A wine like Jodie Foster

In her great book, The Wine Bible, Karen MacNeil writes early on of the difficulties encountered in describing wine, to yourself or to other people. Apples? Peaches? Leather? The infamous "cat pee" (a good thing, or at least a typical thing, in a sauvignon blanc)?

One day, looking for an adventure she says, she went into a wine shop and asked the clerk for "a wine like Robin Williams." Unhesitatingly, he found her one, and he was right in his assessment of it.

She doesn't explain any further, and at first reading I must admit I thought this short passage was rather loopy. But lately, two things have come together, and I think I understand what she was driving at. I've found a wine "like" Jodie Foster.

The actress made a movie fairly recently so of course interviews with her appeared in magazines that I read, weeks after they are outdated, at the dentist's office or in the library. She has always struck me as such a strange type. Very attractive, very intelligent, and yet changelessly icy and rocklike. The look on her face in The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane is exactly the same as the look on her face now. And she cannot, but cannot, play a romantic heroine. She rarely tries.

So I have idly thought of her lately -- didn't see her movie -- and there on the shelf in the store was a wine I tasted months ago and never forgot.

Attractive. Intelligent. Icy. Rock-like. Changeless, I am willing to bet. I respect it, but would not necessarily buy a ticket for it again. A wine like Jodie Foster. Or has the name on the label, Forrester, simply jogged a mental gear, and made me see a pattern that is not there?