2015 Henri Boillot Meursault “Les Charmes”

The truth about who we are and where we’ve been is a piece of paper with words written on it. Keep your heart open.

The truth about the crow is that after he landed on my shoulder, you didn’t say one word about omens. You just looked at him and said, “Hi.” Keep your heart open.

The truth about the way it feels when we’re in different time zones is that absence makes the heart into a castle. The castle protects you from the inevitable—for the time being—but we both pay a cruel price for your peace of mind. Why did you have to go and turn yourself into a memory, even if you are the best memory I’ll ever have? Keep your heart open.

The truth about losing each other’s souls to the world is that we never belonged to each other in the first place. We were faces in a crowd, the words to a silent song, wines that lived and died in their cellars. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to fear or regret. Though I will say a quick prayer for the moment that hesitated before it passed. I’d like a few more of those, please, if you can spare them. Keep your heart open.

The truth about your memory—where it went, how we fought for it, how we lost that fight—is that we gave your memory everything we had. Each word we said to each other, the entire history of love, was a gift. How are we supposed to thank each other? There are the favors we do for each other and then there are the favors nobody can return. Keep your heart open.

The truth about the pain I feel when we’re in different worlds is that it touches each hair on the back of my neck. It breaks the bones inside my hands. It hurts in ways that make me wish I could ghost myself. Pain’s supposed to make you feel alive. If pain doesn’t hurt, you’re dead. With all due respect to the living and the dead, the only time I’m not in pain is when you’re in my eyes and I’m in yours. Keep your heart open.

Which brings us to the 2015 Henri Boillot Meursault “Les Charmes.”

In the glass, Boillot’s 2015 “Les Charmes” is a thoughtful gold, an articulate whisper, a mind you can read like a book. The bouquet is an extended invitation to clairvoyance. The French say the great Meursaults are wines of seduction. (They’re not. They’re wines of unholy alliances, also known as strange bedfellows. But you’ve got to love the French for sticking to their stories.) On the palate, the flint of the Meursault strikes the limestone of Les Charmes and—viola!—the fire is lit. Much as you might want the finish to contain that fire, gently, with mercy, those kind of endings only happen in fairy tales. In real life, the house always burns to the ground.

Keep your heart open because love runs on its own private schedule. Keep your heart open because the best words you said to me were, “Give it time.” Keep your heart open because the only thing worse than saying goodbye is saying nothing. When you say nothing, you pretend that nothing is all you have to say.

The truth about you is that the world is a candle being lit in your honor. Before that candle was lit, the rooms in the castle had a cold, forbidden quality. Nothing good or bad could happen in those rooms because they were rooms full of second thoughts, rooms of judgment, rooms where hope was dismissed as a necessary evil before it had the chance to open anyone’s heart. My guess is, these stories will make their way up the ladder that leads halfway to the stars, but what do I care about progress? In the old country, where my people come from, they say progress is just another opiate of the masses. You want progress? I’ll show you progress. Our faces are inches apart. Our eyes are open, and full of tears. Neither of us can blink. That’s progress. Keep your heart open. The truth about us that we take each other seriously, but not too seriously. We also take each other with a grain of salt. How serious is that salt? And what if that salt should lose its savor? Keep your heart open.

The truth about the world is that it has no place for the way we feel. The world spends its days trying to erase all the love that lives in the stars, all the love that makes the night the home of delicious secrets. Remember your first taste of who we might have been. Keep it safe. Protect it with every ounce of your legendary resolve. Keep it as a souvenir of the trip we took to eternity. Feed it. Water it. Let it grow into the rest of your life—from the ground up. And keep your heart open.

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.