2005 Château de Fargues Lur Saluces Sauternes

One of the interesting things about life is that life comes to an end. Depending on how lucky you are, life starts and lasts for a while, but then it stops, and the end is final, regardless of how lucky you are. We do what we can to prolong life. Art, love, medicine, and religion are here to help. Music helps a lot. And pets. But sooner or later, either by accident or by design, we come face to face with the limited time offer we accepted at birth, and life goes on without us.

Another interesting thing about life is the way it really does go on without us. We die, but life lives forever. A fraction of the world’s bacteria and viruses die with us, in a kind of anonymous parasitic empathy, but the rest of the world goes on living. That’s what makes life so confounding. As individuals, we live mortal lives, but the life that passes through us is immortal.

Now, you can argue that there was no life before the Big Bang, that nothing existed before the universe took the mother of all deep breaths and gave birth to existence. The problem with that argument is the way the human mind works. Our lives begin and end, but our minds are blessed—or cursed, if you think that way—with the ability to imagine what happens before a beginning and after an end. If the Big Bang started all this, what started the Big Bang? If nothing created existence, what created nothing? And, if “God” is your answer, what kind of god creates nothing?

Death is not what you would call a popular topic, at least not among the living. If there is an afterlife—a zone where disembodied spirits speak the lingua franca of the dead—then conversations about how, when, where, and why you died must be popular. Among the living, the common approach to death is, “Not now. Yes, I know it’s inevitable. Did you have to remind me? Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Our willful neglect of all that death has to offer takes myriad forms. One of those forms is eating and drinking. Like sex, drugs, rock and roll, and litigation after fifty, the art of eating and drinking is what keeps us alive. Consider the alternative. If you stop eating and drinking, your life might last a month, but the end of that month will be haunted by your starved body’s transition from life to death. Not only does eating and drinking keep us alive, it keeps us in the food and wine bubble. We may not be able to survive our mortality but at least we can enjoy it while it lasts. 

Which brings us to the 2005 Château de Fargues Lur Saluces Sauternes.

In the glass, the 2005 Château de Fargues is a glimpse of gold. You can look at the gold, and looking right at it will give you a sense of weightlessness, but you can also see through the gold, and seeing through it will give you a sense of being both inside and outside its beauty. From the outside, the gold appears to be lovely. Inside, the gold is alive.

Château de Fargues’ bouquet is precise, and its precision is exciting. On the palate, the bouquet’s precision reasserts itself through a spectrum of flavors. Each flavor is a marvel—caramelized peaches, Meyer lemon ice, pineapple tart—but to say that Château de Fargues “tastes like” any or all of its flavors is to misunderstand the gift of Sauternes. A great Sauternes—and the 2005 Château de Fargues is nothing less—is simultaneously multiple and singular.

People who love Château de Fargues drink it for its multi-faceted bouquet and hallucinogenic flavors, but we celebrate this wine for its finish. A good wine will always leave you with a good finish, but some good finishes last longer than others. With Château de Fargues, especially the 2005 vintage, the finish lasts long enough to remind you of how lucky you are to live in a world where the middle of your life lasts longer than its beginning or end—long enough, one would hope, to reflect on the beginning and embrace the end.

The key to enjoying the 2005 Château de Fargues is to disassociate yourself from the common misconception that Sauternes are dessert wines. Sauternes are sweet, but just because a wine is sweet does not mean you have to drink it with sweet foods. Sauternes work beautifully with duck confit, grilled flank steak, lobster club sandwiches, or seared foie gras. Like all dramatic wines, Sauternes perform well in the company of bacon.

If you want to do what the French do—not always a sound strategy, though in this case an inspired one—get a Wonder Roast chicken at Kaune’s, take it home, cut it up, put the pieces on a hot platter with some salsa verde and mango-habanero chutney, and eat the Wonder Roast as slowly as your appetite will allow, with an open bottle of the 2005 Château de Fargues on the table. You will remember the meal, maybe for the rest of your life. As the chicken and the Château de Fargues disappear, do yourself a favor and reflect on the timeless adage, “It’s not how you start. It’s how you finish.”

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.