Blog | Jacqueline Friedrich: The Wine Humanist

FrenchFeast: Fizz,Frites,Fromage and Philosophical Fermentations

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

5/01/2008 - 2:13 pm

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 deveau 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.

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Truffle meals in Touraine

3/07/2008 - 4:04 pm

tags: Touraine | truffle | truffles

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.

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French Feast Goes to Sicily

3/07/2008 - 4:14 pm

tags: Palermo | Sicily

January 13,15, 2008: French Feast Goes to Sicily: Palermo: 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.

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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 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

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 the extent that such a beast exists.
2000 VdP d’Oc rouge “La Bergerie” Domaine de Ste Croix: good and juicy. I should have included it in my book, if only as a mention.
2003 Cairanne ‘Grands Classiques’ Domaine de la Presidente: When tasting wines for my book, The Wines of France, I didn’t much care for the samples sent from this domaine. As they’d sent duplicates, I had a chance to retaste two – the two noted here – for the party. Each was a good, solid Rhone – and should have been mentioned in my book. Both were ripe and rich, as the vintage would indicate, but neither was heavy or exaggerated. Nice, easy drinking.
2005 Bourgueil Freres Nau: Abel brought a magnum of this wine and it was the star of the evening. People – including yours truly – kept chasing Abel around the house in search of refills. It’s a delicious Bourgueil from an often overlooked domaine. Try it; you’ll like it.
The wines fit the food and the mood. I’d made a chickpea dip (Jaime Oliver recipe, very easy), tuna and caper rillettes, and blue cheese biscuits. Most people brought food. In addition to balloons and sparklers, Mary brought quite a few cheeses – as did other people – as well as mini hotdogs, mini hotdogs in a spicy sauce, mozzarella and cherry tomato kabobs, watermelon, prunes wrapped in bacon, devilled eggs, spicy meatballs with quails’eggs inside, and sliced dried sausage. She also made a birthday cake – classic American devil’s food sheetcake. Other guests brought piroshki, eggplant caviar, and charcuterie; as well as cranberry crumble and petite fours. Dominique made pasteis de nata but forgot to add the flour to the filling. They were delicious anyway.
Now it doesn’t look as if we drank all that much – at least not by my standards. I had a hangover the next day anyway. So did most everyone else.
Abel had forgotten his jacket – with wallet and papers (licenses, passport) inside. So he came back to fetch it the following day and observed that he was surprised by the large percentage of French people at the party. “You’ve really made your home here,” said he.
I replied that there were representatives of no less than seven nations: France, USA, England, Portugal, Latvia, Serbia and Holland. Is the French countryside more of a melting pot than the USofA?

Wine of the Week: July 10, 2007 Domaine du Grand Cros 2005 Cotes de Provence Rose “Nectar”: Now here’s a wine to convert those who turn up their noses at the very idea of rose and to delight those who never needed convincing. It might also go a fair way to proving that such a thing as a “serious” rose does, indeed, exist. The basics: carignan, mourvedre and syrah, with an average yield of 35 hl/ha; cold prefermentation before vinification in barrel and aging sur lie. A deep salmon-pink, this is a big, taut, rich rose with the texture of satin. It’s very fruity with strawberry flavors accented by peach. But it’s more mineral and stony than it is fruity and has a long, dry finish. The Domaine du Grand Cros, an eco-friendly, state-of-the-art winery, makes three levels of wine in each color. Nectar is the haute de gamme. I’ll be reporting on their other wines in the near future.

Wine of the Week: June 25, 2007:Domaine de l’Alliance, 33210 Langon. Sauternes and Graves. Young Daniel and Valerie Alibrand met at La Tour Blanche, a famous winemaking school in the Bordelais. From Valerie’s family, they inherited land, including 6 hectares in Sauternes – on the same crest as Rieussec and de Fargues. Their first vintage was 2005, a blessing for most vintners. Not for Daniel and Valerie. They find their 2005 Sauternes too heavy and prefer the freshness and balance of 2006. They’re being a bit hard on themselves – in the best possible way: both vintages are excellent. The 2005, predominantly semillon, aged in used barrels from Yquem and de Fargues, is crystalline, fresh and rich with flavors of honey and mango. The 2006, a barrel sample of pure semillon, still had flavors of fermentation but was extremely promising, a cascade of freshness, with flavors of apple compote, minerals and quinine and a long, long finish. Some might find it atypical of Sauternes but it’s the kind of atypical authenticity that I love. And there’s an explanation: Daniel worked in Vouvray and prefers the balance of those wines to Sauternes. He won’t use new barrels (and evidently has very good sources for used barriques); he won’t harvest botrytised sauvignon blanc, preferring instead, shrivelled grapes (passerillage). Each is extremely appetizing, one sip leading to the next. They also make a mighty fine Graves Superieur, the 2006 of which is focused, balanced and bracing, a rich, bright, demi-sec.

