Lebanese Wine in Los Alamos

I love you... but I'm thirsty

Every year for our anniversary, Matt and I drive up to Bell’s in Los Alamos for lunch. Now that our anniversary has “changed” to our wedding date, I’m still gonna make Matt drive up there with me the weekend before Christmas for lunch. *It’s a Christmas tradition now*. (I can literally hear our future kids whining about how mom and dad always make them drive so far just for lunch).

I love the drive up there. It takes us about 2 hours and we always take the scenic route.

The lunch menu at Bell’s is simple and petit. Each year I try to mix it up but I really love their egg salad sandwich, their terrine, and moules frites so much that it’s hard to deviate. This year though, we skipped the egg salad and went for the terrine, steak frites, and the schnitzel (this is new!). But what I’m always excited about is their wine list.

Bell's at Christmas time is so special

When it’s just the two of us, I like to explore the BTG list (by the glass) so I can drink a couple different glasses. That may sound limiting when the bottle list is long and beautiful, but Bell’s is one of the places where their BTG selection is just as strong as their full list.

For our first glass, we went with a weighty white wine– an Aligote from Loire Valley, Primavera 2022 by Vincent Giraudon. To know me is to know I love a white wine that is both creamy and lucious, with a sprinkle of maldon salt. I prefer toasted or roasted fruit over the usual sticky and ripe tropical notes I associate with white wine. I do not love southern hemisphere white wines, but I love white wine that reminds me of being wrapped in a cashmere blanket. Winter whites, I call them.

This bottle was exactly what I love: warm and cozy, medium bodied with roasted winter fruits, a creamy texture, a tiny bit of floral to brighten it and a touch of salt to balance it all.

I learned later that this producer is actually a chef turned winemaker who has worked across some of my favorite French wine regions including Alsace, Burgundy and the Loire. The aligote he tends to is from a small plot in the Loire, and it’s actually quite rare to find Aligote vines in the region.

Our second glass, a moody red wine, was exactly the kind of wine I had been searching for that month. Given the political turmoil and war in the Middle East this year, I have kept my eye on the ways Palestinian and Lebanese winemakers have continued to work despite their heavy realities. One of my favorite producers (and internet friend), Mersel Wine, shared openly about the realities of living and working in wine during wartime and one of my favorite wine writers Farrah Berrou, writes Aanab News about life in Lebanon through the lens of wine.

our wine selection

One of the reasons I am so drawn to wine is because it is a time capsule from the time and place where each wine was bottled. Each bottle will have seen something different, it will tell a different story, touched by different hands, and carry different emotions. It is beautiful extension of the human experience. Because of this, I am much more interested in wines that come from a deep and complex place, and that tell me their history as I pour each glass.

Our second glass took us through that journey a bit, a red blend: Musar Jeune in the Bekka Valley of Lebanon, one of Lebanon’s older contemporary Chateau. The grapes leaned more traditional-French: Cinsault, Merlot, and Cab Sauv, rather than indigenous Lebanese grapes (which deserve a whole . Think Rhone meets Bordeaux, but made to be a little lighter, a little less serious (and by less serious I mean, no need to decant. Easy to pour, easy to sip, easy to enjoy).

I loved the velvety texture of this wine and the perfect balance of fruit, earth and leather; blackberries, soil and leather married well with a perfect bite of steak frites. There we were on our sixth anniversary, merging our memories with the memories of what the bottle holds. This is a feeling I chase often in wine. One that combines the perfect pairing with the perfect storytelling, and somehow, forever a part of my own experience.

Thanks for reading and thank you for being here <3

pics from anniversary's past :)