I'll Drink to That (42 page)

The last time I saw him after the 2006 harvest afforded me a nicely wrapped little vignette charged with all the symbolism I needed for viewing the future of this wonderful region. Supping joyously with his grape-picking crew, Marcel presided over the table like a benevolent despot of good cheer, forcing more helpings of Nathalie’s
boeuf bourguignon
on youths a third his age, overwhelming them with his energy and his jubilant chatter, topping up their glasses of wine, regaling them with stories about years past and harvests good and bad. When someone pointed out the battered old bugle hanging on the wall, Marcel sprang up and unhooked it. Erect now, poised in regulation position, he told about his army days when he used to rouse the troops before dawn, then raised it to his lips and gave the assembled crew a few skillful riffs. Naturally that set off a generalized clamor for everyone else to give it a try, and the ear-shattering competition went on and on until I took my leave and returned to my room at the other end of town.

It was approaching 11 P.M. as I walked through the darkened village, and as the bugle blasts continued I could only assume that the Pariauds had understanding neighbors. At length the amateurish blarings petered out and Marcel himself took up the instrument again for one more performance before turning in. The easy, practiced notes made it clear that it could only be Marcel who was delivering this last nocturnal serenade over the sleeping landscape. You take your comfort and your symbols wherever you can find them, so at that moment the import of Marcel’s spontaneous choice of repertory for a final musical offering could not have struck me as more fitting: any normal bugler would surely have selected taps to play out into the Beaujolais night, but Marcel was blowing reveille.

Acknowledgments

M
y first thanks go of course to Georges Duboeuf, “Monsieur Beaujolais” himself, who for more than thirty years educated me on the wines, the people, the geography, the history and folklore of the region that has come to be associated with his name. So dominant for the Beaujolais is the persona of Duboeuf that the equation for me was perfectly simple: no Duboeuf = no book. The other members of his family pitched in to the degree that their workaholic routines allowed them talking time: Rolande, his wife; Franck and Fabienne, his son and daughter; and Anne, his daughter-in-law, who brightens the day for the thousands of visitors who flock to the extraordinary Wine Hamlet that Georges designed and she runs. I add a word of respect and regret for Georges’ older brother Roger, sage and historian, who died shortly after according me two long and fruitful interviews at the family homestead in Chaintré.

Apart from the Duboeuf clan, four persons were of exceptional importance in providing research material and/or helping ensure that I presented it accurately. Professor Gilbert Garrier of the University of Lyon, gourmet, oenologue, raconteur and unequaled historian of French wines, cheerfully opened his books, his mind, his cellar and his dining room door, and sent me on my way a more knowledgeable if not necessarilywiser person. Michel Brun, retired from the Duboeuf troop, where he soldiered for some thirty years, became the object of my daily persecution via e-mail, fax and telephone for any niggling wine detail that I couldn’t get straight without his amiable patience. Edward Steeves, Massachusetts Yankee who spurned a teaching career for the love of wine, came to France and became boss of an important distribution house near Mâcon, freely offered his impressive erudition in matters of wine, history, culture and language, along with the unsuspected bonus of a redoubtable command of grammatical nuance in checking my text. And finally there is Marcel Pariaud, winemaker in Lancié, a true peasant seigneur of the Beaujolais, with whom I spent far more hours talking (or rather listening) than with any other single person. Marcel was my personal professor in agronomy and winemaking, and role model in human comportment.

In Beaujolais “officialdom,” the various groupings that deal with organizing the trade and furthering its good health, I owe thanks to Michel Bosse-Platière and Michel Rougier, respectively president and director of InterBeaujolais when they received me, as well as Gérard Canard, the organization’s retired director; to Maurice Large, former director of the Union Interprofessionnelle des Vins du Beaujolais; Michel Deflache, director of InterBeaujolais; Louis Pelletier, director of l’Union Viticole; and Jean-Luc Berger, technical director of l’Institut Technique de la Vigne et du Vin.

Among writers and journalists, Bernard Pivot afforded me an astute overview of the people and the Beaujolais culture into which he had been born, while Michel Bettane and Frank Prial added their forthright and sometimes dissident views as seasoned professionals of the world of wine criticism. Vincent Rocken, who covers the Beaujolais country for the daily
Progrès de Lyon
, gave me valuable background information, and Lionel Favrot, editorial director of
Lyon Mag
, offered a spirited defense of his magazine’s approach to reporting on the region’s events.

