2013 Domaine du Gros Noré Bandol Rosé

Baseball’s Hall of Fame is in Cooperstown. The NFL’s is in Canton. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is in Cleveland. TAHOF, The Acronym Hall of Fame, has no fixed location. TAHOF’s lack of a bricks-and-mortar edifice leads people to believe that TAHOF does not exist. Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only does TAHOF exist, TAHOF is everywhere. Admission is free, and TAHOF is always open.

Of the all-world acronyms enshrined in TAHOF, these are my favorites.

ART. “Approaching room temperature.” A medical acronym, used in emergency rooms and intensive care units, in reference to a patient with minutes to live. “Get that lady a pine box. She’s ART.”

BOBO. “Burnt out but opulent.” Used by Millennial salespeople in reference to rich, over-the-hill Boomers. “I could sell that BOBO an A7 if he had an attention span.”

BRAT. “Born, raised, and transferred.” A military acronym for the children of soldiers. “I was an Army BRAT. Grew up all over. Never had a best friend.”

CITTOJ. “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Teddy Roosevelt’s version of “Comparisons are odious.”

LITROD. “Luck is the residue of design.” Branch

Rickey’s version of “You make your own luck.” “Were we lucky to win? Maybe. Maybe not. Either way, LITROD.”

MOAB. “Massive ordinance air blast.” A military euphemism for a detonated mid-air explosion. “Mother of all bombs” is a variation.

SCUBA. “Self-contained underwater breathing apparatus.” A first-ballot inductee, now a global industry.

SPAM. “Stupid, pathetic, annoying messages.” Another first-ballot inductee, and one of a handful of acronyms with multiple meanings. In 1937, the Broadway actor Kenneth Daigneau entered a naming contest for one of Hormel & Company’s new canned meat products. Daigneau won the $100 prize for contracting “spiced ham” into “Spam.” During the 1940s, Spam went to war. Hormel sold one hundred and fifty million cans to the Allies. Margaret Thatcher remembered Spam as a “wartime delicacy.” GIs de-contracted it into “Special Army meat.” Spam’s metamorphosis from canned snack to cyber parasite is a prime example of how this versatile acronym adapted to the electronic age.

SNAFU. “Situation normal, all f****d-up.” The fog of war in five letters, not unlike its cousin FUBAR—“F****d-up beyond all recognition”—the acronym that went on to star in Saving Private Ryan.

TIARA. “Tiara is a recursive acronym.” A recursive acronym refers to itself, usually by the word that starts with the acronym’s first letter.

WASP. “White Anglo-Saxon Protestant.” One of the original ethnic acronyms. “Women are superior people” gave it a shot as a latter-day variation during the 1970s but never caught on, probably due to its accuracy. WOG, “Wiley Oriental gentleman,”—as in, “They’re all WOGs east of Suez”—and WOP, “without papers,” for an undocumented Italian-American, are other ethnic acronyms.

YAHOO. “You always have other options.” Especially when you think you don’t. Or if you’re Marissa Mayer.

“Acronym” derives from the Greek akros, “height,” or “tip,” as in the tip of a spear; and onuma, “name.” In ancient Athens, the acropolis was a neighborhood of temples built for the gods on the highest point of the city. “Acrid,” “acrophobia,” and “acrostic” are also descended from akros.

The Free Dictionary defines an acronym as “A word made from the initial letters or parts of other words, such as SONAR, from so[und] na[vigation and] r[anging]. The distinguishing feature of an acronym is that it is pronounced as if it were a single word, in the manner of NATO and NASA. Acronyms are often distinguished from initialisms like FBI and NIH, whose individual letters are pronounced as separate syllables.”

The military likes acronyms because acronyms contract time. In battle, speed is both a defensive and offensive weapon. The four seconds saved by contracting “What’s on your radio detecting and ranging equipment?” into “What’s on your radar” could make the difference between defeat and victory.

In the LOW, or Land of Wine, time passes more slowly than it does on the battlefield. This has left us with a shortage of acronyms. With that shortage in mind, I nominate the following acronyms for TAHOF’s consideration.

GROAT. “Greatest rosé of all time.”

WINE. “Wine is not easy,” “Wine is never easy,” or, “Wine is nervous energy.”

Which brings us to the 2013 Gros’ Noré Bandol Rosé.

In the glass, the 2013 Gros’ Noré Rosé is as much a vision of depth as an expression of clarity. What you see is what you get, but what you get ends up being so much more engaging than what you see. The bouquet is a challenge, an invitation, and a persuasion, all rolled into one. On the palate, the Gros’ Noré searches for your raw emotions, locates them, captures them, and refuses to let go. If you laugh or cry easily, you may do both when you taste this rosé. The finish takes your breath away, gives it back, and then takes it again.

But is the Gros’ Noré 2013 Rosé the GROAT? If it is, it shares that honor with the 2004 Domaine Tempier Bandol Rosé, the 2009 Domaine Abbatucci Rosé “Cuvee Faustine,” and the 2012 Clos Canarelli Corse Figari Rosé. For now, I’m calling all four the GROATs. None of them are losers. All four are drinking beautifully. CITTOJ. Why does one have to be declared the winner?

When I was young, and enjoyed a good argument, I used to insist that the word “palindrome” should be a palindrome and that “acronym” should be an acronym. Palindrome refused to cooperate, but “acronym,” as it turns out, is now an acronym: “Abbreviated coded rendition of names yielding meaning.”

See you at TAHOF. I’ll be in the main hall, contemplating the bust of KOALA and doing my best to yield meaning.

One Bottle is dedicated to the appreciation of good wines and good times, one bottle at a time. You can write to Joshua Baer at jb@onebottle.com.