June 5, 2007: Another Shaggy Meal Story:June 2, 2007: Asparagus Day Chez Marionnet:
If a collection called “The Sayings of Chairman Marionnet” were ever to be compiled, the first entry would surely be his claim for his wines: Ceux sont des vins qui desoulent. (These are wines that sober you up.) Now, Marionnet’s wines are as close as wines get to thirstquenching but I have never really believed that they restore sobriety.
And so it was that, when invited to spend a gastronomic Saturday at his home in Sologne, I opted for the train, rather than my ’87 Renault 5, arriving in Blois where Henry met me.
The day was grey and overcast. We took the long route to the Marionnet HQ – touring plots on which Henry had planted his ungrafted vines (all of which go into his Vinifera line). From a distance, all were bursting with health – which was, in fact, the case with most -- though on closer inspection, some of the leaves and some of the embryonic bunches showed signs of hail damage from the violent storms that had swept through the region two weeks earlier. The damage was nothing that a stretch of warm, sunny weather wouldn’t cure, but Henry fussed and clucked like a mother whose 8 year old has skinned both knees.
Then it was on to the homestead where Marie-Jo and a cook were peeling mounds of white asparagus. Henry walked me into the most recent addition to his house, a spacious, luminous ‘winter garden,’ lined with breakfronts whose shelves were filled with vintage Brittany and Blesois (from Blois) faience, the latter – which I’d never seen before – characterized by turquoise-colored backgrounds, gilt-edging and Baroquely geometric borders.
It’s not unusual in France for a host to wait until all guests have arrived before serving the first glass of wine or spirits. I didn’t, however, think this would be the case with Henry Marionnet – of all people, the crowned king of carousing!
So as we sat on opposing couches, a tray of gleaming (empty) wine glasses on the coffee table between us, I did a most unFrench thing though in a classically Marionnet way. When in a situation in which glasses are empty or not present at all, the Chairman pronounces another of his signature Sayings, “On se croirait dans une ferme dans la Beauce.” (Loose but faithful translation – ‘We might as well be in a Beauce farmhouse.’ The Beauce being the breadbasket of France where people drink milk, not wine.)
And he leapt into action, returning with a bottle of 2006 Chenin Blanc from his Vinifera line which was soon joined by a plate of delicious rillettes.
I’m often very critical of Chenin blanc made beyond the eastern limits of the Vouvray appellation. But here was a shimmering exception. Also an exception to my rule-of-thumb that Loire Chenin is not for quaffing. Here was a fresh, ethereal white, with floral and mineral flavors as delicately spun as a vintage handkerchief. One of those wines that just slips down the gullet.
We had been talking about old times and old friends and, as often happens when our conversation takes this turn, we began trading stories about Jean-Francois Dubreuil, a brilliant, hilariously funny wine merchant from the Vendee who, because of health reasons, retired a year or two ago.
When Jean-Francois would begin a round of drinking – whether in one place or as part of a moveable tasting, from one cellar to another – he would, Henry recalled, address the liquid he was about to swallow in the following manner, “Places-toi bien. Tu vas voir defiler des choses!” (Position yourself well. You’re going to see quite a parade!)
Enfin, the other guests arrived – a thirtysomething couple – Benjamin, a fireplug, a real lover of wine and, not least of all, the director of wine sales for the hypermarket chain Carrefour, and his pretty wife, Marie, a schoolteacher in the posh suburb of Neuilly – and their very calm, very content infant, Augustin Pierre Gaspard (and those are only his given names; he’s also got a double-barreled family name).
Immediately Henry piled us into his car and drove us to see his small plot of sculpturally gnarled prephylloxera Romorantin vines. Romorantin is cultivated only in small pocket of the Loire and is the only grape allowed in the tiny appellation Cour-Cheverny. It makes an interesting, chenin-like white and Henry’s remarkable Provignage may be the finest of the lot.
It’s a suave, mineral white, rather rich and supple even when fully dry. It can easily be drunk all alone – as Henry likes to do – or with a multiplicity of dishes, starting with melon and prosciutto, maybe, and moving on to main courses of white meat or fowl. On this day, however, Marie-Jo brought out rillettes, rillons, and pan fried rounds of boudin noir, all from an excellent charcuterie in the small, nearby town of Contres.
Thus commenced a meal that was 1000% Ligerian (ie from the Loire). First, those white asparagus – picked earlier in the day – with a thick sauce based on crème fraiche and red wine vinegar. To go with the asparagus, what else? Henry’s rich but bracingly fresh 2005 Vinifera Sauvignon Blanc.
Then came a matelote d’anguilles – eel stewed in red wine – with a side of tiny girolle mushrooms.
With it, Henry served the 2005 Premiere Vendange, his juicy, mineral, completely unsulphured Gamay. It’s such a pretty wine, particularly in 2005, that I thought it too tame for the eel. I’m hardly a stickler for food and wine marriages but I suggested that Marionnet’s Cepages Oublies – based on a not quite legally permitted grape, the Gamay de Bouze – make a better match. Out came a bottle and, voila!, it was perfect, a spicy, lipsmacking red with a hint of the wild about it that went perfectly with the innate rudeness of eel.
Next, yes next, came farmhouse chicken, roasted to perfection, with crispy skin and juicy, flavorful meat. This was paired with more girolle mushrooms and mashed potatoes that give the Robuchon version a run for the money. (Though chez Marionnet the puree focused on potato rather than on butter.) I am still dreaming about that roast chicken and that puree. And although I’m on a much needed diet, I regret not having eaten more.
I think Henry wanted to serve his Vinifera Gamay with this course but I begged, successfully, for the Vinifera Cot. The deep blackberry color of a Cote Rotie, it’s about as succulent as wine can get, with profound flavors of ripe, dark fruit.
Cheese (local goat and artisanal Roquefort) was followed by sorbet and a pie-shaped galette, crunchy and rich with the flavors of sugar and butter.
At some point Henry disappeared into the cellar and came back with a 1976 Gamay de Touraine which tasted for all the world like a mossy Pinot Noir.
It’s common at times like this to marvel at how well a wine that was never meant to age has actually managed to age; then to up the ante, saying that it’s still got a good life ahead of it and can age some more. Trust me. This was the time to have drunk that wine.
Speaking of time, you will not be surprised to hear that with all this eating and drinking, combined with animated discussions of burning wine issues, I missed my train back to Paris. Luck was with me however. I hitched a ride with Benjamin, Marie and the baby. And though I’d hoped to nap, we talked wine and food all the way home.

