Mad Maggie's
Touriga Nacional: A Port in Any Storm
The week passed so quickly at Mad Maggie’s farm, there was no time to jot notes.
I had been rooming at Warrenton, an hour’s commute from Horton Cellars, Barboursville and hoping to settle something closer.
The head winemaker put me in touch with his in-laws and so it came to pass I had a room with Jim and Maggie Murse a dozen miles from the winery at a hamlet named Rochelle, in Madison County.
In fact, Rochelle is more a simple rural crossroads. In this week in 1863 there was a big cavalry fight near there, but the few local plantations and farms seem otherwise untouched and unnoticed by the decades and century between then and now.
The winery granted an hour leave time for the drive up to meet Jim, a retired limnologist and dairy farmer. Mike figured since we were both professional biologists, both farmers and shared aspirations to the title of crusty bastard emeritus, we would hit it off. Jim, at age 73, is also a marathoner. Farming seems to exclude those who are not up to the physical tasks.
He agreed I could take a room at the farmhouse they used only during the week, and so it went. Of course, he did mention Mad Maggie might have other ideas.
That first night began with apprehension: Jim intimated Maggie had promised the room adjacent to someone named Lana. As with most evenings during harvest, work broke off late at the winery and I found myself winding along the deeply shaded country roads between Barboursville and Rochelle. I knew Jim and Maggie spent weekends at their place in Richmond, and it was not clear who would be at the farm and if I would have to make an introduction myself.
The guest turned out to be long time family friend and wine journalist Lana Bortolot of both Wall Street Journal and the wine journal SOMM. I was relieved to find Jim and Maggie had not left for their Richmond weekend and so I found myself invited to dine with them at the wonderful old farm table in the kitchen of their 1830s farmhouse.
Maggie, it turns out, is not so mad after all. I was relieved when I met Lana, that she was no a mass murderer, however several folks later let me know such queries on first meeting, might not be the best first impression one might want to put forth. Judging from Jim, Maggie’s husband, she not only tolerates but expects eccentricity and color from those lucky enough to share a meal. I am simple: if they are not inclined toward gratuitous bloodshed, and like wine, that’s all I need to know.
Maggie clearly relishes a lively and somewhat irreverant dinner conversation, and seems to collect house guests toward that end. So, all began well, and as dinner wine progressed to a bottle of Horton port I felt completely at home in the warmth of these old friendhips.
Maggie, a botanist and teacher at most levels during her career, reminded me of my favorite mother-in-law,, and her farmhouse was surprisingly similar to ours: the same bookcase of Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie paperbacks stocked two deep in the bedroom bookcase. The same antiques and framed prints. I would like to claim the similarity good taste, but perhaps we should just leave it as a comfy familiarity.
Lana was a character in her own right: daughter of a New York model who grew up in northern Vermont. All of us at table loved the rugged country life: Lana was sent to by her mother to Outward Bound one summer and has loathed the outdoors ever since.
I was wrong to presume their son-in-law, as the head winemaker at Horton, provided them with wine. Therefore, following my personal dictum that he who appears with wine makes many friends, I arrived with a bottle of Horton port, which I had spent much of the week swimming in, stained by, overcome by fumes thereof, and generally gaining a close and unpleasantly personal relationship with the touriga nacional grape.
That said, I am now a fan of the port: first, it is highly drinkable but even better, it is one of the few wines that, uncorked, can be left open without ill effect on the wine. The other reason I am a fan is that all the massive 2015 touriga crop is now in, processed and, for at least that grape, I will have no more physical pain in handling it, hauling around palettes or bins of it, throwing it, fifty pounds at a time into a crusher, or pumping it from tank to tank.
No, my sole task henceforth this 2015 harvest at least, will be to buy a bottle or two at discount for friends and basking in the warm glow of the resulting gratitude and friendship port seems to inspire.