Beyond Ordinary: November Book + Bottle Pairing
It’s November, and we’re moving quickly from the slow, easy summer months to the busy hustle of the holidays. With the days getting shorter, it can feel like there’s not enough time to get everything done, and social gatherings can start to take the place of our quiet reading nights. This might not be the month to start a thick, classic piece of literature unless you’re determined to make finishing it your new year’s resolution. That’s only one of the many reasons we were so glad to read Ordinary Girls for this month’s Book + Bottle pairing. We flew through the brilliantly written pages, wishing there were more. The story is not light, for sure, but it draws you in so you must finish it, you must find out what happens to this poor girl. The other reason we’re glad to have read Ordinary Girls is because of the way it makes the reader examine their own fortunes and be overcome with gratitude. Thankfulness is a common trope for Novembers, but this book expands the meaning of gratitude and opens our eyes to empathy and understanding. Exactly the reason for the season.
Meanwhile, although fall is here, we’re only just starting to get respite from the summer’s oppressive heat and humidity. We’re still drawn to refreshing beverages, but are trying our best to capture the essence of fall. While we’re not going to select a pumpkin-spice wine for the month, we wanted something a bit more robust, interesting, and fall-like, while still having an essence that would pair with Ordinary Girls. Just like the book presents topics that many of us might not have encountered in our day to day lives, our wine this month might be new to you as well, but in a more positive way. This November, we’re drinking a wine called Pét Nat - we’ll explain what it means and where you can get it below. Read on to see why this wine pairs perfectly with our book, and our bonus this month is a suggestions of wines to bring to Thanksgiving dinner. It still seems far away, but it’ll be here before you know it.
Miami Beach at Night
THE BOOK
Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Díaz is a coming of age story of a young girl in Puerto Rico and then Miami Beach. She has childhood crushes and best friends, and she struggles to gain independence from her family. She tries to fit in, learns who she is, and tests the boundaries of what it means to grow up. However, unlike some of the lighthearted stories we may have read in our adolescence, Jaquira tells a story of horrors no adult should have to endure, much less a child. Instead of a coming of age story where a somewhat middle class kid experiences a dalliance with drugs, one bad night with an abuser, or a brief emotional struggle with identity, Jaquira fights these battles her entire childhood and through her young adult life. The pain is unrelenting, but she’s somehow able to keep the tone hopeful. The book is a memoir of her young life, but it reads like a novel. You almost wish it were a novel, so you could ignore the atrocities hoping that no one actually endured them. Ordinary Girls has been likened to a Latinx Educated in that it exposes the traumatic behaviors of a small community that fostered an isolating and painful upbringing and shrouded the main character in a horrific fate that she is impossibly able to overcome to become a stable, content, and successful adult.
Jaquira watched her father deal drugs; watched her mother abuse them, falling into the waiting arms of schizophrenia. She was beat by her grandmother, raped by her first boyfriend, and harbored secret affection for her girlfriends. She was a drop out by age 16, been in and out of jail several times, and tried to commit suicide for the first time at age eleven. This is hopefully a life few of us can relate to.
Jaquira’s life at full throttle
Díaz starts the story in a relatively positive light. She’s a kid with a decent home, plenty of food to eat, and a good friend she plays with every day. It’s the hopeful naivety of youth, where she’s shielded from harsh truths by ignorant bliss. Slowly, as Jaquira becomes more aware, the reader sees the family adopting destructive habits and watches as their life begins to fall apart. We start to see her community as a hindrance rather than a support. Her father is dealing drugs, her parents fight violently, they stop watching over the kids, allowing them to go rogue. They move to Miami Beach, exacerbating their challenges. Enter more drugs, violence, abuse, and tragedy. The world Díaz sets out for us is endlessly discouraging. Most of the characters have it as hard as Jaquira, and we’re left with little hope of her escaping. Where would she go? She doesn’t know anyone stable, with healthy habits that could show her there’s a different way. Her role model is her 18 year old aunt who does drugs, but is pretty and has a car. She’s still alive at 18, and that’s the best possible scenario Jaquira can see for herself at that age.
Yet, Jaquira shows us repeatedly how resilient young people are. Amongst the terror, she’s able to experience joy, love, and friendship. We see glimpses of her and her friends playing on the beach, eating sugary treats at a theme park with the unabashed joy of a child on a ride, or writing notes to friends in class. That’s where most of us can relate, and why the story is so powerful. It’s not all dark - there’s depth and light, and Jaquira doesn’t feel sorry for herself. She tells it like it was - the good, the bad, the ugly. She holds on to the little nuggets of good, and it’s these that give her hope. Her grandmother abuses her her entire life, but she holds on to the pleasant and loving conversation they share on the phone shortly before her grandmother’s death by suicide. These heartwarming flashes make the reader smile for a second as we imagine similar scenes from our own childhoods, and then help us relate better to the injustices that fill the remainder of Jaquira’s life. We see ourself, our niece, our daughter in the joy, and then recoil as we imagine them in pain. The book is an emotional rollercoaster, but one that you keep reading hoping the story ends on an upswing.
