Cellar Notes
A Quiet Flight in Miles City
On terroir, hospitality, and the Montana school.
There are people — I will not name them; the letters page will — who insist the work is not as good as it used to be. Some of us who have spent the time with the literature, with the actual endocrinology, are able to sample the finer things. Palate is a practice. Nostalgia is a crutch.
This month we are in Miles City, which some locals will tell you is the capital of the thing they do not name to outsiders. I find that charming. Every wine region has its myth of origin. Burgundy has monks. Montana has a frontage road and a man named Dale who offered us coffee and did not ask what the camera was for.
The local product, in the traditional style, presents first as a bright top note — ammonia adjacent, not ammonia itself, a cousin you would not invite to Thanksgiving but would talk to in the driveway. Then a mid-palate I can only call unctuous, by which I mean it coats. I know what the word means. I have used it correctly here. The finish is long and a little sad, like a good Barolo if Barolo were invented in a wind that never stops.
Dale's trailer is a study in restraint. One chair that is for sitting. One chair that is for the cat, though there is no cat. The linoleum has been mopped. I said as much to Amy and she wrote something in that notebook she thinks I do not see.
We were treated with extraordinary hospitality the entire time. That matters. The great regions are not only geology. They are manners. When the evening took a turn — and evenings take turns; this is travel — Dale's cousin drove. I will not dwell on the clinic. The lighting was unkind. The staff were professionals. I tipped in cash because that is what you do when a place has taken care of you.
Compared with last year's Orlando notes, which some of you wrote to say were “irresponsible,” I found Montana more savory, less neon, with a mineral line I associate with actual cold. Orlando was a stunt. Miles City is a cuisine.
I have been accused of dressing up a habit as a discipline. That is what criticism is. Bourdain understood this and then he didn't. I am still in the first part.
Next month: a vertical tasting of gas-station cold medicine, provided we can find a clerk who will sell Amy a third box without making a face. The face is part of the terroir. I will be taking notes.
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