Jacqueline Friedrich: The Wine Humanist
WINE BY PEOPLE, FOR PEOPLE

This is page is something of a blog in which I discourse on the delights and displeasures of living in France.

Please note that Restaurants and Hotels previously described here are now in Out&About.

If you want to comment on something you read on another page, send me an email saying that and I'll introduce it here or in Mail & Events.

October 6, 2008
Take to Your Stoves!
Herewith a very useful recipe for a savory loaf cake flavored with goat cheese, raisins and mint. Not only is this a delicious way to use up over-the-hill, back-of-the fridge goat cheese, it’s also immensely adaptable. I can be served warm or cold; cut into small pieces as a canapé or larger slices as an appetizer (accompanied by some kind of salad); and it marries well with a lot of different wines (see below).

I’ve adapted the recipe from one I found in the French magazine Cuisine & Vins de France (November 2003). They allegedly adapted it from Jean-Luc Poujauran, a star boulanger in the 7th arrondissement of Paris (though when I asked him about it, he pleaded ignorance).

SAVORY GOAT-CHEESE, MINT AND RAISIN LOAF

7 ounces of semi-moist, flavorful goat cheese, crumbled
3 1/2 to 4 ounces of Comte, Emmenthal or Swiss cheese, thickly grated
1/3 C of white raisins
20 small, fresh mint leaves, snipped
salt and pepper

3 large eggs
2 1/4 C flour
1/2 C milk
1 packet of yeast
1/2 C olive oil

Preheat the oven to 210.
Line a loaf pan with tin foil. Soak the raisins in boiling water for 15 minutes.

In a bowl, beat the eggs, the flour, the yeast, the oil, the milk and the salt and pepper. (You will not need an electric beater.)

Add the crumbled goat cheese, the Comte and the mint and the snipped mint to the mixture. Add salt and pepper to taste. Mix gently but thoroughly. Delicately pour the mixture into the loaf pan and cook for 45 minutes.

When Ahmed and Lena visited for the weekend I had no idea what time they would arrive or how hungry they would be. I prepared this loaf cake knowing I’d be able to use it during their stay.
First, it was an appetizer at dinner, paired with a chick pea salad seasoned with fresh, chopped parsley and chives from the garden and dressed with a vinaigrette. (I liked the contrasts in both flavor and texture.)
My wine selection was a 2006 Sancerre Cuvee Reservee from Domaine Serge Laloue, a pure-fruited, mineral and stone sauvignon blanc.

The next day I served small squares of the loaf to go with aperitifs before dinner. I think this is where it really shines and it goes beautifully with an off-dry white. I paired it with the 2005 Vouvray “le Portail” from Didier & Catherine Champalou, a masterly, demi-sec barrel-fermented chenin.



August 31, 2008

REGRESSION/ ATAVISTIC EATING

It engulfs me from time to time, often at life-changing moments, like moving to a new home or the weepy end of an important relationship. I return to the foods of my youth. In a big way.
Now you might not necessarily consider the Democratic convention a sufficiently significant moment for me --- 3000 miles away in deepest France – to warrant such culinary backtracking. You would be wrong.
Like many, I have been obsessing about this election. So much so that, enamored of sleep as I am, I was determined to adopt American hours during the course of the Democratic convention, watching CNN (for want of better options) until 6AM CET.
I brought a blanket downstairs, rearranged the pillows on my couch, and stocked the fridge and pantry with foodstuffs that could only be called a nutritionist’s worst nightmare.

Herewith, the sickening details:

THE SOLIDS:
Dippas Tortilla chips: I’d have preferred the lime-flavored ones but either Dippas has stopped making these or Leclerc, my local hypermarket, has stopped carrying them.
Chopped beefsteak tomatoes with Sadie’s Russian dressing. Sadie, my grandmother on my mother’s side, lived with us when I was growing up in South Orange, New Jersey. She was a good but a haphazard cook, too impatient for fine points, like filling her blintzes so that they looked like something more than empty envelopes. (More on Sadie’s blintzes later.)

Anyway, this Russian dressing is surely not unique to Sadie but it is through Sadie that I came to know and love it: you simple mix good commercial mayonnaise (Hellmann’s is just fine) with Heinz ketchup to taste. Voila! Easy. Delicious. On one of the convention nights I think I was actually energetic enough to get off the couch, cut some chives from the garden and snip them in to the dressing. It’s pretty good. Try it.

Roast Loin of Pork: Like many single people I often cook a dish on Sunday that will carry me through a couple (or more) meals during the week. I have a really good butcher in the neighboring village and love to shop there. Having bought and roasted the loin of pork before the convention started, my culinary exertions were essentially over. I used a James Beard recipe. I often turn to James Beard when I want to find some normal, unfussy, tried-and-true, back-to-basics recipe. This was practically effortless, very delicious, and fed me for most of the week – sometimes reheated, more often sliced and made into a sandwich with that good commercial mayonnaise and seven-grain bread.
Southern Fried Chicken: I have tested many recipes – calling for milk, marinating in milk, eggs, etc – but not one of them had the Proustian effect I was after. I grew up on Tessie’s southern fried chicken. Back in the ‘50s you didn’t have to be rich to have a live-in maid. Tessie lived with us and was more, much more, than my surrogate mother. I still feel she and her daughter, Ernestine, were the only people who ever understood the child that was me. Let’s give the lie to stay-at-home moms. My mom was often out playing bridge or mah-jong. Tessie raised me. She was an amazing cook – both Jewish and Southern soul food -- and, basically, a farm girl, with mostly afro-American but partly Native –American bloodlines.

We are talking suburbia of the 1950s. Tessie had turned our backyard in to a vegetable garden: tomatoes, cucumbers, and more. She stuck one of my brother’s plastic rifles vertically in a vegetable plot to scare off birds. She made ice cream out of snow. I always pulled up a kitchen chair to the stove to stand on and watch her cook – apple pies, greens, latkes, Jewish chicken soup, kugel, and, yes, fried chicken. (We also opened up Sadie’s skinny blintzes and really loaded them with filling.)

This was the fried chicken my soul was searching for and, again James Beard came through. When I read his recipe I thought, this is Tessie’s method. Nothing more than shaking the chicken pieces in seasoned flour (in a bag), patting off the excess flour but rubbing the rest into the flesh, then letting the chicken rest for about 30 minutes before essentially deep fat frying it.
Finger lickin’ good doesn’t even come close. I remember once eating an entire chicken. This event brought an end to my boycott of chicken. Back in the 50s, when food was food, there was a neighborhood grocery in which the owner used to kill and pluck the chickens in the back of the shop. Once I happened to witness this operation and swore I would never eat chicken again. I can’t remember how long that lasted but I do remember watching tv with Tessie one night after she’d cooked her basic fried chicken recipe. I ate one piece, then another, until I’d finished the entire chicken. ( I will get to the wine pairings later.)
Ice Cream: Anyone who grew up in South Orange, New Jersey knew we had the best ice cream in the world: Grunings. No going home again. Move on. For years I’ve been making “Jean Hewitt’s Lemon Ice Cream”, the recipe for which I found in Maida Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts. (Another standby for me, as anyone who reads FrenchFeast will know.) But that didn’t last forever.
French industrial ice cream is an insult to the genre. I settled for the oxymoronic mini-Magnums, sort of wee Dove Bars. I ought to have bought the full size bars because the mini-size evidently did not meet the needs brought on by the Democratic convention. So I generally followed the mini-Magnum with the least awful industrial vanilla ice cream I could find. And into the bowl I broke specoloo cookies – crunch, and flavored (I’m guessing) with cinnamon, clove and mace.

THE LIQUIDS:
Gin & tonic with a slice of fresh lime.
Diet Coke with a recycled slice of fresh lime.
Wine: The choice was daunting. I’m still tasting for Loire #2 and had, earlier in the day, delected in the 2005 Sancerre blanc “Edmond” from Alphonse Mellot. Much too elegant for the fried chicken. I thought maybe a Sancerre rose from Henry Natter would be just the ticket. Nah. Too pretty.
I had just tasted a bunch of really nice, peppy Muscadets and one of them might have been perfect with the chicken. Alas, they were no longer in my house as I had just effectuated one of my customary wine exchanges with my neighbor , Jean Teillet.
I get a lot of wine samples. As I’m not always home, Teillet often accepts my wine deliveries and stores them in his basement. When I taste wine, I generally consume very little. I hate waste. So I give the remainders to friends, much of the time Jean and his wife. If it’s only six bottles, I’ll deliver them myself. When it tops twelve, I call. Jean comes over with a wheelbarrow filled with cartons of wine I haven’t yet tasted. He returns home with the wines I’ve put aside for him. I think he recorks most of them.
So the Muscadets were gone. But I had a pleasant light red, a Cote Roannaise chilling in the fridge, and, if it wasn’t the dream match, it went down just fine.
But after ice cream, I like something dry and searing. A single malt, for example. I had already gone upstairs, put my contact lenses in their soaking case, and put on my pjs. I wasn’t going downstairs for the whisky. Closer to hand, however, was a bottle of nice Bourbon. (On my night table, actually. In my defense, it’s been there for over two years.) I poured myself a finger – yes, just a finger – drank it and so to bed.

And now I’d better get on a diet.

August 12, 2008
Dejeuner-Dinatoire

I realize that I use -- or want to use -- this common French expression often so I thought that I ought to explain it. This is the perfect place.

As you might suspect from the hyphenated word, it means a lunch that lasts so long and is so copious it becomes dinner. Few things give me as much pleasure as enjoying this kind of meal with good friends. This is part of the reason I live in France. Americans tend to eat like this once a year, on Thanksgiving.

It's true that France's equivalent of Generation X tends to be too busy to eat like this -- except on Sundays or holidays when they visit their families in the provinces. I hope the tradition doesn't die. That the children of the Gen Xers, influenced by grandmothers, will perpetuate it.

Here's a menu from a family in Anjou, who lived in Rablay in the Coteaux du Layon and made wine, including Coteaux du Layon-Rablay. (The person who gave it to me cautioned, "We weren't rich.")

Wait! There's no need for anonymity here! The menu was given to me by Mme Robin, the mother of Chantal Morgat, former owner of the Chateau du Breuil, where I was, at the time, renting a room. Chantal is the mother of Eric Morgat, a rising star on the Savennieres horizon. (Eric was living at home. He had just started business school. He would later drop out to become a vigneron.)

The menu is printed on a small, hand decorated card, with the name of the person whose seat it marked written on the back.

MENU 12 Aout 1905

Consomme Marie Louise

Poularde sauce Mayonnaise

Escalope veau aux champignons

Gigot roti/ Flageolets

Salade

Dessert varie

Fruits de saison, St. Honore

Vins Fins

Thouarce le Champ, Rablay

Cafe, Liqueurs

IMHO that's a meal!

July 11, 2008: Birthday Meal

The Guests: Guy Bossard, Henry and Marie-Jose Marionnet, Jean-Francois and Martine Dubreuil (cf Wines of Memory and Sentiment in my Loire book).

The Menu:

Hors d’oeuvres: (In the small courtyard behind my house. I had wanted to have aperitifs in the garden but the mosquitoes* have gotten downright militant over the past two years – particularly in hot, humid and storm-threatening weather, which is the weather we’ve been having. So the courtyard would have to do, even though my adorable gardener had just mistakenly cut my clematis at its roots and I hadn’t had time to replace it or renew my geraniums. Still, we’re surrounded by greenery: rose bushes, grape vines, boxwood, acacia, spent irises, Japanese anemone, Virginia creeper, sage.) (*Mosquito update: my friend, Annette, just alerted me to an article in the Courrier de l'Ouest entitled Moustiques: du jamais vu depuis 1977! Mosquitoes! Not since 1977 have we seen such an invasion -- is my liberal but faithful translation.)

Graber Olives: a souvenir from California. I’d arrived at the site of the competition two days early and got to hang out with the olive oil judges (whose judging, for some reason started and ended before the wine judging). We visited an old olive producer, Graber Olive House, in the leafy suburb of Ontario (near Pomona). There are two very pretty gift shops and the olive-making facility-cum-museum. All of the equipment is vintage and very beautiful in the ‘form-follows-function’ sense. The olives are grown and harvested and canned with great care. Picked at optimal ripeness, they are hand harvested in velvet-lined buckets, three olives to a bucket. Then they are sorted several times and separated by size. Size 12 seems to be the most popular. You must try these olives. They’re soft as butter and very mild and as addictive as peanuts (All the wine judging tables had plates of them and we gobbled them up like popcorn.) (www.graberolives.com).

Saucisson a l’ail: from my boucher/charcutier in the neighboring village of Huismes. 3rd generation. A guilty pleasure.