May 17, 2007: Picking up where I left off in my Arles diary, two new restaurants. Scroll down to April 19.

May 11, 2007:Boating on the Seine
At about the time the new president of France was returning from his yachting vacation, a group of wine professionals embarked on a rather shorter but no less sweet boating trip in the City of Light.
On a sweater-cool day, with just enough sun to avoid complaints about the weather, we set off on a sleek little yacht called Act III for a two hour cruise on the Seine. During this time we would taste the “Top Twenty” wines from the appellation Entre-Deux-Mers. The wines would be accompanied by the “creations” of Jean-Pierre Vigato (Restaurant Apicius) and the mises en scene (transl. “staging”) by Lenotre.
Once upon a time, as I’m sure you recall, Entre-Deux-Mers was a cheap, bland, near transparent white that tasted like alcoholized water. It’s still pretty cheap, as prices go, but it’s much richer, more flavorful and more textured these days.
Better winemaking, not to mention a more competitive market, can be credited for that. But a couple of factors that go into the new, improved winemaking style deserve to be singled out. The first would be the increased (and increasing) use of sauvignon gris, a grape that adds richness to the usual sauvignon blanc, semillon (and sometimes muscadelle) blend. The second is the increased (and increasing) practice of aging the wine on its fine lees for a period of time after fermentation. And yes, skin contact and very cool fermentation temperatures also affect the final outcome.
The wines tend to be more alike than they are different. In general, expect bracing, zesty whites, often rather pungent, with vivid flavors of grapefruit and grapefruit zests, some herbaceousness, minerals (in the best), as well as the marrowy texture and thread of fine bubbles that come from aging sur lie.
The price that you’d pay at the cellar is below (often well below) 10 euros. And the wines, in general, are best well iced. Perfect for those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer.
Herewith, some recommendations. (Prices ex-cellar, in euros).
Best Buys:
Chateau Chantelouve, 3,40
Chateau Haut Garriga, 3,40.
Chateau Lestrille, 4,90.
Cave de Rauzan, 3.40.
Very Good:
Chateau Bonnet, Lurton family, 6,75 euros.
Chateau Lalande-Labatut, 5,50. (40% sauvignon gris).
Chateau Martinon, 4,65: Chiefly semillon.
Chateau Sainte-Marie: 6,30. One of few, maybe the only, wine made entirely with hand harvested grapes. Very light filtration. One of the most textured.entirely hand havest.
Chateau Tour de Mirambeau, 7,25. Creamy (in the ‘everything’s relative’ sense) and a touch hot.
Chateau Vignol, 5,80. Fresh as a breeze though a streak of bitterness intrudes.
Favorite:
Chateau Vrai Caillou, 8 euros. The most expensive but also the most textured, the most marrowy, the most subdued, with the most gravitas and the most minerality.
Best Ratio Price/Quality/Atmosphere:
Chateau Fontenille, 5 euros. I was appalled to see our yacht doing an about face – which meant we were returning. More appalled to realize I’d been below deck, tasting, while the boat passed the Eiffel Tower. Not on the way back! So I leaned against the railing, with this delightful white in my glass, and simply ENJOYED. Delightful.
Now, all the while, we were being served exquisite amuse-bouches/tapas. There were many delectable fish-based nibbles and other confections that looked like jewelry – teeny, glistening squares of foie gras on pain d’epices, mini boxes of dark chocolate filled with semi-melted foie gras. As a serious professional I was going to avoid the last two until I’d finished evaluating the wines. Then I saw how rapidly they were disappearing and snatched one of each.
Which just goes to show you that when you’re in a yacht on the Seine there are absolutely no ‘food and wine pairing’ issues presented by the marriage of bone-dry, ice cold, light white wine with deep, dark, rich chocolate and foie gras.
Finally, it’s amazing how quickly two hours pass when you’re not eg listening to a presidential debate but gliding along the Seine with tasty wine and gorgeous food, admiring the tracery work of the Eiffel Tower, the champagne-colored stones of the Louvre and so on. But, dear reader, not all tastings are like this.