No profession follows wine matters more closely than the restaurant brotherhood. Within its ranks I owe special thanks to Paul Bocuse, Jean Fleury and Jean-Paul Lacombe in Lyon; Georges Blanc and Marcel Perinet in Vonnas; Chantal Chagny in Fleurie; and Jean Ducloux in Tournus.

In the iconic village of Vaux, undisputed capital of the Beaujolais for readers of Gabriel Chevallier’s classic
Clochemerle
, I respectfully salute the mayor, Raymond Philibert, the graphic artist Allain Renoux and the
artistes
of Beaujolais-Villages appreciation Roger de Vermont and René Tachon. My own enlightenment in matters vinous owes much to my honorable fellow members of the
Groupment des Organisations Sociales, Intellectuelles, Éducatives, Récréationelles, Sportives et Éducationnelles
(GOSIERSEC).

In various branches of the commerce of wine, I thank Pierre-Henry Gagey, president of the Maison Louis Jadot, and Guillaume de Castelnau, director of Château des Jacques; Jean-Marcel Jaegle, president of Tonnellerie Dargaud & Jaegle; Bill and Peter Deutsch of W. J. Deutsch & Sons; Jean-Pierre Labruyère, president of Moulin-à-Vent; Joseph Berkmann and Allen Cheesman of the Joseph Berkmann company in London; as well as the extremely knowledgeable Peter Vezan, wine broker in Paris.

For technical advice on the biophysics of vinification, I thank Dr. Björn Jäckisch of Honeywell.

Over the years I have bothered far too many winemakers to enumerate them all here, but I would like to single out the following for their welcome and dealing with my questions: Jacky Nove-Josserand of the
Cave Coopérative de Bully;
Jean-Pierre Thomas, president of the
Cave Coopérative de Liergues
; and René Bothier, president of the
Cave Coopérative de Saint-Laurent-d’Oingt.
Among individual vignerons, in no particular order, I offer particular thanks to Nicole Savoye Descombes, Daniel Buillat, Ghislain de Longevialle, Bruno Martray, Marcel Laplanche, Claude Beroujon, Pierre Siraudin, Gérard Large, Jean and Bruno Bererd, Monique and Georges Larochette, Marcel Lapierre, André Poitevin, Louis Durieux de la Carelle, Maxime Chervet, Paulo Cinquin and Jean-Guy and Evelyne Revillon.

And finally, a special note of personal thanks to my wife, Brien, for her patience, help, support and expert copy-reading eye, and to Bill Shinker, Lauren Marino, Hilary Terrell and Lisa Johnson of Gotham, for accompanying these pages from initial idea to its present finished form.

Glossary

AGRÉMENT: Approval (of wine samples)

ANCIEN RÉGIME: France’s pre-Revolutionary political and social system (monarchy)

ANDOUILLETTE: Country sausage composed principally of tripe

ASCENSEUR: Elevator

AUBERGE: Inn

AUTOROUTE: Superhighway

BALLON: Typical bistro wineglass

BOUCHON: Lyonnais term for bistro

BOUILLIE BORDELAISE: Agricultural fungicide composed of slaked lime and copper sulfate

BOULODROME: An earthen pitch for playing
boules
or
pétanque

BOURRU: Adjective designating wine not yet fully fermented

CANUT: Lyonnais silk weavers

CAVEAU: Wine-tasting cellar

CAVE COOPÉRATIVE: Co-op wine cellar

CÉPAGE: Variety of grape

CHAI: Wine storage building

CHAPTALISATION: Increasing wine’s alcoholic content by adjunction of sugar in fermentation

CHÂTELAIN: Owner of a château

CHEF DE PARTIE: A senior cook in a large restaurant’s kitchen brigade

COMMIS: A beginning cook just out of apprenticeship

COMTOIS(E): Adjective designating one from the Comté region of eastern France

CONCOURS DU MEILLEUR POT: Competition for bar offering the best Beaujolais Nouveau

