Canneto Vino Nobile de Montepulciano 2004

-j-j- and I tasted this at Fine Wine Brokers and fell in love with it.

It was very deep and strong. Dark and mouth-filling.

I thought I tasted fennel.

This may have been because I had fennel on the brain. I was at that very moment making a gravlax. Though “moment” is probably the wrong word; the gravlax took a week to concoct.

How to make a gravlax (literally, “hole salmon”): You take raw salmon and cook it without using heat. Instead, you cure it, in this case by packing it in a mixture of chopped fennel and onion for three or four days. Then, rinse it off. Then, wrap it in plastic. Then, unwrap it and top it with chopped fennel fronds and dill. Then, wrap it in plastic. Then dig in!
Except I realized too late that it’s supposed to be an appetizer. Gravlax is not a pigout food. You’re supposed to serve up a few slices to trigger your guests’ salivary glands and then move on to the main course. But -j-j- and I had a pound of it to get through.

When it finally came time to eat it, we thought we’d crack open the wine that had the whiff of fennel.

It was a mistake. They didn’t go together at all.

-j-j- theorized that the fennel on the fish may have been cancelled out by the fennel in the wine, leaving nothing but an oily, fishy scent forced up our sinuses. It was all right, though, if we used some roasted sweet potatoes and sautéed vegetables as a buffer, cleansing the pallet of the fish and preparing it for the wine.

When we’d finished eating, the wine was able to come into its own. It opened and developed and mellowed, and I was able to remember what I loved about it. There was nothing light or fruity about it. It dragged my tongue through the dank underbrush.

As for the salmon, I nibbled at it some more a day or two later. The raw saltiness was very good, but it kept me from eating more than a few bites of it at a time.

It’s supposed to be able to last for another week in the refrigerator, but in a moment of panic, I decided to try baking it, to see if I could enjoy it in greater quantities. But no—it just got fishier and saltier. I gave up and threw it out.

And I decided never to try anything new again.