May 3, 2007 Gardening Day Update:
The sky was a leaden grey but it did not rain – or not more than a couple of drops now and then – on May 1, at least not in the time frame that mattered. (The storm arrived after 8pm. Satellite reception was knocked out, so no tv, but the hours of plowing, pruning and weeding, as well as the hours of eating and drinking were over by that time.)
Right now I’m sitting outside, under the pergola, nearly intoxicated by how lush and beautiful everything looks. Roses, lilacs, ceanothus all in full bloom, irises spent, wisteria (finally) creeping up the most sunlit pergola support and getting tangled in the dead branches of a wild cherry tree. Peonies ready to burst open, clematis budding here and there, as well as new shoots of lavender and sage. There’s the sound of a distant lawn mower, of the Indre River rushing over its weir, and of the conference of the birds (pace Peter Brook). The air is as fresh and fragrant as if it had been scrubbed clean. And it’s cool and fresh, not hot and muggy as it has been for the past week.
Now if only I could get rid of that last lingering bit of hang-over.
Ah, we drank! Starting with Guy Bossard’s 2006s – an invigorating Gros Plant (better than 90% of mass market Muscadets), and the deeply mineral “Granite” from the single vineyard Baziliere. Then came Francois Pinon’s Vouvray. (He’d arrived late, having exhausted himself over the weekend during his annual two-day Portes-Ouvertes when clients (actual or potential) come to taste, snack and chat. But he was in time for the meal and piqued our appetites with his vibrant 2006 sec and his luscious 2005 Cuvee Botrytis. (More on these in my Loire notes, once I finally pick up where I left off, with the “P”s.)
In all, we were 11, a really tight squeeze around my dining room table: Abel and Dominique (see Gardening Day #1), Monique and Charles Joguet (bearing two bottles of ’88 Dioterie, ’95 Chene Vert and ’96 Varennes du Grand Clos), Joyce (who often appears in my diar-etic notes), Michel and Guilhem (of site mug shot and Tarte Tatin fame), and Ilona (Latvian ambassador and Brenda Blethyn look-alike who was born in deportee camp in Germany, grew up in Yorkshire, has four grown kids and is a natural comedian and singer).
Back to what we drank. For my hard working gardeners, I had put out a bottle of mineral water (which went unopened) and a bottle of 2003 Irouleguy rose from Domaine Ametzia, strong and taut and fresh. There was none of this left.
With the first course, two Tavel roses: 2004 Domaine Lafond-Roc Epine (pleasant and flavorful but a bit ‘obvious’ and 2003 Domaine Trinquevedel (bracing, taut and tasty).
Guy did not bring any eels or langoustines so I made the aforementioned Tuscan white bean and tuna salad. (With chopped red onion, a vivid vinaigrette, and, at the last minute, some squirts of fresh lemon and a lug or two of rich olive oil.) This was on a bed of cress (from aforementioned cressiculteur in neighborhing Huismes) and was garnished with toasts covered with tapenade.
With the main course: two Bandols: 2001 Domaine Tempier and 2002 Domaine du Gros Nore. These were major hits with everyone, as was Joguet's very, very different ’88 Chinon Clos de la Dioterie, all sandalwood and dried flowers and sweet spices. In their various ways, each was wonderful with the Tuscan rabbit. (Basically from the cookbook Soffritto except that I added a whole lot more garlic – which I didn’t mince – as well as more sage and rosemary, both of which I left on the branch.) This was accompanied by farfalle tossed with lots of sweet butter, snipped chives, parmesan, salt and pepper.
Two more Chinons and one of my recorked Alsace Gewurtztraminer Grand Crus with the cheeses which segued into dessert, Maida Heatter’s East 62nd Street Lemon Cake, accompanied by last year’s mirabelles which I’d put by with a mix of alcohol and sugar.
And Dominique had made pasteis de nata. The pastel de nata is an iconic and addictively delicious Portuguese pastry. In the way any woman marrying a son of Nantes must learn to make beurre blanc, I assume that any woman marrying a son of Portugal must master the pastel de nata. And Dominique could win the blue ribbon at the Coimbra county fair with hers. And then digestifs and coffee.
The mosquitos are getting to me so just a word on last night’s presidential debate: WAY TO GO, SEGO!

