Myth, reality, and pathos of French wines

Some years ago, as we were leaving Biarritz on our yearly summer pilgrimage, penitence journey, and automotive flaggelation, otherwise known as our August vacation, we stopped at a café to have a couple of croissants and a frothy "grand creme". We had gotten an early start in order to avoid the mob of tourist that usually invade our city in summer.

The place was empty except for a couple of the locals who were reading the horse racing results in the "Sud-Ouest" newspaper and discussing possible bets to be made on the PMU off-track betting machine.

A third crone came in, greeted his two friends, and said to the "patron", a tall, blond woman who was busy getting the bar ready for the morning customers, "Bonjour, Jeannine; un petit rouge, s'il te plait."

The woman went behind the bar and brought the man an unlabeled bottle and a tumbler. The man poured a full glass, drank it all, and then proclaimed, "Je été soif." I was thirsty.

It has always amazed me how many Frenchmen (and I used the male gender because I have never seen French women do it, although that does not mean there are none who do it), will come into a bar or café early in the morning, on their way to work, or elsewhere, and have a glass of wine just like that.

I once sat in a café in Paris waiting for the airport bus, and I counted as many men having a glass of wine as those having a cup of coffee--and this was around 9:00 AM.

There are a lot of myths and misconceptions about how and when the French drink their wine. In the Americas, we have this image of a French person opening a bottle that is dusty and cool from having been kept in the cellar for 20 years. Ofter uncorking it, letting it "breath" for at least an hour, the wine is tasted, pronounced to have definite flavors of black cherries, a hint of chocolate, and even certain spices, the right balance of tannins and acidity, as well as a bouquet reminiscent of ...blah, blah, blah.

The fact of the matter is that this ritual is performed at a dinner party by the same snobs that drive Ferraris and huge SUVs in a town where you can barely go above 35 kph due to the traffic and the narrow, curving streets. That wine tasting ritual is acted out for the same reason the guy drives around town in a sports car: to impress friends and family and hopefully, the women in the audience.

Here in France, most wine is drunk the same way one would drink a soft drink or a beer anywhere else in the world, that is, without ceremony, as a liquid accompaniment to a meal, to quench your thirst, or as a conversation lubricant at social or public gatherings.

We used to go to what is known as a "workman's restaurant"; that is, a place that serves a four course mean with wine included at a fixed price (around 10.50 Euro at the time). As soon as one sat down at a table, the ladies who ran the place would bring bread and a liter bottle of "table wine". The food was great and plentiful but the wine was delicious. I asked the lady where the wine was from and to my surprise, she said it came from Navarre. It wasn't a wine you would want to keep in the cellar for 30 years but it was light and tasty, full of flavor and minerals--just the thing you want with a four course meal.

I now leave the Margeaux and Iquem to the snobs (not that I could afford them anyway), and enjoy finding wines from the lesser known regions of France: Cahors, Gaillac, Madiran, and even our own Southwest.

On my birthday or for Christmas, someone in the family will give me a beautiful wooden box with a couple of superb wines from Bordeaux. I dutifully put them away in my little cave in the studio and then open a bottle of wine from Tarragona, which costs 2 euros, and I guzzle it down with chunks of dried sausage from Bayonne.

Most good wines are reserved for dinner parties or holiday meals like Christmas or New Year. For day to day consumption there are good table wines and cheap Spanish wines that are not too rough around the edges.

Once in a while, I will horrify my wife by sitting down to watch the eight o'clock news (snooze, if you read the other blog) with a large bowl of potato chips and a cup of a very good wine such as a Sauterne, the marvelous white wine from the Loire region.

My wife (striking the pose of an insulted dignitary): "What are you doing?"

Me (with a potato chip half way to my mouth): "Uh, nothing, just, uh, having some..."

My wife (pointing at the potato chips as if they were poison): "You are NOT going to have THAT with Sauterne, are you?

Me (dropping the potato chip as if I had just been told it was covered with the Ebola virus):" Uh, well, I was, uh, sort of thinking of having..."

My wife (throwing her hands up in the air in desperation): "Augh! Have you no conscience, have you no idea of what a Sauterne is? You are like these Americans. Why don't you just mix it with the Coca-Cola and be done with it!"

Me (trying to bluff my way out of it): "Don't exaggerate, it is just some chips and wine."

My wife (stammering with indignation in that peculiar way the French stammer): "Eh,eh, eh, eh, eh...beh, eh, eh, eh...just some wine, eh? It is a Sauterne! Put it back and leave it for when we have the proper fish or cheese to go along with it. Augh, really!"

Sheepishly, I go to the kitchen and pretend I am putting the wine back in the bottle but quickly down it in two quick gulps.

My wife is no snob but like all French persons of her generation, she is adamant about how certain wines, foods, cheeses, and such, should be treated: Fish means a good, dry white wine or a Sauterne that is not too fruity; when she cooks a goose at Christmas (And, wow, can she cook a goose!) we have to have a good, robust Bordeaux, preferably a Médoc. Foie gras and dry, cold champagne is the preferred aperitif.

But as I have learned, few people from the Americas have the palate to appreciate good wine. We have ruined out taste buds with the spicy, greasy fare we eat and we might as well as be drinking iced tea when we are served a Saint-Estèph from the year 2000.

French people, especially women, can pick out every ingredient in an elaborate dish. Their palate is truly trained from childhood, although these later generations are being ruined by the ubiquitous McDonald's and sugary junk food, like most kids in the world.

The generations that would have "un petit rouge" in the morning are fast dying out and being substituted by the generations that have fancy machines that make artificially flavored coffees from prepared capsules.

In the last Bordeaux wine fair, there were busloads of Chinese and other Asians roaming the isles and buying up everything that was in bottles or cases. A man looked at the foreigners carting cases of wine to their busses and sighed, "Soon only the rich will have good wine because they hoard the great grand crus; we the middle class will content ourselves with Coke Light, eh?"

"And the working class?" I asked.

"They will have to drink that swill from 'the other side of France', that colored water they call Beaujolais Nouveau," he said disparagingly. By the other side of France he meant the Mediterranean.

The ladies from Navarra sold their restaurant to a businessman who turned it into an expensive bistro for yuppies and businessmen like the owner. The workmen can't afford it so they go to lunch elsewhere. I wish I knew where: I miss the home cooking and wonderful table wine the ladies served with the meals.

Tomorrow I will blog about that so-called Beaujolais Nouveau.