“You remember that first game of chess you played with your father: You, sitting across from him at the table, thinking Who does this old man think he’s playing with? He enjoys the stunned look on your face as he captures your last knight and lectures you on who knows what, trying to make life lessons out of stories.
You think you’re playing. He thinks he’s teaching.
You’re determined to do the opposite of everything your father says. He’s determined to stop you in your tracks. This is what passes for I love you these days.
You learn that day that you will always remember your one bad move, that moment when you could’ve made one choice but made another, and what follows is your whole fame falling apart, piece by piece, check, cross-check, and suddenly, when you’re fourteen, checkmate.”
Just as with the book Educated, the reader questions where the fault lies. Is it the community, the family, or the girl that led to all that destruction? It’s easy to blame the community, as there’s not a single role model available for young Jaquira to show her what her life could look like. Her neighbors are the users, her peers are the instigators, and even the cops judge there to be no innocence left in her community. Bodies are found in the neighborhood bushes or on the beach and drugs seem easier to come by than books. What person could come out of that community as a normal, stable citizen? But you do see a few people get out - the girl who lives with her teacher mother in the same conditions, but who is loved, protected, and guided through the destruction to a better life. Even Jaquira’s little sister, Alaina, makes it out by being raised almost exclusively by her Abuela who had bigger hopes for the littler girl and was able to protect her from the outside. So then family? Is that where the fault lies? Jaquira’s mother was a user with unstable mental health and a proclivity for violence - so that’s what’s going to be imparted on Jaquira. But, how can you expect her mother to be any different when she, too, was raised by a relatively absentee mentally ill mother who used beatings as her primary method of communication. Her white grandmother abhors the black side of the family, telling Jaquira that because of her heritage, she’ll never be good enough. Or Jaquira herself? We watch her identify wrongs her family and community commit - she seems to know inherently that there’s a better, different way. But we watch painfully, as she misses these escapes and falls time and time again into the same patterns of destruction.
The Lifeguard station that makes several appearances in the story - showing Jaquira’s brief brushes with salvation.
She does, eventually, start trying to make better decisions. She sees what life could look like, what she wants for herself. She sees a different life in her boyfriend’s family — a family that treats one another with respect, support, and love. She follows his path, enlisting in the military, feeling necessary for a moment, only to drop out at the last minute. She moves away, gets into school, only to come back to Miami Beach and fall into the same patterns. Each step she takes, she gets a little closer to a better life, but she has to leave a large part of her past behind her to truly escape. Ultimately, Díaz is saved by education. She sees she’s had talent as a writer all along - she’s given the space to write her story and that of others, to give something of herself to the world. She graduates from college, goes to grad school, and gets a job as a teacher and then a journalist. She survives.
Throughout her story, Díaz refers to herself and her friends as “ordinary” girls, and she gives that title to the book. For some, her life is anything but ordinary, to others it’s a mirror of their own. To Jaquira, it was her life, it was ordinary, and it was unexceptional because that’s what she saw all around her. This isn’t the story of one girl, it’s the story of so many ordinary girls who lived lives just like this. Díaz is able to give voice to the ordinary girls like her who were left behind, forgotten, and are still lost. And she was able to write herself into a better life.
“Jaquira Díaz’s Ordinary Girls is more than a memoir. It is an awe-inspiring, middle-finger-waving rejection of the cult and culture of shame that pervades Latinx communities . . . an unflinching yet compassionate dissection of the pain, love, and violence that cast Díaz’s life in equal parts light and shadow . . . a love letter to the girls who have been stigmatized and silenced and hurt and left behind, to those of us whose families are both a source of incredible joy and immense pain, to all of us who contemplated dying more times than we could count and came back up for air at the last possible second . . . a homecoming for those of us who miss our pátria, a mirror for those of us looking for our ancestors . . . a history of Puerto Rico that trickles into the present, right up until the devastating aftermath of Hurricane María. And perhaps most importantly, Ordinary Girls is a reminder to keep surviving in whatever way we know how, so that we can one day write ourselves out of despair and into the people we could be—without shame.”