April 2007 : For notes on the 2006 vintage in Bordeaux, check out Book Updates; Loire notes continue. click on Works, then click on "A Wine & Food Guide to the Loire.

April 30, 2007, 8:45pm
Anguish. Gardening Day is tomorrow. The weather forecast is far from favorable. Predictions include scattered showers and, later, possibly violent storms. But the weather forecasts are often wrong. It was supposed to rain today and, so far, it hasn’t. So if the predicted precipitation can hold off until around 2:30 tomorrow, that would be just great. What with our June-in-April weather, the garden has become a jungle so work urgently needs to be done. (But if the weather cooperates, working in the garden will be a fragrant pleasure – with the lilacs, roses, ceanothus and muguets all in bloom.)
Preparing for Gardening Day means I don’t get to write anything “serious.” I’ve already made Maida Heatter’s East 62nd Street lemon cake. I’ve got two rabbits in the fridge – having made a spread out of their livers that I sauteed with red wine and capers. Dilemma: having consulted some 30 cookbooks, I’ve narrowed the choice down to two: do I make a classic lapin a la moutarde or a recipe from Benedetta Vitali’s “Soffritto”(white wine, herbs, garlic)? Further dilemma: I like to make things the night before but, since I’m afraid the rabbit will dry out if cooked that much in advance, I’ve accepted that I’ll just have to be more stressed than I like to be tomorrow and cook the main course as people are arriving and waiting for their “assignments”.
Also in the fridge are baby carrots, baby turnips, fat bunches of cress and several lettuces from the cressonier in the next village. Also local goat cheese, farmhouse St. Nectaire, Camembert moule a la louche and an 18 month old Comte. For a first course, I’m ready to make a Tuscan white bean and tuna salad but I’ll hold off because Guy Bossard may well show up with langoustines or oysters or a freshly smoked eel.
Guy will also bring his 2006 Muscadets for us to taste. If Francois Pinon shows up, he might bring some of his Vouvray. And if Charles Joguet doesn’t forget the date, he may bring a nicely aged Chinon.
I have, however, put some good roses in the fridge for the (possible) Tuscan salad; and, for the main course, Bandols from Domaine Tempier and Domaine du Gros Nore; Roussillons from Domaine Cazes, Faugeres from Leon Barral, and Vin du Pays de Lot from Domaine Belmont. The best of the last 20 unconsumed recorked Alsace samples have also been lined up and ready to be put in the fridge – as soon as there’s room for them.
Now I just have to pray for sun.