COURTIER: Wine broker or scout

CONFRÈRE: A professional colleague

CRU: An officially recognized vineyard, usually of higher quality

CUVÉE: A selected batch of wine

CUVERIE: Storage building holding vats or tanks of wine

DÉGUSTATION: A tasting session

DE GUSTIBUS NON EST DISPUTANDUM: You can’t argue about tastes

EAU-DE-VIE: A strong spirit distilled from wine

ÉCOLE LAÏQUE: A nonreligious school

FAIRE PISSER LA VIGNE: Overproduce by causing the vine to “piss”

FERMAGE: Renting land for planting vines

FÊTE: A party, celebration or feast; more broadly, a holiday

FOND DE VEAU, FOND DE VOLAILLE: Veal or chicken stock, usually as base for sauces

GONE: A typical Lyonnais (cf.
titi parisien
)

GRATIN DAUPHINOIS: Scalloped potatoes in cream

HECTARE: Metric system’s land measurement: 2.471 acres

HECTOLITER: One hundred liters

LA MALO: Wine’s secondary fermentation, known as malolactic

LOUP EN CROÛTE: Sea bass stuffed with lobster mousse, served in a pastry shell with a choron sauce. House specialty of Paul Bocuse’s restaurant in Lyon.

LES TRENTE GLORIEUSES: Three decades of French economic growth, roughly 1960-1990

MARCOTTAGE: Air layering: burying a vine’s branch to cause it to grow roots

MERDE: Shit

MILLISIME: Vintage, year of production

MISE EN BOUTEILLE: Bottling

MOÛT: Must, crushed and smashed fruit being readied for fermentation

NÉGOCIANT: Wine dealer or intermediary

NÉGOCIANT-PRODUCTEUR-ÉLEVEUR: Dealer who also grows, ages and refines wine

PARCELLE: A section or “parcel” of land

PARADIS: The first, slightly alcoholized, juice from the press, after maceration

PAYSAN: Peasant

PÉTANQUE:
Boules
, or the “bowling” game played with iron balls

PIERRES DORÉES: “Golden Stone” region of the Beaujolais

PIPETTE: Long glass tube for withdrawing wine samples from the barrel

PIQUETTE: Poor quality “wine” made by adding water to already pressed grapes and pressing again

POILUS: French soldiers of World War I

POULET EN VESSIE: Chicken cooked with cream and vegetables inside a pig’s bladder

PRIMEUR: New wine; usually a synonym for Beaujolais Nouveau

PRIORITÉ À DROITE: In traffic, the vehicle on the left must cede to the one on the right

SUI GENERIS: Of its own kind, self-generated

SO
₂
: Sulfur dioxide, wine’s most common preservative and disinfectant

TERROIR: Total natural environment of a vineyard or
parcelle’s
site

TITI PARISIEN: Typical Parisian of folklore and myth, most usually of the working class

VENDANGE: The harvest

VENDANGEOIR: Plant to which grapes are brought to begin the process of vinification

VIGNERON: Winegrower

VIGNERONNAGE: Sharecropping on a 50-50 basis with the landowner

VINIFICATION: The process of turning grape juice into wine

VITICULTURE: The growing of grapes

VITIS VINIFERA: Vine species used for most of the world’s wines

Index

absentee landowners

absinthe

Académie Rabelais

Affaire Lyon Mag

Africa

ages of Beaujolais wines

agrément

agronomic science

Aigle Noir

alcohol content of wine

alcoholism

“alcohol therapy,”

Algeria

Alps

Alsace

American grape vines

andouillette Beaujolaise

Anne of Beaujeu

AOC (
appellation ’origine controlée
)

aphids (
phylloxera
)

and American grape vines

attempts to control

devastation from

and grafting grape vines

life cycle

rebound from

and supply issues

and wine substitutes

Ardèche region

asphyxiation

Assemblée Nationale

Atkinson, Derek

À Travers le Cristal
(Orizet)

Auberge de la Mère Blanc

Au Cul Sec (Bottoms Up)

Aujoux

Australia

classification of wines

gamay vineyards in

and
phylloxera

success of

wine production in

automobiles

Avignon

Bacot, André

bakers

banana aroma anomaly

barley

Baroillot, Père

Bâtard-Montrachet

Beaujeu

Beaujolais (“generic”)

AOC label

and Beaujolais Nouveau

and mechanization

reactions to

Beaujolais Agricultural Union

Beaujolais Interprofessional Committee

Beaujolais Nouveau