Bordier’s seaweed butter on sourdough bread from Chinon's best boulangerie: Bordier, one of most famous butter producers in france. Started in his shop in St. Malo on the coast of Brittany. The business was subsequently pruchased by Triballat, a large Brittany-based dairy. Bordier still has his shop but works mainly in Triballat facilities outside of Rennes. His butter is pretty fabulous. (A lot of restaurants serve it.) and he has several ‘flavored’ varieties, including the butter flavored with algae. I first tasted this when visiting him. The butter tasted like oysters. He gave me samples and I froze what I didn’t use immediately. The butter served on my birthday had spent about 6 months in the freezer. It was still delicious but the oyster flavor had calmed down significantly; the butter now seemed faintly seasoned with seaweed.

Wines served as Aperitifs:

2005 Cour-Cheverny, Domaine de la Desoucherie; 2006 Cour-Cheverny Domaine de la Desoucherie Cuvee Solea; (2005) Romorantin VdT Les Cailloux du Paradis; 2005 Plume d'Ange VdT blanc, Les Cailloux du Paradis; 2005 Pouilly-Fume Chateau de Tracy; 2005 Pouilly-Fume HD- Haute Densite du Chateau de Tracy.

The Romorantin from Courtois was so much like a fino sherry I thought it would be great paired with the olives, a tapas moment. I thought just about all the other wines would be fine with the saucisson a l’ail and that the pungency of the Pouillys would be make them perfect partners for the algae-butter.

Finally we sat down to eat. And, as has become traditional on my birthday, we started with Guy’s langoustines. And what langoustines they were! Truly the master of the langoustine, Guy had shopped for them (at the Marche d’Interet National in Nantes), cooked them (no one cooks a better langoustine) and arranged them on a big platter. He also has a knack for extracting the meat from the teeny claws. (I guess they’re called claws. Correct me if I’m wrong.) And he’d brought an excellent mayonnaise.

Here duty requires that I open a parenthesis: the Vendeens* in our group, Jean-Francois and Martine, ate their langoustines with butter and the rest of us with mayonnaise. I don’t know why this is but it is. (*The Vendee is a department in western France, south of Nantes, between the Atlantic Ocean and Poitou-Charentes. More importantly, it is a region, a defiant one as evidenced by its role as the seat of the counter-revolution in France.)

Back to the langoustines: I had thought that a rich and/or a slightly off-dry chenin would go best with the fresh sweet meat of the crustacean – and had therefore selected the Chinon blanc from Domaine de la Noblaie – but it’s altogether fitting that it was Guy’s Muscadet “Expression de Granite” – so fresh and mineral and tingling – that won everyone’s hearts, minds and palates.

For the main course I’d made coda alla vaccinara, a traditional Roman oxtail stew. I love oxtail for many reasons. Flavor and texture, of course, but also this cut of meat demands long, slow simmering and such dishes tend to benefit from being made a good day or so ahead. Great for the single hostess. The fair amount of pork rind called for in the recipe gives the oxtail a silky, slithery veneer ; the hours of gentle bubbling at the back of the stove rendered the meat fork tender , infused with the flavors of carrots, onions, and white wine.

This kind of dish highlights the subtlety and suppleness of non-bombastic reds, graceful reds with finely etched fruit and mineral notes and soft tannins. The winners here were the Chinon “Pierre de Tuff” from Domaine de la Noblaie, the California Pinot Noir from Clos PepeEstate, and, of course, the ’88 Chinon Clos de la Dioterie from Joguet -- in the days when Joguet was Joguet – which was probably the most magical match as the wine’s mature scents and flavors harmonized effortlessly with those of the slow cooked meat.

There were four cheeses on my platter, one served blind. This was a cheese given to me by chef-superb food person-angel in America Karen (aka Odessa) Piper. Here’s her backgrounder:

“The cheese is called Pleasant Ridge Reserve. (Reserve) because it is aged any where from 8 to 12 months before it is released. It is produced about an hour west of Madison Wisconsin by MIke and Carol Gingrich at Uplands Cheese. They always grazed their cows on pasture; long before it became fashionable/profitable in the midwest to do so. They did their home work, researched and invested in good infrastructure and the cheese has nailed down some very prestigious awards. They were pioneers when they set about to make this cheese. Other facts, the milk is organic, cheese made only when cows are on pasture , the rind is washed with red b-linen molds and the cheese is made by blending the morning and evening milks. MIke would send me samples during the inception and ask for my feedback, so I tend to indulge in a tiny little bit of bragging rights. (NB: at the time, Karen was the chef-owner of L’Etoile, the leading restaurant of Madison, Wisconsin.) Another really cool about this cheese is that it comes from the 'driftless' region, geographically bordered by the Blue Mounds and the edge of the last glacier. A lot of Wisconsin's best cheesemakers are clustered here, and there is some talk that it has identifiable terroir. Your piece is aged 12 months. It might be fun to let your friends taste it with out knowing its origin and report back to me. wish I had given you some Hickorynuts to serve with it.”

My guests were duly impressed and, of course, surprised to discover that the USA could actually produce serious cheese. Instead of hickory nuts I served walnuts from my very own tree -- the first thing I planted when I moved into this house in the summer of 1997. The other cheese selections were all French. There was an organic Reblochon, brought by Guy and so ripe it was literally pouring out of its rind, a good, farmhouse Ste Maure, the log-shaped goat cheese whose AOC area includes the Chinonais, and a raw milk Camembert. I bought the last two cheeses at the Chinon branch of Leclerc, one of France’s leading hypermarket chains. Both were very good and of high quality but the scandal is that in a shelf of maybe two dozen Camemberts plus another 6 “Lite” versions, there was only one raw milk version. It’s the only one I’ll buy there. (Raw milk Camembert-Leclerc update: Monday, when I went shopping, there was NONE to be had!)

There was plenty of red wine left for those who wanted red with the cheeses. I prefer white almost across the board and, in many cases, sweet whites. I’ll drink a bouncy young red with fresh goat cheese, a more delicate red with a fine old Beaufort and Port or Banyuls with blue cheese but in almost all cases, a white will go just as well, if not better. The pungency of stronger cheeses -- I find – obliterates most red wines while whites manage to stand their ground, at the very least, and, in the best cases, marry well with the cheese. (Think of Champagne and parmesan.)

KO (Karen Odessa) had specified a sweet wine for her cheese – which is what I was going to serve anyway. I like to serve sweet wines with the cheese course because I don’t like them with dessert. Sweet on sweet is too much of a good thing, they end up defeating each other, a case of food & wine overkill. But a sweet white with firm, vivid acidity with a full-flavored cheese is downright mouthwatering.

The 2006 Quarts de Chaume from Domaine de la Bergerie and the 2005 Bonnezeaux 'Malabe' from Domaine des Grandes Vignes took to the task royally. Now Quarts and Bonnezeaux are, in wine world terms, kissing cousins. But, as one came from the relatively light (for sweet whites) 2006 vintage and the other from the very ripe, ultra-rich 2005 vintage, together they presented a brain (or palate) teaser: do you prefer svelte and lithe or voluptuous and near syrupy with your cheese? To me, it’s like those English teacher questions, Tolstoy or Dostoevski? I say, why should I have to choose.

Dessert was Maida Heatter’s orange cake – the recipe that uses yogurt. (If you cook and you don’t have Heatter’s Book of Great Desserts, get it immediately.) To close a big meal, I often make something with a citrus flavor – lemon-lime creams, lemon ice cream, or mousses or cakes. I had made this cake for the funeral of Jean-Francois’ mother. That might seem a bit sinister but it wasn’t meant that way and it wasn’t taken that way.

More than anything else, this meal was about memory, about the importance each of us had had in each others lives and I had been wanting to bring us all together for a meal for over a year. None of us had seen Jean-Francois or Martine since J-F had had a stroke about 18 months ago. We all wanted to know how he was. Though even speaking with him on the phone I could tell that his recovery had been nothing short of miraculous . Like anyone else my age, I know a fair number of people who have had strokes. Most of them are clearly diminished, some incapable of leading a normal life. J-F was his old self, with the exception of a dragging left foot. And he warned me that, when it came to drink, he would be “less valiant” than he used to be.

I also like sparkling wine with dessert. This statement will no doubt induce either the gag or the sneer reflex in many wine buffs. My reasons: the palate, by this point, is somewhat saturated; the body and mind are feeling sated too. A good bubbly cleans off the palate and revives the spirit. It also tends to go pretty well with an orange cake.

And when Guy is present, there’s always a nicely chilled bottle of his mousseux on hand. A blend of gros plant, chardonnay, melon and cabernet, it’s better than most of the sparkling wine coming out of Saumur. And it does the trick.

I also brought out my mirabelles in eau de vie (summer, 2006) and my eau de vie de mirabelle (summer 2007). (2008 will yield nothing: frost, rain and chilly weather during flowering.)

(Coming Attractions)

What we talked about.

July 14 meal with other friends. Here's a photo.

July 14 in Yzeures s/Creuse. I'm the fat one with my back to the camera -- and that's all I'll show of me. Abel, with the curly hair, is at the head of the table. Dominique, his wife, is next to him. Paul, a great artist and our host, is across from me. Helene, his wife, took the picture.

June 23, 2008: Moonshine, Mine

My garden, while not exactly an orchard, has plenty of fruit trees -- plum (mirabelle, greengage), pear (Williams, Duc de Bordeaux-- or is it Bourgogne), peach (white, yellow and red fleshed) and apple (Golden, I was told but the fruit looks more like Canada to me). No matter how dismal the flowering season -- this one was cold and rainy -- I have too much fruit to deal with. Particularly mirabelles. I'm not a jam person. I give away cartons full of plums to anyone who comes to visit. I freeze plums (great for clafoutis in winter). I put plums in eau-de-vie. In fact I always wanted to make eau de vie but I thought the process would be too complicated. In 2007, faced with a record harvest, I decided, 'Why not?'

I got hold of a 60 litre container, put it in my barn, and filled it with about 40 litres worth of fruit. (My tree actually yielded more than twice that but I had already given away the rest.) I had no idea what I was doing but, figuring I'd spent a lot of time around fermenting fruit, I gently punched the fruit down with a long wooden spoon and covered the container, airtight.

Over the next week or two I added whatever fruit I picked, finally filling the 60 litres with an assortment of pears, apples and the occasional greengage plum or quetsch from my neighbor. And I waited.

After a week a froth of bubbles covered the fruit. Fermentation had started. Every once in awhile I stirred up the fruit, shooed away fruit flies and inhaled the (already) intoxicating aromas.

This process lasted through early autumn when my schedule demanded I spend most of my time in Paris. I'd return to the country on the weekend or every other weekend, smell my sludge-like fruit mixture to make sure I didn't detect any volatile odors, stir it up a bit and put the lid back on the container.

It was time to think about distillation.

Once upon a time the French countryside was loaded with small distillers. Just about every village had its own distiller -- who would go from house to house, turning the fermented fruit into moonshine. He (it was always, to my knowledge, a 'he') was called a bouilleur de cru.

After the war -- whether due to concerns about alcoholism or under pressure from the big aperitif companies -- such distillation was outlawed. Those who already had licenses, however, were grandfathered in. These bouilleurs de cru often had stills in various villages within, say, a 50 kilometer radius and, from November through June, they made the rounds and distilled the fermented harvest of local home gardeners and vignerons.

It's a dying tradition but it still exists. I found my distiller, a young man named Laurent, through an article written about him in La Nouvelle Republique. His still, in an aluminum hangar, is in Seuilly, the village where Francois Rabelais was born. On the lowlands of the village, it turns its back to the main road and lies beside a small stream. Inside, an ancient, wood-fired alembic occupies 3/4 of the room.

One reaches Laurent by mobile phone. I explained my circumstances and he advised me to bring him a sample. I was nervous. I was convinced he was going to tell me my stuff was merde and that I should just throw it out.

I don't think that's why I got a flat tire going to the still but I was obliged to hobble to a garage and get TWO (don't ask) new tires before proceeding to Seuilly.

There are always a handful of men hanging around stills and Laurent's still was no different. I handed him the wine bottle containing about a cup of my brew and we went into the still for him to judge it. He poured about two-fingers worth into a duralex glass and sniffed. He nodded in the affirmative. Whew!

Then he stuck a finger into the muck and licked his finger. Again, a nod in the affirmative. Double WHEW.

Now, distillation -- which presented a complication. My batch wasn't big enough to make a whole chauffe. It would have to be mixed with someone else's sludge. I was in no position to make demands but I did point out that my juice was almost entirely mirabelle and was 100% organic. He nodded.

That was in March and I had to go back to Paris. Would my nice juice spoil in my absence? Not to worry, he said. And he was right. I told him I would be back around Easter. He thumbed through his diary, checking his various distillation dates, and told me to bring the container over when I could. A month later, I did. The juice already smelled like eau de vie.