April 26, 2007 MEL BROOKS WAS RIGHT ABOUT SARAN WRAP
There we were, five jolly friends in the middle of a lovely dinner, at my buddy (see Arles) Joyce’s apartment in the medieval quarter of Chinon. After the group had polished off a delicious Chinon from Wilfred Rousse, I went down to J’s cave and brought back a red we both like a lot, the succulent, unfiltered Cotes de Bergerac from Barde les Tendoux. You guessed it. Corked. Back to the cellar? Settle for a ho-hum Bourgueil J had opened several days before? Eureka! “Bring me some Saran Wrap!” I cried. I had already poured the wine into a carafe. Now I balled up three generous lengths of Saran Wrap, stuffed them into the carafe and sloshed them around. Faster than you can say Rabelais, the cork taint had disappeared. As Hamlet said to Horatio: there are stranger things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.
So what does this have to do with Mel Brooks? Those of you who know his hilarious recording “The 2000 Year Old Man”have no need to ask. Those of you who don’t, should do yourself a favor and buy the CD.
In the meantime, here’s why Mel Brooks: on the album, Mel Brooks plays the 2000 year old man. Carl Reiner is his brilliant straight man cum internviewer. At one point Reiner asks, “What was the greatest invention of all time?” The 2000 year old man answers, in a very strong Yiddish accent, (and here I’m operating from memory): “Saran Wrap. You can wrap 3 olives in it; you can wrap six olives in it; you can wrap a small sandwich in it; you can wrap a big sandwich in it; you can look through it…”
When Carl Reiner asks: “What about space travel?”
The 2000 year old man answers, deadpan, “That was good.”
Well, here’s yet another reason why Saran Wrap is the greatest invention of all time: it eliminates cork taint!

February 27, 2007: See first installment of Loire tasting notes: click on Works, then click on "A Wine & Food Guide to the Loire. WINE(S) OF THE WEEK: FEBRUARY 23, 2007: A second amuse-bouche to whet your appetite for my tasting notes from the Salon des Vins de Loire – which I hope to finish before the end of the month.
Domaine les Grandes Vignes: Bonnezeaux.
Here’s a sizeable (50+ hectares), eco-serious domaine run by two brothers and a sister, Jean-Francois, Dominique and Laurence Vaillant. They make the full range of Anjou wines – all of which I love and all of which I’ll describe in my Salon tasting notes. Here, however, I want to single out the wines from Bonnezeaux.
IMHO, the Vaillants are the new stars of this great appellation. Their vines are on the steep terraced slopes (more than 50% incline) of Malabe, one of the AC’s best lieu-dits. The Vaillants prune severely, deleaf, harvest by successive passes through the vineyard, picking only grapes attacked by noble rot. Yields average 21 hl/ha. Fermentation takes place in barriques – never 100% new but, depending on the cuvee, some new and some new-ish, eg two or three wines – and age in barrels, with periodic stirring up of the lees, until bottling before the following harvest.
Although the vines are relatively young (ten years), the wines are already profound. Additioonally, each cuvee, from each vintage tasted, managed to be rich and ripe yet still ethereal.
The 2004 “Malabe”was lipsmacking, regal and harmonious; a luminous weave of silk and taffeta; the 2005 “Malabe”upped the ante: it was richer, with amazing focus and a core of luscious fruit, honey and citrus zests. Silky and lacey, it’s a future monument, simply superb. These two wines were both under 12 degrees alcohol, with 110 and 172 grams of residual sugar per liter respectively. The SGN cuvees, called “Noble Selection,” is similarly under 12 degrees alcohol but weigh in with 187 to 253 grams of residual sugar. The 2004, purely exquisite, was an airborn essencia of Chenin; the 2005, richer and more honeyed, was luscious but still fresh; and the ’97, still youthful, was drinking beautifully, a heavenly melding of honey and citrus zests…and a whole lot more.

See February 20, 2007 notes in Book Updates. WINE(S) OF THE WEEK: FEBRUARY 13, 2007:A Taste of the Salon des Vins de Loire: DOMAINE DES CHAMPS FLEURIS: The more I get to know this domaine, the more I fall in love with its wines. Every single one of them. But let me begin at the beginning. Owned and run by three enologists -- Patrice and Catherine Retif and Denis Retiveau (Catherine’s brother) --, Champs Fleuris is not a completely new domaine. The three started in 1985 with seven hectares overlooking the Loire in the village of Turquant, just beyond the little town of Montsoreau and its stern chateau. They now have 35 hectares of tuffeau-based soils, all ideally located atop the cliffside facing thegreat river. They produce the entire range of Saumur wines, including an oaked and an unoaked white, four versions of Saumur-Champigny, a rose, a Cremant de Loire, and, vintage permitting, a nectar-like Cuvee Sarah Coteaux du Saumur from vines facing the confluence of the Loire and the Vienne. I intend to supply complete notes from my tasting with Denis Retiveau once I finish the Hugh Johnson material. For now, I’ll just single out four favorites: the 2004 Saumur Blanc “Les Damoiselles,” a stylish yet terroir-specific barrel fermented dry chenin that’s all freshness and light, minerals, discreet fruit, and cream; the barrel-aged 2003 Saumur-Champigny from the lieu-ditles Rotissants, an ambitious, succulent red the color of Cote Rotie, with lipsmacking flavors of black cherry and soft oak set against a scrim of chalk; and two vintages of their most powerful and structured red, the Saumur-Champigny “les Roches” which comes from the heart of the Les Rotissants vineyard.The 2003, the fleshiest of their wines, approaches the right bank of Bordeaux in flavor and structure – perhaps not surprising given the vintage and the presence of 10% cabernet sauvignon in the les Roches mix. The 2005, bottled only two weeks before I tasted it, was more Loire-like, a voluptuous red with seductive flavors of kirsch, black cherry and cherry pits – something of a nuanced exploration on the theme of perfectly ripe cherries – with the freshness and effortless elegance that seems characteristic of wines from tuffeau soils. Too, too delicious. If you see any of their wines anywhere, order them.

