Sarah Jessica Parker’s Hot Wine

What do you do when you’re emptying barrels in preparation for bottling? You listen to a wine podcast, of course.

In this case, it was the Wine Enthusiast podcast. I was busy running back and forth cleaning barrels, so I wasn’t paying particularly close attention, but I was following along enough to know they were interviewing some celebrity who had gotten involved in a winery project and was now slinging jalapeño Sauvignon Blanc.

I thought, that’s kind of interesting. Sauvignon Blanc can naturally have those green, herbaceous pyrazines that give it almost chile-like aromas. I encountered a lot of that in Slovakia, where I really enjoyed the Sauvignon Blancs. But they were talking about this particular wine actually being spicy.

Eventually, I pulled out my phone to see who they were interviewing. It was Sarah Jessica Parker, of that spicy HBO series Sex and the City.

We’ve done some doctoring of wines ourselves over the years. The TTB (Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau) oversees wine and wine labeling, and once you start adding things other than grapes, you enter a different world of wine regulations. The most familiar example is probably vermouth. At Holly’s Hill, we’ve made wine with vanilla beans. We’ve made one with juniper berries. And, of course, we still make our Dry Hopped White Wine.

We even made a Pumpkin Spice Grenache once.

Just kidding! That was a Halloween prank I pulled on our social media followers about ten years ago. We actually got a response from someone asking if we had any more for sale. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it was a joke, so I just told her it was sold out.

Before the podcast was even over, I had ordered a bottle of Sarah Jessica Parker’s jalapeño Sauvignon Blanc. And wow, it was going to be here the next day. That’s as fast as Holly’s Hill can get wine to you too, assuming you’re in California or Nevada.

Well, FedEx disappointed.

It didn’t come for two days, and although I was excited to try it, we were busy until after 10 p.m. putting the finishing touches on Holly’s rental house. New tenants were moving in the next day and the following morning we were all waking up early to drive our “baby” to college two states away.

I packed the bottle in our ice chest. My plan was to surprise Carrie by pouring her a glass and asking her what she thought it was. That plan didn’t last long. She spotted the bottle in the garage fridge.

On the long drive, I kept thinking about the idea behind the wine. Sauvignon Blanc can already have those green, peppery flavors, so adding jalapeño is really just turning up something that can naturally be there. Which got me thinking about Viognier.

Why not bring a little more peach to the Viognier party? We could do that, but who would be our pitch person? Julia Roberts is from Georgia. She’s a peach, right? Or maybe we need a musician from Georgia. Better yet, somebody who sings about peaches.

Movin’ to the country. Gonna eat me a lot of peaches… All I could come up with was The Presidents of the United States of America and their song “Peaches.”

Silly, I know.

We arrived at our destination well after dark, so Sarah Jessica Parker would have to wait another day. What I thought was going to be a next-day wine tasting ended up happening four days later. Did I survive? Yes. But only barely.

Finally, I asked Carrie if she wanted to do the honors, with a bit of a wink. It was a screw cap. The house we rented didn’t have wine glasses either, just tumblers. Only four stars for this place. Just kidding!

Should I have brought some nice Riedel glassware? No. The bottle says “white wine with natural flavor.” I think Sarah would approve of our casual approach.

The tumblers did make it a little difficult to pick up the aromatics. There was plenty of fruit, but I was expecting to get knocked in the face with green pepper. That didn’t happen.

Carrie took a sip.

“Huh. That’s really very interesting. It’s not horrible like I thought it would be.”

It wasn’t really spicy, but there was definitely a little jalapeño flavor. Our 22-year-old daughter took a sniff from the bottle and said it smelled sweet. She was right. There was a lot of nice fruit in there.

I kept sipping while watching an old Anthony Bourdain rerun on the rental house smart TV and eventually came to the conclusion that this wine wasn’t for me. Maybe I’m just getting old and having a harder time accepting new things, but as I drank it, that spicy feeling started building in the back of my throat. It wasn’t doing it for me.

Did I finish the bottle? Yes.

Are we going to make a peach Viognier? Probably not.

But if Julia Roberts calls will I hear her out? Yes.