And a week later, it was eau de vie. Laurent had distilled my batch with a batch of fermented plums (he said), reduced the alcohol from 100% to 51% with the water from the process (this I have to witness some time) and put my share in an 8 litre container.

"Is it good?" I asked when I went to pick up my brandy. He nodded, very slowly and sagely. There was a group of senior citizens from a nearby village "touring" the installation.

I brought it home and funneled the eau de vie into various-sized wine and alcohol bottles. I've never seen a liquid that clear, that transparent, in my life. The full Laphroaig bottle looks pretty droll. And I've put a label on the Bombay Sapphire bottle -- to avoid any potentially dangerous misunderstandings.

But there it is. My own eau de vie. And it's really, really good. I regretted not having brought a sample bottle to Los Angeles for the wine and spirits competition. Maybe next time.

May 1, 2008: On a Snowy Day, a Feast in a Cave near Chinon

This meal took place in 1991. I'd been planning to write about much more recent meals but came across the notes on this one while looking for something else. I couldn't resist posting the story.


Charles Joguet, for those of you who don't know him, is a former winemaker, a painter, a sculptor, who lived, as he liked to say, on the left bank of the Seine, in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, and on the left bank of the Vienne, in the winemaking village of Sazilly, outside of Chinon. At the time of this meal Charles, 60-something, with an honorable pot belly, was regarded, and appreciated as being sui generis, one of a kind. Simultaneously the urban bohemian (bobo in today’s parlance) – with his well-groomed white hair (which he would surreptitiously pat with the frequency of a nervous tic), his neat beard, and a scarf tied bandana-like around his neck no matter the weather – and a man of the earth, a homeboy, a prodigious story teller, always ready to uncork a bottle, to bend an elbow at the bar, to while away afternoons and evenings in wine cellars. In other words, a true Rabelaisian, here in the land of Rabelais. One of Chinon’s best winemakers, with a cult-like following in Paris, London and the United States, he had also become -- and still is – one of my best friends.

“Does it ever snow in Chinon?” I’d once asked Charles.

“Boff. Just enough to knock the flies off the wall,” he’d answered. So it was as surprising to him, a Chinonais from birth, as it was to me when several days of snow were followed by a freak blizzard on an otherwise unexceptionable day in February.

Cars refused to start. Snow blocked the road between Chinon and Tours. It blanketed the vines on the slopes of the Clos des Olives as it did the low-lying vines on the banks of the river Vienne in Cravant. It covered the cobblestones on the rue Voltaire in Chinon’s medieval quarter, making that picturesque street with its ankle-murdering outcroppings of unevenly laid stones – the street has since been repaved – even more treacherous to navigate than usual. And, overlooking the town and the quais and the river, the chateau of Chinon, its color drained, seemed to merge with the blanched, soft, winter sky.

Local life came to a dead halt. Except that the menfolk met, as usual – perhaps more than usual, with the inconveniences caused by the snow as an excuse as well as a surefire topic of conversation and occasion for opinionating – in the Café de la Gare across from the train station, the Café de Panurge near the town hall, and the Café de la Paix on the quai, facing the statue of Rabelais. One small glass of sparkling Vouvray or light, red Chinon would follow another, and then one more, and everyone would try to recall when last it was that such a thing had come to pass, here, in the heart of Touraine, where the weather is invariably and famously mild.

My day would not be much changed, however. Charles had arranged for me to sample the Ur-tete de veau. But for the fact that he he had to come fetch me as my car was among the many that would not start, our meal would take place pretty much as planned.

Tete de veau is firmly ensconced in the Hall of Fame of France’s most beloved dishes but it’s not for the faint of heart. An entire calf’s head is simmered in seasoned water, then cut up and served with a tangy vinaigrette or sauceGribiche. And this particular tete de veau – which Charles had described as a “pure masterpiece” – was one of the specialties of Gaston Beduit, a drinking buddy of Joguet’s.

A very gentle man in his late 60s, Beduit was simultaneously self-effacing and confident. He seemed to work more since his retirement than he did when he was a full-time boucher-charcutier. His friends see to it that he is permanently employed. When they throw big fetes for important birthdays, say, Gaston is the one who roasts entire lambs or goats on spits. And, on an irregularly regular basis, he prepares meals – for card games, for the end of the hunting season, or when someone’s landed a particularly large fish or has gotten hold of a wild salmon – in his cave outside Chinon, on the road to Marcay, where there is a Relais& Chateaux in a 15th century castle.

Everyone in Touraine has a cave. I now have a cave. Caves, troglodyte caves, are an integral part of the landscape of that part of the Loire Valley that stretches from Vouvray in the east to Gennes, north of Saumur, in the west. The soils here are tuffeau, a soft limestone. When the stone was quarried to build the region’s castles, churches, bridges, and homes, caves of all sizes and shapes were left behind. Originally used as dwellings, and, during the revolution, as churches and escape routes, they are now, for the most part, used to cultivate mushrooms or store wine. They are also used for entertaining, particularly if they have a fireplace or a bread oven.
Gaston Beduit’s cave was like a million others in the region. Enter a dirt courtyard and a door, seemingly built into the cliff-face, leads into a small front room with a huge hearth at the base of which lie a clutter of pots, pans and casseroles. A large wood table, surrounded by stools made of tree trunks, takes up most of the room. A small broken fridge stands against one wall, next to it, a sink, a tiny work table and two electric burners. The stone walls are covered with 50s era cheesecake girlie calendar photos. And behind a curtain is Gaston’s larger cave, where he stores his wine.

When Charles and I arrived at noon the table was set and the sole window was steamed up from the heat generated by the fire in the hearth where the tete de veau was simmering in a big cast iron pot. Gaston shuttled back and forth, between work table and fire, and then disappeared into his wine cave, emerging with a white from Turquant, a troglodyte-rich wine village near Saumur. It was sharp and metallic and cold as the snow. As we drank, the others becan to arrive, a stone mason, an electrician and a garage owner who had origianlly declined the invitation to lunch because he had a Renault meeting in Tours. The meeting cancelled because of the snow, he showed up for lunch.

Then there was Guy Piella and his brother, Francois. Piella, a 30-ish orb of a man, drove a truck when he was not distilling. One of the few remaining bouilleurs de cru, he would travel from village to village, distilling into strong, clear eau de vie and marc the mashed and fermented ‘wine’ that local residents had made from the last season’s plums and pears or the left-overs of the winemaking process.
Charles once observed, “Guy is like a mole. You don’t see him but he’s everywhere.” He knows who was having an affair with whom, who was secretly a homosexual, who was bankrupt,not to mention more practical things like where to buy the best andouillettes and saucisson a l’ail (a charcuterie in Sache) and boudin (an artisan in Loudun) and where to scavenge for coulemelles, the king of wild mushrooms. Piella has since died in a car accident but on that day he was in typically awesome form, having arrived with a half dozen bottles of different eaux de vie as well as game he had bagged – a hare, seven woodcocks and as many pigeons as we could eat after the tete de veau.

As the men stamped the snow off their shoes and stood with their banks to the fire, rubbing their hands, Gaston placed on the table enormous platters of tete de veau, the chunks of meat nicely interspersed with cooked carrots and fresh parsley. We dug into the succulent meat, the chewy cartilege, the marrowy brains and dipped the pieces into Gaston’s pungent sauce which practically stung the palate with flavors of capers, vinegar and shallots.

Meanwhile, Gaston had skewered the hare and the birds on a large cast iron spit. As it rotated Gaston basted them using a capucin, a long cast iron rod with a triangular cone at one end. He placed the cone in the embers until it was red hot, then loaded it with lard which melted on contact, anointing the hare and the birds as Gaston methodically drew the capucin across the spit.

They were beyond delicious. Nothing could have been more lipsmackingly good or more elemental. This was Food. Not Robuchon. Not Gagnaire. Not Ducasse. The world of toques and stars and silver plated globes seemed superfluous when faced with the simple act of sitting around a rough-hewn table in front of a fire on a snowy day and eating woodcock seasoned with pepper, garlic and herbs, its delicate brains the texture of sea urchin, and the fine meat of the pigeon and the strong visceral flavor of the hare that Gaston had stuffed with foie gras.

We were drinking Chinon that Charles had brought – seven consecutive vintages from his vineyard Le Chene Vert, a sunny, five acre slope facing the Chateau of Chinon. We started with an ’86 (plush and vigorous, tasting of black cherries and sweet spices) and ended with an ’80 (light, very dry, with fleeting aromas of sandalwood, dried fruit and flowers).

Charles had chosen those wines because Gaston loves Chene Vert. As a boy he’d apprenticed for its former owner and it was the first vineyard he ever knew.
“Did I ever tell you how I came to own Chene Vert?” Charles asked the assembled group. Astonishingly – for this was an oft-told tale – there was someone who hadn’t heard it.

Charles folded the pocket knife he always carries, dabbed his lips with his handkerchief, and said, “Vous permettez?”

Nods all around.

“Well then, one day my friend Bernard Vasseur from Chinon saw me in the Bar du Theatre where, by the way, I was drinking a ’76 from old man Taffoneau, a minor masterpiece, and he said, ‘Listen Charles, I’m going to show you something really special. Come with me.’
“It was sunset and he brought me to Chene Vert. Hoh!” Charles paused, shaking his head in memory of how he felt that day, at the moment when he first saw this hillside, with its southwest exposition, and realized that here he could produce truly great Chinon.

“Evidently the vines were very old,more or less well planted, and Bernard told me that he was obliged to sell it. The only potential buyer wanted to graze sheep on it. Well, to see it all at once, at sunset like that – the stone cave, the oak tree smack in the middle – an oak, mind you, that had been planted at the same time as the vineyards, by the monks of Bourgueil. It’s certainly one of the two or three vineyards first planted by the monks, 900 years ago.

And they planted an oak and an entire clos – one hectare on each side of a central path. To the right of the path, the soils are chalk mixed with silex; to the left, it’s pure tuffeau but with big stones.

“Very strange. I thought what a beautiful vineyard you could have here. In three weeks the sale was to take place. I told Bernard that I would like to buy it but I had no money. I went to the sale anyway, however. It was a vente a labougie (auction by candle), the kind of sale conducted to determine rights of succession for minors. Sometimes this kind of sale is necessary. I’d heard talk of it. I’d seen it at Druout and knew what it was about. You light a candle that burns quickly and the last bid in before the candle expires gets it.

“The sale was in a notary’s office – which is always a little dark, a little sad. I went and stood in the back of the room. The man who wanted to graze sheep was there too, up front. In the beginning they burned almost two candles in little bids of 50 francs, 100 francs, on a property whose offering price was 4000 francs. So during this time, the candles burned and I watched the flame of the last one going down and, Cluck! Shlock!” Charles clicked his tongue, sliced the air with his hand, “Poff! Sold! That’s it. I had it for 4800 francs.Less than 5000 francs, all expenses included for the 2 hectares. I was as shocked as the guy with the sheep. Ok I had to replant it. And I’ve only just finished paying of those expenses. But I’ve very happy that I bought it because I truly love that vineyard.”

Story over, Charles took a swig of the ’80. Gaston was beaming and I could see tears in his eyes.
By this time there was a tray of local chevre on the table, night was falling and four thirsty railroad workers appeared, included Eusebe, whose arrival caused Charles to double over in laughter.

“You know what he does?” Charles said to me. “He’s supposed to blow a trumpet when a train approaches. But there’s maybe only one train a day on this particular route so he never has anything to do.”

Eusebe nodded, glass in hand. “All the same, “ he said, “I’ve rigged up the trumpet to a gadget so it blows on its own when a train’s coming. I don’t even have to be there.” Instead he goes in search of litres of red for his co-workers.

The electrician and the garage owner left and others arrived. Guy’s bottles of eau de vie were put on the table – Pear William, Ste Catherine plum, hawthorn, marc. Searing and strong they were, but any finer points were lost on my: my critical faculties were finished for the day.

February 21, 2008: Truffle meals in Touraine:

A couple of weeks ago I participated in one of those “it’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it” press trips to the Rhone Valley. It was truffle weekend, replete with odoriferous markets and meals. Somehow I’ve left my notes from that trip in Paris – and I’m in Touraine – so that report will have to wait.

I came away with a truffle larger than a golf ball and brought that truffle to my home in Touraine where I do most of my serious(ish) cooking, and based two dinner parties and two comfort meals of eggs and truffles around it. I had invited an expat American couple, Robert and Annette Bonnell, who live in a Life-Style magazine-ready semi-troglodyte house on top of a cliff at the entry to Saumur, for dinner number one.

