Rex Mundi Cuvee Cathare 2016

My son is a Dungeons & Dragons fanatic and campaigns more or less every weekend with his friends. Currently, this is a bittersweet situation for me because I love that he loves D&D, and I could not have picked better friends for him if I tried (he has an autism spectrum disorder, so I’m rather protective), but virtually everyone in the group is graduating from high school this weekend (including my son) and they will all be scattering to the winds next year and most of them are going to university and equally to that most of them are not going to the university here in town. In the course of filling out his enrollment paperwork and housing contract and dining contract and application for a single room through his soon-to-be university’s disability services office, I found a 27-page Tavern Drinks Menu that he and one of his friends had put together for D&D campaigns during their open hour at school. TWENTY-SEVEN PAGES!!! Good god almighty. I like to drink, but cripes. That’s a lot of (imaginary) booze. I hope to god they were doing their homework FIRST. Some of the drinks were pretty standard D&D fare (Goblin-brewed rot gut, anyone? “Nothing fancy but it gets the job done…”) and some of them were wildly creative (one of them causes an alternate-universe split personality with bad repercussions down the road if you overindulge), but my first thought was not to worry about appropriate use of off time at school but rather: “Ha! I write a wine blog and here is my son, whom I sometimes worry about socially, putting together a side-splittingly hilarious drinks menu! How cool is THAT?” or words to that effect.

The bone dice are MINE.

This is a kid who is old enough to drink beer legally in Europe but refuses every time we visit (which is fine with me, honestly) and recently announced that he doesn’t think he will ever like alcohol (again, fine with me). Let’s just say that the D&D Tavern Drinks Menu in combination with the fact that he has precisely zero interest in consuming alcohol means I officially have no social-life worries about him in college. He will find his teetotalling D&D brothers and sisters and for the love of all that is good and holy in the world, I hope to god he shares this menu with them. With Dungeons & Dragons and monsters and Tavern Drinks Menus and goblins and gargoyles and alternate universes in mind, let’s turn our attention to Rex Mundi Cuvee Cathare 2016, because if ever there was a red wine that belongs on a Dungeons & Dragons Tavern Drinks Menu, this is it. Plus also, it’s National Wine Day! This is a holiday to which I will happily offer my full support. I freely admit I bought this one for the label. I mean, who could resist a bright red label with the wine name in gothic gold and black type, framed by a screaming gargoyle who seems about to pounce? I ask you…

Note impossibly cool label.

Rex Mundi, for those not familiar with medieval French history, is the God of the World or the God of Chaos in the Cathar faith (they also had a God who rules heaven). Rex Mundi is a bit of a trickster hedonist, ready and waiting to trip up unsuspecting mortals on their way to the afterlife. In short, he’s my kind of guy. Some people, both now and definitely in medieval France, thought he was Satan (nope), and as a result, thought Cathars were worshiping the dark lord, among many other charges of heresy, the most notable of which was “Hey! You’re not giving your money to the Catholic church every Sunday! We can’t have THAT!” (I say this as a Catholic, just as a Catholic with a pretty clear-eyed view of my denomination.) Interestingly, this wine is the same grape blend as another one I have had from the south of France, Domaine de Ju Ventoux (Syrah, Grenache, and Carignan, in that order), but with a wildly different outcome due entirely to terroir and climate. Where Ju is bright and minerally and crystalline and windswept thanks to the Mistral and Mount Ventoux (all of which we will cover in a future post), Rex Mundi is dark and sinful and rich and earthy and hot (not heat hot, but rather hot like someone you want to be… hedonistic… with… cough). It’s a wine you drink at night, preferably with someone you love or at least want to hop into the sack with. It’s dark like a line I once read in a fantastic bit of historical fiction about the Anarchy in England (12^th century Civil War, look it up): “Her dark hair put him in mind of a hot summer night,” especially after the young lady in question loosened it so it fell around our hero’s face while they were kissing passionately in the stables after escaping her aristocratic parents. This is a wine that you can aerate on a nightstand or bed, so to speak. It’s absolutely loaded with rich fruits, blackcurrant and blackberry and amarena cherry, and then these all seem to have been heavily doused in exotic spices and smoked over an open fire in the courtyard of an ancient stone fortress right next to the stables, where a really handsome, appealingly dirty stablehand is lovingly polishing leather saddles. It’s a giant, mouthfilling wine with light, refreshing acid and somewhat grippy tannins. It’s such a dark red that light barely penetrates it. I swear it turned my teeth and tongue purple. It’s really spicy and rich and did I mention all the dark fruits? You could drink this one with food for sure, but it needs something that can stand up to it, like game or duck or super-strong cheese or a haunch of flame-roasted venison served by a gorgeous and bosomy kitchen wench.

Libere la bete! Preferably into a goblet for full effect...

It’s not a farmer’s daughter wine, it’s not quite that earthy and barnyardy because the supple fruits keep it from veering into primitivo territory. It’s more like the Duke’s naughty daughter’s wine. It is, in short, ravishing. This is not a wine for everyone because you really have to like an unapologetically big, dark, spicy wine, but if that’s your thing (it’s definitely my thing), Rex Mundi Cuvee Cathare might become your D&D Tavern Drinks Menu go-to (as opposed to the “Redheaded Harlot,” the effects of which I won’t describe here).

It's not a wine blog post without Hazel the Adventure Cat. 

Silver medalist, possibly because it’s such a big spicy wine and not everyone loves that (I would give it gold). My brother-in-law, who stocks and sells wine for a living, would call this the Ultimate Lynette Wine. Available from Laithwaite’s Wine. Drink now, preferably with someone hot and preferably in a dark room with candles scattered seductively about.

Glow-in-the-dark dice belonging to my son, who kindly but grudgingly let me use them for the photo shoot.