Every wine lover knows these lines:

Since 1992, Cakebread Cellars has been making what has become a very popular light-bodied red wine blend named after the famous poem, Rubáiyát by Omar Khayyám.* For each vintage of Rubaiyat, winemaker Bruce Cakebread makes the kind of red wine blend ideally suited to accompany light picnic or barbecue fare.

But the modern day romantic in each of us does not have to sing in the wilderness, especially a paradisiacal one, to be able to properly enjoy Cakebread Cellars' 2000 Rubaiyat. It goes extremely well with grilled or spicy foods, or any dish that might otherwise overwhelm a lighter white or rosé wine.

Accordingly, the constant in Rubaiyat's blend over the years has been the food-friendly Pinot noir wine, with 90% or more of this variety going into the blend in recent vintages. Additionally, a small amount of Syrah gets blended to better bring forward the Pinot noir's vibrant raspberry and bright cherry-like flavors.

Aged over one year in new and year-old French oak barrels before being bottled, the 2000 Rubaiyat is produced in such limited quantities as to be only available at the winery. It is also enjoyable to serve Rubaiyat slightly chilled.

* The 19th century English Romantic poet Edward Fitzgerald gave the title The Rubaiyat (RU-bee-aht) of Omar Khayyam to his "translations" of the verses of the 11th-century Abu-'l-fat'h 'Omar, son of Ibrahim the tentmaker of Naishápúr, known more commonly as Omar Khayyam, a Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet. Khayyam's almost 100 quatrains (four-line poems) celebrate and meditate upon the whole range of human life. We naturally like best the one about the pleasures of wine.