Before leaving Paris I’d stopped by Tito’s, a very good Italian shop in my neighborhood, for some fresh tagliatelle and good parmesan. I’d gotten leeks and was hoping to find some wild mushrooms, preferably girolles and/or trompettes de la mort but no luck. In the end I sauteed the leeks slowly in a lot of butter, cooked the pasta (excellent quality here) and then tossed the pasta with the leeks, more butter, parmesan and grated truffle. I grated more truffle on each portion of pasta at the table. (Oh, we started with a nice fish soup from Belle Iloise.) This was followed by a farmhouse Ste. Maure – the log-shaped goat cheese – I bought on impulse. (It was too expensive and, when I tasted it, not very good; too early in the season, I suspect.) And we ended with an apple cake made by Annette.

The wines, which I’ll discuss later, were just fine, more than just fine, but the evening was for and about truffles – from inhaling it, each of us in turn, immediately after I had opened the vacuum-sealed plastic bag it was in, to shaving the first bits, then shaving more and more, with extravagance and abandon on second helpings. In addition to its normal truffle forest underbrush aromas which I won’t even begin to try to describe here, there were also notes of black olive. First time I’d noticed that. And the fettucine was silken and absolutely perfect with the truffle. (Thanks, Tito.)

After the meal I parked the remainder of the truffle in a plastic container filled with organic egg and later that week or the next, when I made myself a dinner of scrambled eggs and truffles, I noticed some little white blotches on my black beauty.

No time to waste. The degradation of the truffle was very much on my mind as I was having a bacchic meal with my friend Ilona Uskalis, a full-throttle Latvian who is, as the French say, toute une poeme. (She’ll be more fully described at a later date. She merits an entire tome) Care to come over for truffle and pasta? Says I. You’re on, answers Ilona, toasting me with a glass of one of the six bottles of Coteaux du Giennois I’ve brought after having tasted them at home. I also invited some other local myths, Bernard Chauvelin and Nicole Lambert, a delicious couple who live separately (is there any other way) in the neighboring village, Bernard in an honest-to-god troglodyte cave.

I’d made my standby Tuscan white bean, red onion and tuna salad and then followed it with penne tossed with butter and then with a mixture of heavy cream, parmesan and truffle. I shaved the remainder of the truffle over the top but, sadly, there was less of it than I’d hoped. I had cut away parts that seemed too soft to the touch. If such a thing were possible, they seemed to be fermenting. In truth, this dish was more about butter and parmesan than it was about truffles but some of the flavor did come through. And Ilona, who had only smelled truffles grubbed up from the ground, with mud still coating them, and who thought they smelled like beets, had a Eureka! Moment.
Salad and cheese followed by an experiment I’d been wanting to conduct: a pineapple and rum variation on tiramisu. It worked pretty well – fresh flavors which gave it a lightness you wouldn’t imagine with 250 grams of mascarpone in the mix – but I think it tasted better the next day. Ilona, as impulsive a shopper as I am, had seen an array of nougat in one of Chinon’s better chocolate shops. She bought slabs of two varieties and I think Bernard polished off an entire block by himself.

So what did we drink? I’m still tasting the wines from La Region Centre – and I will be for quite awhile. So, over the course of these meals, we were drinking Quincy, Menetou-Salon, Chateaumeillant and Sancerre, plus a delightful Vouvray brut from Didier & Catherine Champalou which I’d for, and which was terrific with, the tiramisu.

To be specific, here are 13 of the wines we drank:

-- 2003 Sancerre blanc “Etienne Henri” from Henri Bourgeois;
-- 2006 Quincy Domaine Mardon;
-- 2006 Quincy Jean Tatin (Domaine de Tremblay)
-- 2006 Chateaumeillant rose Domaine Lanoix
-- 2006 Coteaux du Giennois rose “Frenesie” Domaine de Villegeai (Quintin Freres)
-- 2006 Chateaumeillant rouge Cuvee du Chene Combeau, Domaine Lanoix
-- 2006 Coteaux du Giennois rouge “Premices” from Emmanuel Charrier
-- 2006 Menetou-Salon rouge Domaine de Chatenoy
-- 2006 Menetou-Salon rouge “Celestin” from La Tour St. Martin
-- 2005 Sancerre rouge “le Connetable” Joseph Mellot
--2005 Sancerre rouge “La Grange Dimiere” Jean-Max
Roger
--2006 Sancerre rouge “Antique” Claude Riffault
--2006 Sancerre rouge Vincent Pinard

For several reasons I’m going to describe the wines tomorrow (I hope). The tasting notes won’t be here, they’ll be in Book Updates. This is because I’m trying to get myself ready for the new site to go live. As readers have told me that the sometimes have difficulty finding the tasting notes, I’ve decided to try putting them all in one place. The new title, when it happens, will be, drum roll, please, Tasting Notes.

Moving right along, the subjects we talked about included:

-- Sarkozy
-- Sarko & Carlo Bruni
-- Private Lives of Public People
-- The US elections
-- A new truffle oak plantation a couple of miles from our homes
-- Global warming
--Yachts and the people who buy them (Bernard has built them and captained them and called in at just about every port you would ever want to visit – which is very frustrating for Nicole because Bernard is less than enthusiastic about visiting places he’s already seen.)
-- Marseille (Bernard has been consulting there recently and we all love the city.)
-- Latvia:Ilona was born in a Latvian refugee camp and grew up, married and raised her children in Yorkshire. Three of Ilona's four children have moved to Latvia. They are the New Latvia.
-- Amsterdam
-- Food in Amsterdam
--Global warming
--Sicily (Yes, I’ll be finishing my Sicily notes. The news is, however, that I’m going back to Sicily in two weeks so I have an excuse to wait.)
--Global Warming
-- The Berry: a) the disagreeable character of people from, as exemplified by Nicole's ex-husband; b) the great cuisine of as exemplified by two of my favorite restaurants, Cheu l'Zib in Menetou-Salon, and La Cognette in Issoudun.
--Making your own eau de vie and finding a local distiller
--Wine and WineSpeak (see tasting notes in Book Updates)
--Latvia: Ilona's youngest daughter just had her second child. And, despite the help she gets from a doting husband and a child-loving sister, she's alone most of the time with healthy, rambunctious Otis and Vigo. All of which makes Ilona shake her head mournfully, "She's a Latvian alone in a field." (I have come to understand that "a Latvian alone in a field is Ilona's idea of utter desolation.)
-- An ambitious new school for autistic children in the Paris region. (Nicole's oldest son is autistic and is doing very well there. But it should be noted that I've never seen anyone better with autistic children than Nicole.)
--Lots of local gossip.

You get the picture. Bernard and Nicole left at 2am. Ilona doesn’t drive so I’d invited her for the night. We stayed up til 4:30, drinking Marc de Champagne, and got up the next day not too much worse for wear.
After breakfast we walked along the Indre river, which flows through my village. I didn’t hear any hunters’ guns so I guided us on my “default” walk – the walk I take when I lack imagination and when the hunters aren’t shooting. It’s a lovely walk – following the Indre as it twists and turns and makes its way past farms and fields, bordered by thickets of poplars, walnut trees, brambles, pussy willow, wild roses and whatever wild flowers are in season, like snow drops this past Sunday.

I wanted to walk down to the weir in the direction of the Chateau to see whether or not the heron that had been standing like a statue two days earlier was still there. He (or she) was. And in the same position. There were also two foxes but the heron didn’t seem to be paying them no mind As we walked the sun hit the river in such a way that it transfixed us. Not that I've never seen sun on water. But the breeze was such and the timing was such that when the rays of sun hit the ripples, it looked as if hundreds of stars had alit, just above the water's surface. It was a magical light show and, as it lasted, it hypnotized us. We could not move.

It was unseasonably warm (uh oh) and sunny and we decided to have aperitifs in the garden. Daffodils are flowering, new leaves are sprouting on the hydrangea and the early rose bushes. It was time to put our feet up, have a drink and sigh with contentment. Which we did until a chill set in.

Then Ilona made a souffled omelet with the eggs that had been keeping company with the truffle. There was salad and cheese and the rest of the tiramisu and some of the above mentioned wines. After coffee I drove Ilona back to Chinon and got home just in time for Meet the Press. A Sunday well spent.

January 13,15, 2008: FrenchFeast Goes to SicilyPalermo: Part I:

I’ll be writing more on the power and the beauty of the landscape but for now, I’ll cut to the chase: what we did when we arrived.

It was late Sunday afternoon on December 30th. We made our way through the crowds on their passegiata strolls, checked in to our hotel and changed clothes in in time to go to the opera.

Our hotel. Hotel Gardenia. On the 7th floor of a building in a commercial gallery. The reception desk, where you check in, and the breakfast room are several doors away, in another hotel which has (more expensive) rooms on the first floor of what is probably the same building.

Gardenia’s rooms were prison basic. The furniture made Ikea look like Claridges. But the beds were comfortable, the location convenient,the staff at the reception desk helpful and nice, and, it might have been hard to find better at the price as it seems, that Sicily’s hotel industry is still in a very early state of development. A single room, about the size of a prison cell, cost 45 euros; a double (some with balconies), 90.

We had tickets to Norma which was being performed at the Teatro Massimo, the grand neo-classical structure which was the setting for the climactic scene that ended Godfather III.

It’s a huge, glorious jewel box of a theatre – all gilt and dreamy frescoes and red velvet. We were in the peanut gallery, the 6th balcony, so plebian that its seats weren’t even numbered. Many had no view of the stage at all. So it was interesting, though not surprising, that so many of the people seated here got up to walk around – either to get a better view, find friends or stretch their legs. The production itself was fair: the direction was pre-Peter Sellars bombastic, with the crowds just shoved around like so many sheep; the scenery was eery and effective; and the performances were good enough but not great. In any event, it’s always a treat to hear that bel canto and the setting could not be beat.

I want to open a couple of parentheses here. The Teatro Massimo, one of the most important theatres in Europe, is the second largest employer in Palermo. Which either tells you something about the Sicilian economy or about the importance of the Teatro Massimo, or both.

Next: the Christmas decorations. The theatre was a vision from a fairy tale: the central third of its great marble staircase a carpet of red poinsettas; its columns and palm trees clothed in glittering white lights. And this tasteful extravagance was true throughout Sicily. I’ve never seen such lovely Christmas decorations, elegant profusions of shimmering white lights, hung like swags along main thoroughfares, climbing up stone pillars and up the trunks of palm trees. There were also swags with Renaissance putti at their center gathering the strands. And Christmas trees, even in the most modest hotels, were beautifully adorned. The tree in our hotel, for example, was as sweet as a sugarplum – with its white lights and its tennis-ball shaped ornaments, the color of the flesh of blood oranges frosted with stardust.

Since the opera started at 5:30, it ended in time for a good dinner. We went to the Osteria dei Vespri, on the same square as (and possibly a part of) the palazzo owned by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, author of The Leopard.

We loved this restaurant so much we went back again and I would certainly go anytime I find myself in Palermo. A small room, with a wood mezzanine, stone walls and a vaulted stone ceiling, its wine list is phenomenal, its cooking, based on top ingredients, is creative but not bizarre and the service is caring and competent.

As it was rather late, we all opted for one savory course and dessert. First came baskets of homemade baked goods – breadsticks and an assortment of tiny rolls, some flecked with fennel seed, others made from cornmeal, and so forth. My main course consisted of long-simmered, fork tender pork jowls and pearl onions set mashed potatoes and served on a very reduced sauce based on Nero d’Avola. Superb. (And rather “French bistro-gourmand”.)

There was a pre-dessert -- orange-scented crème brulee – and a post-dessert – a platter of mixed petite fours such as chocolate truffles and tiny fruit tarts, all delectable. For my main dessert I had “cassaletta” – a fried pastry disc covered with powdered sugar and filled with ricotta cream flavored with lemon peel and chocolate. (It was as delicious as it sounds.)

The wines: First of all, the wine list is to die, with superb selections from all over the world as well as an encyclopedic range of the best of Italy. But I wanted to focus on Sicily. And so:

2005 Nero d’Avola (IGT) from the pioneering winery Planeta. Actually, it was 95% nero d’avola, our very savvy waitress told us, with 5% of a “world grape.” (35 euros.) Young, rich and very tight, it exuded aromas of black cherry, blueberry and licorice. After about five minutes, the barrique aging became evident and later, more evident. The wine, which recalled a very good red from the Languedoc-Roussillon, needed aeration. I ordered a second bottle and asked that it be decanted. The wine opened up beautifully, a stately presence, a weave of rich, dark fruit flavors and a velvety texture.