WINE OF THE WEEK: FEBRUARY 3, 2007: Here’s a fresh, delicious white for every budget. It’s the 2005 Cotes de Saint Mont “Les Vignes Retrouvees” from the dynamic Producteurs Plaimont. Made chiefly from gros manseng – blended with petit courbu and arrufiac – and aged on its lees (with a regular stirring up of same), it’s very mineral with plenty of that wonderfully marrowy sur lie texture. At about 6 euros (at the winery) it was among the more modest wines shown at a celebration of the 25th anniversay of the VDQS Cotes de Mont. But I fell in love with it and so did about every other journalist with whom I spoke.
The tasting was held at the 2-Michelin-star Carre des Feuillants and, as the speeches were about to begin, trays of hors d’oeuvres were passed around. Best was the friture of tiny fish which was exceptionally delectable paired with Les Vignes Retrouvees. Pure gourmandise. (I found the food served at the sit-down lunch too fussy. In Yiddish we’d say it was ongepotchket in the sense of being overly baroque.)
But let me not overlook some of the other wines served, particularly the reds, which are based on tannat, a varietal that has recently been proven to have remarkable health qualities.(In his book The Wine Diet , professor Roger Corder claims that his research shows that tannat, particularly when vinified traditionally (ie long fermentation and maceration), produces wines that are exceptionally rich in heart-protecting procyanidins.)
The Producteurs Plaimont produce 98% of the wines of VDQS Cotes de Saint Mont. (They also make wines in Madiran, Pacherenc du Vic Bilh and various Vins de Pays.) Grower members must adhere to admirably strict rules – eco-friendly farming, hand harvesting– which get stricter as the category of wine to be made gets higher. Green harvests and leaf-removal by hand are among the obligatory viticultural practices for the level “Grand Vin.”Among these is a cuvee from an experimental vineyard on the grounds of the 15th century Chateau de Sabazan , about 12 euros at the cellar. While I’d be happy to drink any of the Plaimont’s red Cotes de Saint Mont, of which there are at least ten – all of them predominantly tannat with small percentages of the local grape pinenc as well as cabernet – I consistently single out those from Sabazan, which, like Plaimont’s other Grand reds, age in newish oak. At the Carre des Feuillants tasting there were four Sabazans: 2004 (painfully young and closed up tight but promising); 2001 (more open, full, oaky, nuanced and evidently ambitious but needing more time); ’98, muscular, chewy, tannic and darkly fruity; and the ’89, a strong yet fluid red with black olive, black cherry flavors and pleasingly chalky flavors. It had an engaging geographical specificity: here was a red whose flavor, texture and structure placed it solidly in the on the landscape between Spain and Bordeaux.
In these days of reds that can be drunk in their infancy, it’s heartening to come across versions that absolutely must be aged. And even when nicely aged, must be carafed – a good two hours before serving. A young tannat-based red from Southwest France – and here I include Madiran and Irouleguy – is virtually black, nearly impenetrable and would, if it could, put hair on your chest. It can turn off those unacquainted with the style. The trick is to let it mature – or open it the night before, drink a glass, and carafe it the next day and pair it with full-flavored foods. Cassoulet comes to mind, as does magret de canard. Then you can’t help but smile with pleasure at this singular, distinctive red which you just know is good for your health.