THE BOTTLE
We picked a wine to pair with Ordinary Girls that we think celebrates the author’s personality. We couldn’t pick an ordinary wine to pair with Jaquira’s extraordinary tale, so we picked something at the fringe. An ordinary pinot noir made in an exceptional way — as the grapes are fermenting, but before they’ve converted all their sugars to alcohol, the juice is bottled, completing its fermentation inside the bottle. This style of wine is called Pét Nat (pétillant naturel, or naturally bubbly) because the bubbles develop naturally from the process of finishing fermentation inside the bottle. Jaquira Díaz is edgy, always on the move, ordinary and extraordinary. She’s strong, she’s unique. She’s a survivor. Pét Nat is edgy -it’s got bubbles, a different flavor. It’s almost more like spiked cider than wine - the cider quality making it a pleasant match for fall. The bubbles move through the glass taking you through different flavors and moods and experiences. It’s young, fruity, with vibrating acidity. It smells like a rustic wine, it’s not refined, but what’s inside the glass is so much more than it seems. It moves, shines, excites. It’s a natural wine - people are finally paying attention.
Pét Nat, like many “natural” wines are trendy. We’re going back to the source of what wine used to be, with minimal winemaker intervention. The grapes are picked early so they’re full of acidity. They sit on their skins for only a short time - about a day - before they’re pressed off, giving the wine the attractive peach-blush color rather than the full extraction of traditional red wine. The juice is bottled before the wine has finished fermenting, so the reaction continues in the bottle, releasing natural carbonation to create the lightly effervescent texture. Because the fermentation is happening inside the bottle, the wine is left unfiltered and the lees make the wine appear cloudy while adding a lactic, creamy mouthfeel to the finished product.
Some say this is a wine for people who like beer better because of the qualities it shares with hard cider. We think it’s a wine for adventurous folks who love wine so much they want to experience it in all its forms. Pét Nats go well with food or a warm afternoon - and you’ll see this is one of the wines we may bring to Thanksgiving dinner! It makes your setting immediately more casual, fun, and youthful. It’s a wine that celebrates the joy, the hope, and the energy we see in Jaquira’s best days of her story - something we all want to tap into.
This particular pét nat came from Johan Vineyards in the Willamette Valley, and is just a knock out. Until Book + Bottle opens and we can select the best of the best for your tasting pleasure, we recommend hopping over to our neighbor Bandit Coffee on Central Avenue and 26th Street South where they’ve got a super fun collection of natural wines, including several pét nats to choose from. Caution - not all of them are great, so make sure you talk to a reputable wine seller or sommelier to ensure you’re getting something that will brighten your day.
THE BONUS
We know you probably haven’t even put away your Halloween decorations yet, but Thanksgiving is only three weeks away. You’ll feel much better if you’ve got your wines picked out so you can have something on your list checked off. We’re here to help. We’ll probably do a Thanksgiving-themed post, too, but here’s what we know we’re bringing to dinner this year.
You know it’s a celebration when the evening starts with bubbles. You can drink these as you’re cooking, they’re perfect to welcome guests, and everyone can enjoy them as they wait for the feast. Bubbles warm up the palate to get you thirsting for more, but won’t fill you up before you fill your plate. If you’re super casual, go with a pét nat (we’ll be bringing ours to Friendsgiving), and if you’re high class, go with the real deal - champagne. We’ll be bringing a Cava from Spain or a Crémant from France. These are more reasonably priced options with the classic, pure taste of fine bubbles that make you feel rich. The lower price means you can open a few bottles, buying yourself time before the main event.
For the meal, Pinot Noir is queen. It has high acidity which makes it a good food wine, and its low tannins and lower alcohol help it pair with lighter fare like turkey. We love having mushrooms on the Thanksgiving table, and Pinot Noir is a perfect match for those and other harvest treats. We’ll be bringing a red Burgundy to keep the cost down and to keep the focus on the food (selecting a higher quality burgundy like Premier Cru or above can make the wine outshine the food or your investment could go unnoticed as guests devour their meals). For a white, we’re going to bring a Grüner Veltliner - it’s crisp and pretty neutral, so everyone will like it, and the hint of black pepper will be a perfect match for your green bean casserole.
At the end of the meal comes the toughest decision. You’re stuffed to the max, but you’re being offered pecan pie, ice cream, pumpkin pie, and cookies. We opt, instead, for a dessert wine to give us that sweet sensation without making us unbutton our pants. Our favorite here is a tokaji aszú - decadently sweet, but balanced out with acidity and savory flavors so even those people who swear they don’t like sweet wines will be asking for more. You only need an ounce or so to really enjoy, so this is a great way to share some high end dessert with your crowd.
Remember, less is more. You want to have enough for people to drink heartily, but not so many options that people have to think too much. Having the wine coursed out like we’ve done above gives a feeling of elegance and propriety, while still allowing you to indulge in the best part of Thanksgiving dinner! Enjoy!
Cheers to a happy Thanksgiving!