While waiting for it to breathe, we drank a 2005 Nero d’Avola “Il Moro” from Valle dell Acate (22 euros). Good value here, and a very nice wine, with a smooth attack and good structure, but a bit raspy and it suffered by comparison to the Planeta.
I may well be built backwards. I like to end a meal either with Champagne or with something dry and alcoholic -- or both – and start with something off-dry or downright sweet. Keeping within the Sicilian mode, I opted for a dry Marsala, the Pelligrino 1880 Reserva del Centenairo 1980, which was all coffee, toffee and nut flavors with a steel backbone – something of a cross between a Palo Cortado and an Oloroso. (I’ll describe our second meal here later. In the meantime: Osteria dei Vespri, Piazza Croce dei Vespri, 6, 90133 Palermo; tel: 091.617.16.31; www.osteriadeivespri.it; closed Sunday.)

Palermo: Part II

(The first and last parts of this day remain to be written. So far I've only done dinner.)

Dinner: The Big Night:

I had selected Sant’Andrea. Based on everything I’d read, I was sure that this would be the star restaurant of the trip, that we’d want to go back again and again. Well, it was a major disappointment on every level. But before going into some of the sorry details I do want to say that it’s an attractive, contemporary, popular place with good food (as in a squid ink ravioli stuffed with a mousse of broccoli). But it’s not what it’s cracked up to be.
First of all, the service. I may sound mean but I spent many years as a waitress while I thought I wanted to be an actress. So even though it was New Year’s Eve, I wasn’t going to give the restaurant that was supposed to be the best in Palermo a free ride. Everything was timed to the minute: to the kitchen’s minute. What we received had nothing to do with who had or hadn’t arrived, with who had or hadn’t finished the dish they were eating. It had everything to do with the timing they had obviously worked out down to the minute. And they paid so little attention to our needs that eight of us drank only two bottles of wine! Scandalous! I can drink that much on my own on a summer Sunday in the garden!

There was a set menu of four courses for 60 euros with a three possibilities in each course. For my first course I chose “Mediterranean raw fish”: a “king prawn” on fennel, sping onion and ginger; oysters on “scalora riccia”, and fish carpaccio with artichokes and orange. I think this is the last time I will try to like raw prawns. I adore them cooked but raw? The oyster was good but whatever the ‘scalora riccia’ was remains a mystery: I didn’t taste anything much less anything I could identify. Was it a typo, as in “the Mean (sic) course”? I’ll have to ask Maureen. The raw fish – sorry, I forget what it was--was tasty but there wasn’t much evidence of the artichokes and orange.

Next course: risotto with cumin, fish of the day, artichokes, wild fennel, broad beans and fresh caciocavallo cheese. Risotto it wasn’t. The rice was al dente. The fish was a different fish of the day than the one in the first course – one, I think was sea bream, the other sea bass – and was a bit overcooked. The pleasantest thing about the dish was finding the molten strands of fresh cheese at the bottom of the bowl. I was still desperately trying to like this restaurant.

The “Mean” course: stew of Tusa lamb, flavored with and wild fennel and served with a basket made of fried bread and filled with a compote of dried fig and date. I ordered this because I knew that for most of the trip we were going to be eating fish, fish, fish; because I love lamb; and because if they used the name “Tusa,” I assumed it was a special, regional lamb – though they were too busy to answer any questions.
In any event: just a really ho-hum lamb stew, not quite as mediocre as cafeteria level but not far.This, on a New Year's Eve menu in what was supposedly the best restaurant in Palermo? The dried fruit compote was tasty but by this time I had pretty much lost patience.

And dessert: yellow cream and fresh goat cheese with puff pastry. What’s the yellow cream? I wanted to know. “Yellow cream.” Well, it was more of a savory-ish soup than anything else and I ate about two spoonfuls of it.

The Wine: The list was far from great. Mostly big houses like Donna Fugata and when they had a small property, they were out of the wine. Still, we were very happy with our 2006 Cerusualo di Vittoria from Planeta. Made principally from Nero d’Avola blended other indigenous red grapes (eg Frappato, Nerello Mascalese) it was seductively fragrant, with the texture of velvet and rich flavors of black cherry, cherry pit, raspberry liqueur and crème de cassis. We could easily have downed another bottle or three.

December 28, 2007: I just noticed that Terry Theise quoted part of the following email discussion in his German wine catalogue. The email back-and-forth took place almost two years ago. I was writing the Alsace chapter of The Wines of France and tasting Champagne samples. I need to point out that I was reading Terry’s catalogue on his Champagnes and the discussion started when I found I didn’t “get” what he said he “got” from one of the wines.) (I have cut a bit of the meandering.)

Me: What's wrong with me? I've tasted two terrific Vilmart wines but only got faint wood in one and zero wood in the other (the '96 Cuvee Creation). I must say that I didn't get the smoky woodsiness you got tho I did get the lunar silvery aspect.

TT: There's nothing wrong with you; I had two entirely different impressions of the last 2 Cuvée Creation `96I've tasted.

Me: Care to share those impressions with me?

TT: I thought one was spiky and unknit and the other was more seamless and more deeply fruity. The awkward one was at the winery last May; the good oneover here in late October.

Me:The one I had was absolutely seamless, deeply fruity but also bracing, cut like a diamond, shimmering with vivacity. BTW, I think I may be going off the deep end right now with Deiss and Zind-Humbrecht!

TT: Easy to see why. I had ZH's 2002 Goldert Muscat a few weeks ago and nearly wept, it was so beautiful.

Me: But I'm getting worried about my Vilmart reactions. (Nothing unusual, I always question myself.) But I had a wonderful champagne -- although not as terroir-driven as the other cuvee I tasted -- and I didn't taste any wood. (I think Andrew Jefford questioned the use of oak combined with lack of malo. But you'll get no such complaints from me. Who is right? Is there a "right"?)

TT: Rhetorical though your question was, I offer an answer nonetheless. And the answer is: NO.

Me: You see, this is where we get into discussions of taste and it's valid, I think. After all, I've seen (famous wine couple) totally disagree about particular wines.

TT: I like to think intelligent tasters of good will are able to agree on broad matters of aesthetic values even when they disagree about individual bottles. And I also hope people like you and I can discern the difference between a matter of toe-may-toe vs. toe-mah-toe and a more fundamental disagreement. I'd say if there's something illuminating in your complex responses to Vilmart, then do please share it with us. I like wines which evoke complex responses!

Me: Well, I've polished off the Vilmart and am about to taste a Margaine rose. (You see, I DRINK all these champagnes.)

TT: If it's the same degorgement I had last May you're gonna have the very sheen charmed off your cheeks by that wine. I tasted it and a nanosecond later I had a huge crush on it.

Me: Well, I don't know if it was the same disgorgement or not. Drinking it was sheer pleasure -- and I have enuf left over for today. I think it's a really, really nice meal champagne. But it didn't do to me what the champagnes from Gimonnet, Vilmart and Larmandier-Bernier (to name just 3) do.

Re Deiss and ZH: I wonder if you agree with me on the following proposition: maybe, just maybe, there are other wines this inspired and heartstopping in the world. But I can't imagine wine being "better" than this. I mean, how much can you demand of a wine? How much can you demand of Bach? Deiss and ZH are making the vinous equivalents of the Mass in B Minor.

TT: In my German catalog {note: TT now quotes part of this discussion in his German catalogue.} I quote David Schildknecht's definition of"perfect" as "better than which cannot be imagined". David's an armchair-philosopher and is interested in the ontological aspect of the question: how can we claim there is a "perfect" wine? I think his locution grounds it in a reasonable subjectivity.

As regards your two Alsaciens, I don't drink either of them often enough to assert my "agreement" with you,but I'm inclined to agree based on my limited experience. And I know whereof you speak; I feel it often at Müller-Catoir and Dönnhoff, to name but two. Again, I'd love to see you answer your own rhetorical question "How much can you demand of a wine?" That's the kind of wine-writing I just can't read enough of. I'd also find it fascinating if you identified your own tipping-point, i.e. what exactly is it that finally convinces you a wine is "perfect"? For me, a wine enters my palate and the first thing I notice is its gestalt, followed by its innate flavor - or Flavor - followed by any intricacy it unfolds, followed by a sense of the harmonies of those elements, followed by a sense of their length. And all of these things can amount to a sort of hypothetical "perfection", but my own tipping point is a feeling of sadness. This is an aspect of my own response to beauty - or,again, Beauty - to which I'm especially sensitive. When I feel the wine has sent me somewhere, or perhaps taken me somewhere, larger, older and deeper than itself, then I feel the presence of the sublime. And that is my marker for perfection. It's no accident your analogy was to religious (i.e. divine) music. Or so I suppose.

Me: Maybe it’s the laywer in me but "better than which cannot be imagined" is flawed: one can have a failure of imagination. Also, I'm not sure that "perfect" is the right word. It's like scoring 100. And it leaves out the very important factor of “context.” I might, for example, find that a certain Touraine Gamay was "perfect" for an autumn Sunday picnic with rillettes and goat cheese on a hill in Candes St Martin overlooking the confluence of the Loire and the Vienne. I think contex may be key, at least when you're using numbers or words like "perfect." is the Mass in B Minor 'perfect'? Is Van Gogh 'perfect'?
One of the problems -- as we all well know -- is finding the words to describe intensely sensual and subjective experiences. I use the word subjective in a restricted sense.

I do believe that there are objective standards -- for painting, music, wine, etc. but once we agree on those, then the value or reaction beyond the basics becomes subjective.

I have just finished the Margaine and have tasted a somewhat disappointing but nevertheless tasty Cote Rotie. So maybe that definition would work with a little tweaking: better than which people with broad, deep experience cannot imagine. But let's ditch the word 'perfect.' it's too loaded and reminds me too much of numbers. Also, think about how we judge beauty in humans: Elle McPherson is "perfect;" Brad Pitt is "perfect."

Are you sorry you started all this?

TT: In a sense I don't care what we call it, and I agree with your wariness about "perfect". But maybe we have to find SOMETHING to call it, I think. And we have to describe it somehow, so that people have a chance to see what we mean. For me it is a quality of incandescence. And you're absolutely right, it isn't like comparing a 100-watt with a 60-watt bulb and saying the 100-watt is X-percent "better" or closer to some notion of perfection. It is something that suddenly blazes into light.

Not sorry at all: this is the most fun I've had in weeks.

December 22, 2007 My Wine of the Year for 2007 is the 1997 Chateauneuf-du-Pape Domaine du Banneret.
Owned by Marie-Francoise and Jean-Claude Vidal, the estate – which comprises roughly four hectares spread out over five different parcels – is an ancient one: existing documents date as far back as 1405. Jean-Claude, an architect, decided to become a vigneron when he retired from his day job in 1989.
Tradition – in the best sense of the word – is the operating principle here. The vineyards, with a high percentage of old vines, are planted to all thirteen varieties. The low-yielding vines are, of course, harvested by hand, mostly by the extended Vidal (and Espinasse) family.
A blend of 60% grenache, 10% syrah, 10% mouvedre, with the balance a mix of the other nine varieties, the grapes are not destemmed.They ferment together in concrete tanks and then age in old Burgundy barrels for 18 months. The wines are not filtered, they are bottled (with the help of a pipette)and labeled by hand. 80% is exported to the USA. (Vidal’s nephew, Jean-Marc Espinasse, is married to an American. Each has a website: his is www.rouge-bleu.com; Kristin’s (his wife’s) is www. French-word-a-day).
The texture of velvet, the wine – tasted in March 2007 – was a tapestry of flavors – black cherry, cherry pits, eau de vie, sweet spices and minerals. Its coherence and purity took my breath away. You could spend an entire evening observing (and delecting in) its evolution in the glass, now the dulcet syrup of grenache gently dominates, now provencal herbs. The words ‘truth’ and ‘soul’ came readily to mind. Here was a wine of discovery, a wine to bring tears to a winelover’s eyes, a wine that makes you shake your head in awe -- to think that a cluster of grapes could do this.

And it raises various issues: can a wine have soul? By me, no question. I had been moved by this wine before I learned that the grapes had been harvested a mere month before Vidal’s son died of cancer. Before I learned that this was a barrel sample that Vidal, because of the wine’s place in family history, was unlikely ever to bottle.

Another issue is the thorny one of tradition -- in its good, bad and indifferent manifestations. Well, tradition and wine fads. Take the issue of fermenting a red wine with the stems. This is not currently the mode -- though it once was common practice. I hope to explore this issue more thoroughly – though I’ll beg off for the moment; I've had several shots of gin, I hear the village clock chime 7 and have dinner to cook.

One more note before I log off: when and where I tasted this unforgettable wine was also remarkable. That will be Part II of this story.