Wine of the Week: January 25, 2007: Chateau Clauzet Situated on a river-facing ridge that runs from Margaux to St. Estephe, Chateau Clauzet’s neigbors include Cos d’Estournel, Montrose, and Calon-Segur . If recent tastings are any evidence, the 24 hectare Chateau Clauzet, currently a Cru Bourgeois Superieur, shows every sign of of becoming a worthy rival of those popular classified growths.
At a January 18 tasting put on by L’Alliance des Cru Bourgeois du Medoc the 2002 and 2004 Clauzets were silk stocking St. Estephes. Fresh, refined and extremely elegant, they slipped down the gullet as smoothly as swans sliding down a stream.
These beauties are the result of fine terroir, naturally, but also the TLC lavished on vines (leaf removal, cluster thinning, hand harvest etc) and vinfications (long maceration, seven different barrel-makers, bungs made of glass, not silicone) by owner Maurice Velge, who purchased the property in 1997, and winemaker Jose Bueno, who worked for Mouton-Rothschild for 23 years. At roughly 16 euros a bottle, Chateau Clauzet is an affordable delicacy. Parisians can buy it at Caves Taillevent (8th arr) or at Caves Petrissans (17th arr). It is also available via the net at www.1855.com.
Also at this tasting were the 2004 and the 1996 Chateau Phelan-Segur , a Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel located on the same ridge as the above St. Estephes. While the 2004 was closed up tight and resolutely muscle-bound, the '96 was smooth and savory, with a kind of Brooks Brothers manliness.I've written about Chateau Petit Bocq, another St. Estephe Cru Bourgeois Superieur (also Belgian-owned, as is Clauzet) in Book Updates: November 2006. Owner Gaeten Lagneaux was showing 3 vintages at the l'Alliance tasting, 2004, 2003 and 2002. All were promising but it's worth noting that the 2002 might be a great choice in a good restaurant -- Chez Michel in Paris, say -- particularly if you like young Bordeaux with a sense of place. All it needs is a little aeration and a fine, red-friendly plat du jour.
And while I'm on the subject of St. Estephe, a wine that evinced a lot of enthusiasm at the January 18 tasting was the '99 Chateau les Ormes de Pez , a cru bourgeois exceptionnel. A tad barnyardy and quite truffle-y, I'd say it was ready to drink and should be paired with a good roast beef -- to soften its drying finish.

HOLIDAYS 2006/7: OR THE BEST LAID PLANS… (you know the song) ... A SHAGGY MEAL STORY:
As a single person and a lover of celebrations, I make sure to plan my holidays well in advance. A typical Christmas finds me in my cottage in the Loire. Christmas eve dinner is usually chez Joyce; Christmas lunch, chez Hilda. (Eventually I will draw up an annotated cast of characters.) And so it was to be this year. I am usually responsible for wine coordination and so had planned the bottles to be drunk at each event. Then I was felled by a virus that was circulating the hexagon – or at least the region centre, of which the Chinon area is a key part – and took to my bed, sick as a dog and weak as a kitten, feeling very sorry for myself. Sinus congestion made the idea of opening a good bottle or three for myself a less than appealing idea. I drank a lot of cocoa. Somehow Chivas Regal went down very nicely. Particularly when paired with Bordier butter – both sweet and demi-sel – I had brought down from Paris smeared thickly on some very good sour dough bread I’d also brought along. (Bordier, by the way, makes some of the world’s best butter. And I would rather eat good butter than foie gras.)
By December 27th I was feeling somewhat better, better enough not to cancel my mini-gardening day, which event I will now describe. (Fast forward on tips in this dispatch:
Wines to be discussed: 2006 Muscadet Sevre & Maine Expression de Granite Domaine de l’Ecu; 1994 Collioure “Seris” Domaine de la Rectorie; 1999 St. Maurice (Cotes de Rhone Villages) “Expression” Domaine Viret; 2002 Coteaux du Languedoc Montpeyroux Domaine d’Aupilhac; range of Alsace wines and ’89 Veuve Cliquot Grande Dame.
Food to be discussed: smoked eel; oxtail stew (including recipe); 36 month old Comte; clafouti aux mirabelles with recipe indications.
Plus helpful tips on: wine conservation; summer fruit conservation; and the fire-starting attributes of alcohol-soaked corks.) What is Gardening Day? Born of necessity, it’s a day in which I invite a number of friends who are good gardeners to help get my patch in order. They weed, prune, add compost, plant and transplant while I cook a big, harvest-type meal. In general a whale of a good time is had by all. My last full gardening day was May 1, 2006. Finding little time in which to garden this autumn – partly due to lots of rain and storms, including one so violent it uprooted a pear tree – I felt my garden needed more attention than I alone could give it. And so I invited some of the usual suspects over for a half day of field work (winter weather, not to mention hours, oblige and gourmandise.
The Participants
Key to any gardening day is Guy Bossard, the man behind Domaine de l’Ecu, and his wife Annie. They arrived first – only natural, as they had the farthest to travel, coming from Le Landreau in the Loire Atlantique department. As usual, Guy brought samples of the most recent vintage – brut de cuve or drawn directly from the tank – as well as some older, bottled vintages. He brought that 36 month old C

Jacqueline Friedrich: The Wine Humanist
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FrenchFeast: Fizz,Frites,Fromage and Philosophical Fermentations

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

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