Dreaming
of Thalabert
Diary
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For the last several years,
Neil
Gaiman has been my yarn spinner and taleteller of choice. He has a
way with words that is twisted rather differently
than your average hack; he doesn’t turn a phrase so much as he morphs
it with a Warpsmith's sensibility. His work spans a variety of genres, including
horror, fantasy, mystery, humor and for lack of a better term,
speculative fiction, often blending them in varying measures with a rich
(and sometimes disturbing) imagination.
I was in the mood for wine when I sat
down at the computer not long ago to explore some
Gaiman related
websites, and felt that something deep, dark and mysterious would be
appropriate, given the nature of many of his creations. I decided it was
time to give the 1994 Paul Jaboulet
Aine Crozes Hermitage Domaine de Thalabert ($19.99, 13 % alc.) its
annual checkup. Gaiman is an expatriate Brit now living in Minnesota with his
family, and is best known for his groundbreaking, mind blowing DC
Vertigo Comics series, The
Sandman . These are not your parents’ comics; throughout the
entire 76-issue run, there are no posing musclemen and only one brief
cameo appearance of any superhero in cape and tights. Often moody and
atmospheric, sometimes stark and horrific, the storylines are always
deep and engrossing. Morphius (AKA Onieros), the
Lord of
Dreams and his siblings are more than
gods, for even after gods are long gone, there are still The
Endless,
Dream, Destiny,
Desire,
Delirium (who was once
Delight),
Despair
and Death. (Destruction abandoned his station some
centuries ago, pointing out in a rare appearance that his duties and
responsibilities were doing fine without him.) Drawing from a remarkable
range of sources, including the DC Universe, history, literature,
legend, religion, myth and all of their various and respective pantheons,
Gaiman
wove a compelling web of tales that he ended voluntarily (far too soon
for too many fans) after its six year run. He reprised
The Sandman
last year for a special, one shot graphic novel, The
Dream Hunters, illustrated by noted Japanese artist Yoshitaka
Amano, in celebration of the series’ 10th Anniversary. It is
adapted from the Japanese folk tale "The Fox, the Monk, and the
Mikado of All Night's Dreaming," and is told with a beautiful
and haunting simplicity. It has no happy ending, that being one more
reason why it provides such a fitting addition to The
Sandman mythos.
Like
Gaiman, Dom. De Thalabert
is an
old
favorite of ours; we’ve been sampling this vintage since its
release, and have enjoyed multiple vintages going back to ’78. It’s
a dense, concentrated Northern Rhone
Syrah, and what it’s lost
in its
primary floral bouquet has been more than compensated for by mellowed
tannins and evolving complexity.
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