December 12,13, 2007;
November 28, 2007:
Thanksgiving in the time of Train Strikes: This was an atypical Thanksgiving for me – and not only because of the transit strikes. Usually I do a blow out. This year, thanks in large part to a dismal performance by Flat Tire Press, I was not in a particularly festive mood. I even considered giving Thanksgiving a pass but, on reflection, thought that would be unbearably depressing. So I decided to meet the situation halfway.
Though the dining table in my 46 square metre apartment seats a maximum of 8 people, previous Thanksgivings have found a dozen or so brave eaters scrunched together around it. Edit the guest list was step number one. So I invited only Americans this year. Then, instead of roasting an enormous, 15 kg farmhouse turkey, I decided I’d buy a juicy, herbed leg of turkey from my excellent rotisseur on the rue St. Lazare. (It can easily feed five.)
Come Thursday November 22, the strike was officially over but the transit situation was in such turmoil that most of my invitees cancelled out. In the end, it was just me and Don and Petie Kladstrup (authors of Wine & War and altogether delightful people).
This was the menu: nibblies: tuna rillettes, cubes of Brin d’Amour, popcorn and chips; first course: pate en croute Richelieu with Waldorf salad; Main course: Turkey, baked yams, chestnuts braised with onions and Marsala, cranberry sauce; dessert: pecan pie.
Wines: Champagne Palmer “Cuvee Amazone”; 2002 Pinot Gris GC Furstentum Paul Blanck; 1996(or 1990) Saumur Champigny Clos Rougeard; 2005 Cotes du Roussillon Villages Clos des Fees.
Every single item has a backstory.
Nibblies: Usually Virginia brings the nibblies, along with some prime baguettes (very moelleux thanks to long rising) from Gosselin which is across the street from her apartment. This year, she didn’t come because of the strike and, more to the point where Virginia’s concerned, she had a tango date. 75 years old and she’s a tango addict. As we speak – December 11 – in Buenos Aires dancing up a storm with Miguel, her 20-something Mexican protégé and professional folk dancer. (But Mexico is another Virginia story.)
So, back to the nibblies:
Tuna Rillettes: I love tuna. Cold tuna. Raw, as in sushi, or canned, as in salad. I am a sucker for cold tuna preparations which means I often buy tuna rillettes made by some fancy food outfit. This version came from La Belle Ileoise (spelling uncertain). Named after the popular Breton Island, Belle Ileoise specializes in maritime-ish specialties which they sell all along the Atlantic coast. I have a sixpack of their soups that I bought in La Rochelle. They’re pretty nice. But the tuna rillettes, true to form, were a real disappointment. I much prefer my tuna spread – basically tuna, lots of good mayo (Hellman’s would be fine) and lots of capers. Sometimes diced celery and/or red onion.
Popcorn: Why would I even mention this? Because I’m thanking the food gods that the French have finally started selling prepopped, unsweetened popcorn. I don’t own – and never will own – a microwave and, up until a couple of months ago I could only find sweet, Cracker Jack-type popcorn (sans box and trinket). So I make a point of buying a bag or two of the unsweetened variety every time I go to the grocery store. I figure I have to show solidarity, not to mention demand.
Potato Chips: One of my favorite foods – except for Pringles. And these are extra-special: Tyrell’s handfried, low fat, maybe organic, made on a farm in the English countryside. (Apparently the producers have gotten their neighbors up in arms because they want to make artisanal vodka from the potatoes too small to use for chips.) They’re more expensive but they’re excellent. Tyrell’s also makes chips from beets, parsnips etc but I find them a bit too sweet.
First Course: Usually I don’t serve a first course on Thanksgiving because there’s so much food to follow. But I was thinking that, since I hadn’t roasted a turkey and hadn’t made stuffing, I should put more food on the table. Thus:
Pate en croute de Richelieu: I bought this at the fancy butcher shop mentioned earlier. They don’t make it. They get it from a charcutier in the town of Richelieu in southern Touraine. I had been wanting to try it for months since Waverly Root, in his Foods of France, mentions the charcuterie of Richelieu and even a specific preparation called “Richelieu.” While researching A Wine & Food Guide to the Loire I asked and searched and nagged and wheedled but never found any charcuterie with the Richelieu moniker. So I’d been eager to taste this and here was the perfect occasion. Now it turns out that Root was talking about boudin de volaille Richelieu – which I never found and never put in my book -- and what the Richelais charcutier was selling in Paris was a pate en croute. Whatever. The croute was fresh and solid and it enclosed well-seasoned pork pate surrounding a circle unctuous chicken liver mousse. Perfect with the Pinot Gris. More on the wine later. But just a note on Richelieu: the town is named after the Cardinal who dismantled much of the Chateau of Chinon to build his own stately pleasure dome further south.
With the pate I served a Waldorf Salad. My reasoning: a) the pate would look lonely on the plate; b) the cranberry sauce would have been perfect but that had to go with the turkey and I couldn’t serve it twice in the same meal; and c) Waldorf Salad would be almost as perfect and it reminds me of my grandmother, Sadie, who lived with us but whose wanderlust occasionally led to her taking me to Manhattan to see a show (eg My Fair Lady) and stay at the Waldorf – where I first experienced Waldorf Salad in Peacock Alley.
Main Course: The turkey you already know about. Here’s more about the trimmings:
Cranberry sauce: Joyce usually makes this but she was stuck in Chinon because of the strikes. The only place I could find cranberries was at the much written about, eco-friendly, Anglo-French Rose bakery around the corner on the rue des Martyrs. 8 euros for 400 grams! I used Craig Claiborne’s very easy but effective recipe. It calls for cooking the cranberries with sugar, orange juice and orange zests. Foolproof.
Yams: I love yams – so long as you don’t sweeten them. These were simply baked. You could add butter or not.
Chestnuts: I searched the web for chestnut recipes and now have a big file. This one called for Port which I didn’t have. I substituted Marsala, which I did have. It worked beautifully. Lots of chopped onions, nicely sauteed until just turning brown, thyme dried on the branch and a kilo of chestnuts, slow simmer for about an hour. Yum.
Dessert: I always ask a guest to bring dessert. The Kladstrups brought a pecan pie – fresh from Haagen Dazs. I didn’t know H-D did pecan pie but apparently they sell it by the slice. Petie caused a minor commotion when she asked for an entire pie. It was truly good. All it wanted was a scoop of vanilla.

Wines: tk

September 5,6, 2007

La Cognette
What’s that line about all happy families being alike? Well, can this particular family – the Nonnets and the Daumy-Nonnets – adopt me? Please? (I bet Tolstoy wouldn’t have minded being a foster child here either.)
Alain Nonnet, the father of the clan, is as cheerful and as generous a chef as you are ever likely to meet. His food is a fine reflection of his personality. When I was researching the Loire book (first edition) in 1990 I interviewed him about traditional Berry food. We were sitting in the overstuffed, period armchairs of the front room while dinner was starting in the jewel-box of a dining room beyond. “It’s heavy,” he said of Berrichon cooking. And he’d punctuate his description of each specific dish, with a ‘you see’ nod, saying “Heavy!”
So he’s there in his chef’s whites and his toque, as is his son-in-law Jean-Jacques Daumy (who had just begun working with him in 1990), and the women, mother Nicole and daughter Isabelle, as cheerful as Alain,
I had loved this restaurant in 1990 but hadn’t been back since. I think it has dropped from two Michelin stars to one. If that’s in fact true, it’s nuts. What this recent meal showed me was that La Cognette is better than ever. In fact, if you want really traditional (ever so slightly updated) Berrichon food that will have you salivating in you memory of it, make a beeline for this place. (The hotel is as heartily recommended.)
There have been a couple of changes – a PVC terrace added to the façade, for example – but the soul of the place remains intact. This is Masterpiece Theatre meets Balzac. In fact, Balzac wrote “La Rabouilleuse” while living in Issoudun and frequented this restaurant/auberge when it was owned by M. and Mme. Cognet. The décor seems properly vintage – thus, those overstuffed chairs, armoires, bibelots etc.
And the food! Dieters, search elsewhere. You will be miserable. Big eaters, however, will want to move in.
After some perfectly lovely amuse-bouches – eg a “capuccino” of green pea – we started in on the heavy Berrichon-alia with a Cognette classic, cream of green lentils from Berry. The nod to modernism throughout was that everything was served on a slate slab so that the soup came with side dishes of sliced truffles and tiny, diced croutons. You added what you wanted when you wanted it – which meant after you’d stopped sniffing the truffles. The soup was heavenly – in the earthily soothing sense (sorry.) Then came a chausson filled with snails in a garlicky cream sauce. You know there can be nothing bad about a well made garlicky cream sauce. The stunner came with the chausson, about as delectable and as buttery a turnover as I’ve ever eaten. Also large enough for a meal.
Next came individual souffled omelets with ecrivisses.The crayfish were right out of Escoffier. The omelet – the size of a CD – was a minor miracle – light as air, a pillow of flavor. You couldn’t stop eating it.
Then, a Nonnet signature dish and a Berrichon staple, filet of carp stuffed with bread crumbs, sausage and mushrooms. To die. Needless to say, I was so stuffed I couldn’t touch the cheese. I did, however, eat the little salad made from wild purslane -- which made me rethink ripping out the purslane that grows weedlike in my garden. Instead, I should harvest it when it just begins to sprout from the earth.
There were lots of very pretty little desserts but I couldn’t eat the ones flavored with rosewater as that’s one of the few flavors I really dislike. So my tablemates vacuumed them up. Then came platters of minuscule friandises – chocolate truffles, very creamy, very teeny financiers, and microscopic goblets filled with passion fruit cream or a mystery cream which turned out to be a mixture of beet and tomato flavored with pepper.
The vigneron Claude Lafond was with us so it’s no surprise that the sommerlier selected a cuvee of Lafond’s Reuilly blanc made for la Cognette. He also chose a wine new to me, a 2005 Valencay Cuvee des Griottes, 80% gamay/20% pinot noir from Francis Jourdin that was a succulent, nicely balanced, spicy, light red.
La Cognette, rue des Minimes/Blvd Stalingrad, 36100 Issoudun; 02.54.03.59.59; www.la-cognette.com.


L’AUBERGEADE:
You read it here first: l’Aubergeade has one of France’s best and best-priced wine lists. You could spend two years here, drinking a different and differently great bottle every day, and still have money left in your bank account. Just focusing on France, the encyclopedic list includes Guy Bossard’s Muscadet “Expression de Granite,” Vernay’s various Condrieus, Mas de Daumas Gassac, a range of Gauby and so forth. I visited this restaurant with other wine journalists. So it won’t remain a secret for long: Raoul Salama intends to feature l’Aubergeade – because of its wine list – in the Revue du Vin de France.
But, to begin at the beginning: if you didn’t know about this restaurant beforehand, you’d pass it by. A no-frills building on the side of a main local road not far from Issoudun, it looks like a truck stop. And the reasonably priced meals might, indeed, appeal to hungry truckers. (We had the royal treatment: a private room, 3 fancy-ish courses, plus cheese, and all the bottled water and wine we could drink and still paid only 40 euros a person.)
Jacky Patron, the chef-owner (yes, his name is really Patron), knows how to cook. He starts with top-notch ingredients and treats them with great intelligence. You could eat his food every night. (I could, anyway.) First came silky homemade ravioli filled with foie gras. Girolle and morille mushrooms were piled on top and infused the light cream sauce with their woodsy flavor. Yum. Then there was a perfectly cooked, herb-encrusted saddle of lamb garnished with more mushrooms, buttery cabbage and polenta rounds that appeared to have been formed with a cookie cutter. The very good cheese tray included some lipsmaking Stilton; and, for dessert, we each got our own individual fig tart: a buttery, crunchy, CD-sized disk covered with flavorful fresh figs. Couldn’t have been better. Even the coffee was delicious.
So, what did we drink? Well, we’d spent the morning with Reuilly producers so, noblesse oblige, we drank Reuilly, reds and whites from two growers: a 2006 blanc from Guy Malbete had turbo-powered, ripe sauvignon blanc fruit; athe 2005 blanc “La Raie” from Claude Lafond was rich and textured but somewhat redolent of pipi de chat – as sauvignon will be when it’s not entirely phenologically ripe. Malbetes 2006 red was pleasant, balanced and went down easily but that’s about it. Lafond’s rouge, “Les Grandes Vignes,” had attractive plum and tea flavors and was just fine for a Sunday lunch in a country restaurant. Somehow I couldn’t stop drinking it.
L’ Aubergeade, 321 Route d’Issoudun, 36260 Diou, 02.54.49.22.28.

August 8,15,16,23, 27,28,29, 2007: The Shaggy Wine Weekend of July 27th through 29th (To be told in installments.)

About seven years ago I decided to create a wine group. Actually, I didn’t realize it would be come a yearly event but it has – though the participants have changed almost entirely. The idea was this: I’d bring togther a group of vignerons, we’d taste, discuss burning issues (eg EU wine reforms), eat, laugh, get to know each other and taste some more. My motivations were as follows: as a reporter I get to meet a lot of interesting people. Some I like a whole lot and regret that I won’t have some kind of ongoing relationship with them. At the same time, I get to meet a lot of winemakers that other winemakers – in farflung regions – don’t get to meet. Why not bring everyone together?
The first reunion was held at my cottage in the Loire. The participants were Andre Ostertag and his wife and son (who stayed with me); Guy and Annie Bossard, Charles Hours, Jean Thevenet and his wife (Domaine de la Bongran in Macon); Marc Parce (Domaine de la Rectorie and Domaine de la Preceptorie), his wife and four of their nine kids; Claude and Joelle Papin (Domaine de la Pierre-Bise); and Jean-Francois Dubreuil, a caviste, and his wife Martine – all of whom stayed in the tiny hotel in my tiny village.
Each year the reunion took place in a different wine region, hosted by a vigneron-particpant from the region in question – eg Guy Bossard in Muscadet, Charles Hours in Jurancon and, though meals, tastings and chatting/networking remained the raison d’etre, we also started visiting other vignerons in the host region.
This year I decided that since we hadn’t visited any vignerons in the Chinonais, I should host the reunion again. Guy Bossard and I were the only members of the original group who participated. Alain and Isabelle Hasard (Domaine des Champs de L’Abbaye) had joined several years ago. They brought along Pablo Chevrot, a young Burgundy producer, his wife and their three year old son. I also invited Matthieu and Isabelle Champart (St. Chinian), Sophie and Pierre Larmandier (Champagne Larmandier-Bernier), Claude and Lydia Bourgignon, flying soil analysts, and Jean-Francois Vaillant (Domaine des Grandes Vignes).
Our visits: Domaine des Champs-Fleuris (Saumur-Champigny etc); Bernard Baudry (Chinon); Yannick Amirault (Bourgueil).
Obviously this is a long story. I’ll add to it everyday until I get through it.
Part two
Since members of the group would be arriving from all parts of France – some after a nine hour drive – we’d arranged to meet at the first winery we’d visit, Domaine des Champs-Fleuris in the heart of the Saumur-Champigny appellation.
I’ve written about this domaine before on the site – both in my tasting notes from the Salon des Vins de Loire and in FrenchFeast. I wanted to bring the group here because I think it’s one of the new Loire stars and I, personally, wanted to visit, particularly as I hope to feature it in the updated version of my Loire book.
The domaine consists of 30 hectares of vines in the commune of Turquant – a village between Montsoreau and Saumur, noted for its troglodyte-pocked cliffside. Most of the vineyards occupy the tuffeau-based hilltops overlooking the Loire and are planted to cabernet franc. There are four hectares of chenin, a half hectare of caberent sauvignon and a couple of rows of chardonnay which goes into the Cremant.
When Fernand Retiveau retired in 1990, he was succeeded by his eldest daughter, Catherine, her husband Patrice Retif, and her brother Denis Retiveau, all of whom studied viticulture and enology at local schools in Amboise and Montreuil-Bellay. They run the domaine with Cartesianlogic and reflection: every operation in vineyard and cellar is thought through and thoroughly analyzed. Viticulture is tres raisonnee; harvest is by hand – with tris in the vineyard and meticulous sorting at the winery; after pressing (pneumatic), there’s a severe analysis and selection of the best juices. The division of labor seems strict and adapted to the talents of each of the three associates. Catherine, for example, is in charge of the vines. To say she is passionate about her job is to put it lightly: when we visited she was suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome as a result of her work. “A vine plant must be given a methodical education,” is how her husband described her philosophy. (This viewpoint, at least so articulated, was new to me. I hope to get Catherine to elaborate.)

After a brief walk through the cellar – standard, modern but not high-tech, clean – we began tasting,starting with the 2006 Saumur blanc. Their simplest white, it ferments in tank at 18 degrees, goes through malolactic and spends three months in tank, on its lees, before being bottled in the spring. Hardly a simple, wine. Its delicate fruit seemed to float atop a profound base of minerals and stone, giving full expression to the silex in its soils. The structure was straight as an arrow, the texture was suave, combining silk and Rabelais’ taffeta; the finish was long and fresh with the revivifying flavors of lemon zests.
Next came the 2004 Saumur blanc “Les Demoiselles,” a cuvee based on a more rigorous tri of the harvest , more severe decanting, followed by fermentation in newish barrels (four year rotation) and malolactic. Here was a big mouthful of very fine white, the kind of white you’d want with your first course at a starred restaurant. Rich, vivid and specific, it was the very model of a modern chenin, with its perfectly ripe, focused fruit, well integrated oak. The finish, with lingering flavors of the wine, left the palate fresh. You’re ready for more.
The 2003 Les Damoiselles, “ heavier and richer than the 2004, was a very good wine. Although I preferred the airiness and the tension of the 2004, I thought the 2003 might convert fans of big Chardonnays to the chenin cause.
Now the 2005 “Les Damoiselles” was another thing entirely. Bottled in March after a year in barrel, it still needs time to come together but promises to be a monument. Beautifully structured, it wraps your tongue in its richness, with layers upon layers of textured fruit, minerals, verbena, linden blossom and lemon zests, it is fully the equal of Savennieres.
From barrel, we sampled the 2006 Les Damoiselles. Vibrant and luminious, it will be different from the 2005 but equally exquisite.
A Cremant de Loire – pleasant but hardly their strong point – served as a transition to the reds, starting with the 2006 Saumur-Champigny “Les Tufolies,” a tank fermented cabernet franc which represents 60 to 70% of the domaine’s production.
It could not have been a more classic representation of the vin de plaisir –style of Loire cabernet franc – all finely focused, beautifully succulent fruit, a chiseled cameo of a fresh, young red.
Next up was the 2005 Saumur-Champigny Vieilles Vignes. The vines, between 20 and 30 years old, come from the domaine’s best plots. The grapes go through a short prefermentation at 18 degrees and then ferment in tank, the vatting lasting for three weeks. There’s no wood in this wine. It’s a silky beauty with lipsmacking black cherry and cherry pit flavors.
“Les Rotissants” is a cuvee named after its lieu-dit. And its name alone tells you what kind of microclimate this particular vineyard enjoys. The succulent 2003, aged in newish oak, had more gravitas than the previous reds – with its rich, dark fruit accented by licorice – and was equally delectable.
The domaine’s most serious red is the cuvee “Les Roches.” It ages for a year to 18 months in new oak. The 2004, an ambassador for Loire cabernets, was a smooth silk stream of freshness and tight, ripe, red and black fruit. An super meal wine. Prunes joined the black cherry mix of flavors in the 2005 La Roche, the texture of which was as velvety as it was silky. Excellent.
We ended on a mini-vertical of the Cuvee Sarah, the domaine’s sweet Coteaux de Saumur, which is an assemblage of the harvest from a single parcel mixed with grapes from the best tris in other parcels. The 2004, with 12.5 degrees alcohol and 130 grams of residual sugar, was a lush silk tapestry of quince, honey, pineapple and verbena. The chenin grapes were so healthy in 2005 that there wasn’t much botrytis. The domaine’s Cuvee Sarah, nevertheless, was richly honeyed and almost billowed with peach and apple scents. We finished with the luminous ’97 Cuvee Sarah (12 degrees alcohol and 180 grams residual sugar). There was a light note of oxidation as well as evolved flavors of butterscotch, wax and peach compote but , in all, it was a sumptuous, crystalline wine, a pure, honey and herbal tea nectar.
My bottom line on Retif/Retiveau: they don’t put one foot wrong. Ever.

Part 2(a)

The tasting over, I went home immediately to begin dinner preparations but recommended that anyone who wanted to do a little tourism, stop in Candes-St. Martin, with its flower-covered tuffeau-and-slate houses lining the banks of the Loire and its magnificent medieval church anchoring the main square of the fairytale village.
I had hoped we’d eat outdoors, in the garden, but, as you may know, we’ve not had much of a summer in France. The weather was gloomy and cold. At best, we could drink aperitifs outside.
Now, I’m often frustrated and frazzled when the most interesting and note-taking worthy wines are served during the meal, especially a rather festive one. I can’t give the wines the attention they deserve. So I decided that, in lieu of ‘happy hour,’ we’d do a formal-ish tasting before dinner -- going through a number of the samples that the various vignerons had brought as well as wines from my cellar and that this would enable us to pay attention to and talk about the wines. It went on for hours. And we sustained ourselves with potato chips – which happen to be one of my favorite food groups. We were also hoping that the Bourgignons – who had just returned from consulting in Uruguay – would arrive from their home in Burgundy in time for dinner.

The menu: langoustines and clams purchased and prepared by Guy. (He has been the supplier of the best langoustines I’ve ever eaten.) Then poulet au vinaigre prepared by me and served with string beans tossed with butter. Now I love poulet au vinaigre and make it often. This one time it didn’t work. And it didn’t work because of the honey I used – an artisanal miel de chataignier (chestnut tree) from the Ardeche so fragrant that it dominated the dish instead of melding with the other ingredients. It became a sweet-and-sour chicken and a less friendly wine partner than the French classic I’d been expecting. Then some cheeses, including local chevres from the Loire and the Languedoc, followed by two desserts I’d made, a chocolate cake from Maida Heatter’s first book and, inevitably, clafouti aux mirabelles.

Preprandial Tasting Chez Moi :
The first two wines – dry whites – were from Pablo Chevrot, a young Burgundian winemaker. I was meeting Pablo and his wife Kaori (Japanese) for the first time. They are friends of Alain and Isabelle Hasard who had recommended that they join the group. Pablo has a sizeable domaine which is converting to biodynamics. He’ll be joined in the cellar by this brother who, most recently was the winemaker at Heritiers Lafon in Macon.

2006 Bourgogne Aligote Domaine Chevrot “Cuvee des Quatre Terres”: rich, well built and well made, with some minerality, it comes across like a chardonnay. Too good for a kir.

2006 Bourgogne Blanc Hautes Cotes de Beaune chardonnay, Domaine Chevrot. Fermented in tank and barrel, the wine, which comes from Chevrot’s best parcel, was bottled a week before we tasted it. It was quite pure and very precise, rather (traditional) Macon-like, the kind of wine that could unify a jury. I expect it will flesh out with some time in bottle and gain in personality.

Alain Hasard was disappointed that we were going to Savennieres. (I pointed out that it’s a good hour and a half drive from my house.) To make amends, I found two bottles of Savennieres in my “cave du jour” – the hundred or so bottles I keep at home and not in my cave in tuffeau.

1997 Savennieres Clos des Perrieres, Pierre-Yves Tijou: The wine was surprisingly oxidized. ’97 was a very forward year but I expected the Savennieres to stay the course. Although it was extremely mineral, with a core of iron, it seemed well past its prime. Disappointing, especially as I normally love the chenins from Pierre-Yves Tijou.The bottle?

2002 Savennieres Moelleux Chateau d’Epire Cuvee Armand Bizard: A ctually, we drank this wine later in the line-up – after the reds – but it makes sense to include it here. It was a delightful wine, distinctly terroir-driven and bursting with character. Nicely structured, it had appetizing flavors of honey and herbal tea.

2005 Bourgogne rouge Domaine des Champs de l'Abbaye (Alain & Isabelle Hasard): lovely pinot noir fruit, lovely structure, simply delicious.

2005 Santenay 1er Cru Clos Rousseau, Domaine Chevrot: Pablo has 1.5 hectares in this PC, with a large percentage of old vines. The wine was partially aged in new oak (about 30%). Fresh, berried red with mint accents and succulent flavors of plum and cherry. There’s some depth here, a vin de plaisir with gravitas.

2005 Vin de Pays d’Oc Mas Champart: On land outside the St. Chinian appellation, the Champarts planted cabernet franc and syrah. The former, planted in ’88, accounts for 70% of the assemblage of this wine; syrah, the remaining 30%. Tank fermented, it’s a juicy red that I found particularly impressive because of the very true expression of ripe cabernet franc. The wine was fresh, not at all heavy or jammy, and had fine, focused fruit, almost Loire-like in its buoyancy.

2005 St. Chinian rouge Mas Champart Cote d’Arbo: A deeply fragrant red, chiefly Syrah and grenache with carignan and a bit of mourvedre, it exhaled aromas of black cherry, cherry pit, blueberry, eau de vie and violets. It was rich, supple and beautifully balanced, again Loire-like in the chamber-music clarity of its fruit. (How smart not to have ‘oaked’ it!) The wine weighed in at 13.5 alcohol but was fresh, light on its feet, with a lipsmacking finish. A ravishingly pretty wine.

The Cote d’Arbo is a specific parcel – with calcareous soils unusual in the area. I think the Champarts have named the parcel Arbo after the old vigneron who used to work it – pushing his bicycle uphill so he could ride down like a thrill-seeking kid.

Champagne Premier Cru Blanc de Blanc (Vertus) Larmandier-Bernier: A base of 2005 with reserve wine from 2004 and a dosage of 5, this was a full, ripe Champagne with broad appley flavors that, happily, never veered into the cider camp. The richness of the wine initially masked its chalky minerality, though that, as well as citrus zest, ginger, and stone, came through loud and clear on second tasting. The finish was a long echo of the above flavors.

When we were roughly midway through tasting the reds, the Bourgignons called from the road, thinking they were within striking distance. No such luck. They were between Orleans and Blois. It would take them the better part of an hour and a half to get to my house. So, at about 9:30 we decided to attack the first course – the langoustines and clams brought and prepared by Guy.

Now, the Larmandier’s Blanc de Blanc Champagne would have been exquisite with this course. But we’d finished the bottle. Never mind. What we did drink was equally satisfying. Guy had brought a magnum of ’96 Muscadet de Sevre & Maine “Expression Granite” ‘Hermine d’Or.’ Granite, which comes from a vineyard called La Baziliere, is his most mineral-driven cuvee and is almost always my favorite of his wines. It is a very serious Muscadet and the ’96, a year for the ages, was drinking beautifully, fresh and stony as a mountain stream. (Hermine d’Or refers to a label of quality devised by group of vignerons – Guy is a charter member -- who submit their wines to be tasted by their colleagues during a scheduled meeting. Wines that qualify may affix a strip saying ‘Hermine d’Or’ across the necks of the bottles.)

We had almost polished off the two huge seafood platters when The Soil Whisperers arrived. That’s my own personal moniker for Claude and Lydia, flying terroirists who advise such bold-faced clients as Aubert de Villaine and Anne Leflaive how to reanimate their overworked soils – and thus enhance the typicity of their wines – by using natural methods like plowing with a horse and digging in biologically correct fertilizers, ie compost. They also tell people what to plant where – chardonnay on this slope, malbec on that. In other words, when the Bourgignons talk, friends of the earth listen. Claude also has a way of issuing provocative dicta: he famously claimed the soils of the Cote d’Or were so depleted from overuse of chemicals that they had no more life left in them than the Sahara desert. He also claims that great red wine can only be made where there is chalk or limestone in the soils. And he has been known to dig far enough into the subsoils to find the single vein of chalk running through the slate-and-quartz dominated subsoils of the Priorat region of Spain. So I thought I’d pull out a red made from the schisty soils of the Layon area – Pierre Bise’s 2000 Anjou Villages “Spilite”. Those who know the proprietors, Claude and Joelle Papin, know that they, too, are committed terroirists. Spilite is the name of the soils from which this cabernet comes. And chalk or no chalk, I often find the Papin’s cabernets – Anjou or Anjou Villages – to be amongst the most elegant and long-lived of the region’s reds.
This wine fully lived up to my hopes for it. Sadly, I can’t recall the exact conversation. But it may well have been at this point that Claude and Lydia began talking about how wines from different soil types stimulate different salivary glands. So we all started paying attention to our saliva. (So much to learn, so little time!)
I also brought out a 1994 Madiran Chateau Montus “2000 Jours.” This was a special cuvee that (then) owner Alain Brumont made to commemorate the year 2000. It was pure tannat and had aged in new oak for, yes, 2000 days. Actually, Brumont made the wine in association with two buddies, the fashion designer Jean-Charles de Castelbajac and the painter Jean-Paul Chambas, none of them strangers to publicity. The wine wasn’t bad but it was – surprise, surprise – oaky. I’m saving the bottle, however, as the label – a kind of collage in the form of a picture-less picture frame with reprentations of Mona Lisa, Hollywood starlets etc – is probably as collectible as a Mouton one-off.
A 2002 Gewurtztraminer VT “Fronholz” from Domaine Ostertag easily carried us through artisanal blue cheese (from the Languedoc) and chevre (from the Loire) and the mirabelle clafouti. I imagine I brought out some sort of brandy to go with the chocolate cake. But I don’t remember. All I can say is that I got to bed at 3:30 AM and our first tasting was scheduled for 10:30 AM with Bernard Baudry in Cravant.

Day Two

Somewhat the worse for wear, we made it to Bernard’s cellars on time. If you have read either of my two books, you know that I consider Bernard one of the most conscientious vignerons in the Loire and one of the top producers of Chinon. I have great faith in him and, when I want to know the truth about something relating to Chinon wine – the health of the harvest, the evolution of a particular vintage – I go to him. He now works with his son Matthieu, a serious, hardworking, charming young man, who had just left on vacation.

Bernard had just returned from Corsica the night before. The vines there were impeccably healthy. I think our visit enabled Bernard to put off the inevitable face-to-face with his vines –which would likely not be as lovely to look at as those in Patrimonio.

On their 30 hectares of vines, Bernard and Matthieu produce a rose, a white and no less than four versions of red Chinon a year.
A lively, direct press 2006 Chinon rose prepared our palates for a series of fascinating red Chinons;
2006 “Les Grange” (a lieu-dit): Now here’s a red you just want to slurp up. No oak here, just vibrant, juicy fruit, light tannins and a touch of heat in the finish. I could drink it by the bucket.
2005 “Domaine” – assembled from various soils, aged in large wood barrels, bottled the following spring, filtration not systematic. Focused black cherry fruit accented by old wood; succulent but a bit hot and drying in the finish – not surprising with 13.7 alcohol and I’m sure a little time and/or aeration will resolve my minor reservations.
2005 “Les Grezeaux” – gravelly soils, wine aged in 6-year old barriques– Great freshness and fluidity, lovely fruit mingled with forest underbrush and chalk. Again, a touch of heat in the finish.
2005 Franc de Pied (Planted in ’93, this is a one-hectare plot of ungrafted vines in the Clos Guillot vineyard. The soils are sandy chalk, which may explain why these vines, unlike other ungrafted vines in Chinon, have not been attacked by phylloxera.) Rich, concentrated red fruit. A stunning wine. I do believe that the Bourgignons took great pains to point out which of our saliva glands were working here – because they did, indeed, seem to be working overtime.
2005 Clos Guillot: 14.5 alcohol here yet you don’t feel it. Yes, it’s a very rich Chinon, but fruity, silky elegant and structured. Not one false note. An excellent Chinon.
2005 La Croix Boissee (pure chalk soils): A beautifully mingled nose; on the palate, a lipsmacking wash of black cherry, elegant and soigne. Another excellent Chinon.
2002 Grezeaux: Fresh, gently fruited, airborn, very focused, a direct and seamless flow over the palate.
2002 Croix Boissee: Great freshness, stony, light, some veggie notes but quite agreeable.
’95 Grezeaux: Focused, straight as an arrow, airborn, with notes of sandalwood. Drink up.
’95 Croix Boissee: Faded roses, sandalwood, fresh and mouthfilling. Drink up.

We were going to finish the tasting with some of Bernard’s white Chinons but time marches on: we had a 3:30 appointment with Yannick Amirault in Bourgueil and a “no later than 1:30” reservation at le Moulin Bleu, a pleasant restaurant next door to Amirault’s cellars.

Owned and run by Michel and Chantal Breton – a smiling, very professional couple -- the restaurant occupies a renovated 15th century mill on a hillside overlooking Bourgueil and its best vineyards. (Alas, it also overlooks the nuclear power plant in Avoine. But never mind.) The weather was agreeable enough for everyone to want to be on the terrace – an undeniably pleasant place to be. The 19 euro lunch menu is a fine bargain and the food, with its focus on hearty local specialties (eg salad with rillons, coq au vin) is just fine. (Though fewer but better garnishes would be a plus.) The very good, reasonably priced wine list is particularly strong in Touraine appellations, with plenty of excellent Vouvrays and Bourgueils. Should you want to go: Le Moulin Bleu, 7 rue du Moulin Bleu, 02.47.97.73.13. (Ask to sit outside.)

We arrived chez Amirault a bit late – le p’tit quart d’heure de Rabelais, as they say in Touraine – and to the frowns of Madame. But when Yannick saw Claude Bourgignon, he was so impressed he nearly fainted. Yannick is converting his vineyards to biodynamic farming. There was talk of the effects of the lousy weather and this and that and then we got down to tasting.

Now, I’ve known Yannick (and his wines) since 1990 and it’s exciting to have watched him develop from a diligent and reliably good vigneron to his current status as – for me – the best winemaker in Bourgueil and St. Nicolas de Bourgueil. Over the years he has gone from being a fine craftsman to emerging as a poet of wine.

2006 Bourgueil “La Coudraie”: this cuvee comes from three parcels. The soils are a mix of sand and gravel; the average age of the vines is 30 years. The wine was bottled barely a month before we tasted it. A pellucid attack with vivid flavors of black cherry and cherry pits. The finish, for now, is a bit abrupt and lightly hot, but the wine will surely calm down with a bit of bottle age. Very promising.
2006 St. Nicolas de B “La Mine” (from tank): (from gravelly soils): dark purple, very pure, very juicy, rich black cherry flavors, great freshness. Lovely.
2006 Bourgueil “Les Quartiers VV” (from barrel): (soils = argilo calcaire): Intense, focused cherry pit flavors; a sumptuous, velvety wine, it envelops the palate yet remains crystalline. Superb.
2006 Grand Clos (from barrel): (soils: argile a silex): A gorgeous onslaught of blueberries, blackberries, flint, and salt, it’s so elegant and delicious. A tomber.

It was at about this point that Claude declared Yannick “an artist, a poet!” – in an exclamation that recalled Zoltan Karpathy’s triumphant recognition of Eliza Doolittle as a Hungarian-born princess in “My Fair Lady.” (Ok, a bit far to go for an allusion.)
2005 Les Quartiers: (The wine fermented for over a year. 14.4 alc.) The color of blueberry concentrate, with aromas of cassis, black cherry, and eau de vie. Despite a somewhat drying finish, the wine is exquisite.
2005 St. Nic de Bgl “Malgagnes" (argilo calcaire (tuffeau) covered by 40 centimeters of argilo-siliceux): Another wine to die for. Black velvet, Ellington’s Satin Doll, it’s elegant, rich and fresh. This is definitely a cru. Never mind the grape variety; it’s closer to Burgundy than to Bordeaux.
2005 Bourgueil “La Petite Cave” (Yannick’s best parcel in Bourgueil): Quite reduced but very promising – cinnamon and velvet, and lovely, fresh fruit.
It was time to leave. We were all somewhat giddy. Not from the alcohol but from the elation induced by having tasted great wine.

Wine of the Week: August 13, 2007: 2003 Chablis Premier Cru Fourchaume, Francine & Olivier Savary: Yes, 2003, the vintage we francophile winegeeks love to hate: the poster vintage for the evils of climate change, the unprecented heatwave resulted in full-blown (frequently over-blown) wines which often a) lacked phenolic ripeness; b) lacked balance and were too heavy; and/or c) lacked acidity or whose acidity had been clumsily ‘enhanced’; and a host of other things. Well, here’s a 2003 that any wine lover can get behind. Yes, it’s atypically rich for a Chablis. But it’s light on its feet. It’s hugely mineral and flinty, with rich aromas of preserved lemon and verbena. It’s even pleasantly fresh, with an appetizingly bitter tang in the finish. It’s a really good, really “Chablis” Chablis from a very, very, very ripe vintage. Deal with it!(Or accept standardized wines that don't reflect their vintage.)

July 10, 2007 Report on July 4th:
My birthday, Mary's birthday and Independence Day:
I was hoping for warm and sunny weather, and imagining a nice, balmy evening in the garden. And so I was thinking: equal parts red, white, rose, with the reds slightly chilled. But it was cold and dreary, with on and off showers. Nevertheless, I had set aside two dozen bottles of good, easy-drinking wine and, if tastes really changed, I figured I could punt. We polished off about 16 bottles, some of them the recorked Alsace samples (of which I still have about six). Here’s a list of the others: (Note: it will not make you jealous but my it did make my guests happy.)

2003 VdP d’Oc Viognier La Baume (screwcap): La Baume is a leader in the fighting varietal war being waged against New World wines. The Viognier was quite pleasant, fresh and fragrant.
2003 VdP des Coteaux du Libron Chardonnay Domaine Caumette
2002 VdP Cotes de Gascogne Chardonnay Tariquet
People kept telling me, “I love the chardonnay,” but, being chief cook and bottle washer, I never had the time to ask “Which Chardonnay?”
2003 Cotes du Rhone blanc Domaine de la Presidente: see notes below.
2004 Cotes du Rhone rose Domaine Guy Musset
2003 (I think) VdP d’Oc Rose de Syrah Clamery: a nice, big, flavorful rose.
2003 Irouleguy rouge Premia, Les Vignerons du Pays Basque. A drink-me-up Tannat – to th