Tender at the Bone (39 page)

I climbed down from the train and had a moment of panic: Kermit was not there. Then I saw a large round man with a big black beard holding a sign with my name printed clumsily across it.

“C’est moi,”
I said, relieved.

“You speak French!” he said happily. He had a deep voice and a wonderful rolling accent. He led me to a deux-chevaux as beat up as my Volvo; the seats were torn and the car smelled as if it had been bathed in wine. Bottles rattled around on the floor, clanking each time he touched the accelerator.

We drove through the narrow streets, bumping across cobblestones and navigating around ancient houses with spanking new Mercedes parked in the driveways.
“Regardez-moi ça,”
he said, grunting disapprovingly at the offending new cars. He pointed a stubby finger. “Every year the wines double in price. It just can’t go on.” Each time we passed a new car he pointed and looked glum.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “Where’s Kermit?”

“He is waiting for you with the duc de Magenta. You know, there are only fourteen dukes left in France.”

“Really?” I asked, impressed. He nodded, examined me carefully, and asked, “Do you know how to eat?”

I said I thought so.

“Good,” he replied, “you will have to.”

The duke was a disappointment, a rumpled figure in a torn turtleneck. His hair stood straight up in a cowlick that made me
think of Dennis the Menace. Kermit was with him; they both shook my hand gravely, and then we went down to the dark, damp cellar. It smelled like mildew.

A short, square man wearing the traditional blue smock of the French peasant was waiting, his feet planted among bottles of wine labeled simply “Puligny ’78” or “Montrachet ’78.” In the dim, golden light he looked as if he had just stepped out of a painting by Breughel. “Give them some Puligny,” said the duke.

Kermit swirled the wine, sniffed it, then took a sip and gurgled it through his teeth. I did my best to imitate him. “I believe in low-alcohol wines,” said the duke, “so the wine can be felt.” He took an appreciative sip of his own wine and then, one by one, we each went to a different corner to spit on the floor. When we had finished, we poured what was left in our glasses back into the barrel and Monsieur Blanc carefully chased each drop with the bung.

The duke led us deeper, down into another cave where ancient electric heaters rested on the dirt floor, keeping the red wines comfortable. “In general,” the duke said solemnly, “I think the whites are better vinified than the reds.” I didn’t have the faintest idea what he meant, but I nodded. To me the Chassagne-Montrachets seemed intense and the Auxey-Duresses voluptuous, but what I liked best was a fragrant Volnay that smelled like raspberries.

Then there was no more to be tasted and we simply shook hands all around and left. Is this how it’s done? I wondered. It was all so polite. When do they get down to business?

“Were the wines good?” I asked Kermit as we drove through the vineyards in the fading autumn light.

“Very good,” he said. “The duke respects them and leaves them alone. The trouble with Americans is that they keep saying Burgundies are too thin. They like strong wines. To please them the wine makers simply add sugar. It is called chaptalization and it makes the wine more alcoholic.”

He pointed toward the stubby grapevines climbing up the slopes
of gently rolling hills. “Look,” he said, “you can see the difference between the grand cru vineyards and the rest.” He was pointing to the place where the mountains just begin to rise, the place right in the middle. “Those are the great grapes,” he said. It was all much smaller than I had expected.

As we drove, the night came on, black and clear. By the time we stopped for dinner the air was so crisp it shimmered. I got out of the car and inhaled deeply; I could smell the cold. I listened to the gurgling of a nearby brook. We took three steps down the gravel driveway and behind us the car disappeared into the darkness. Kermit took my hand as we groped toward the restaurant. Then the door swung open and the sound of laughter rushed out at us. It was warm inside, and a fire crackled in the grate. We were in the middle of nowhere; the dining room was packed.

We ordered a warm terrine of duck and a mousse of pike and Kermit studied the wine list for a long time. Finally he put down the list and said something to the waiter. “I’ve ordered a Crépy I’ve never tasted before,” he said.

“Always working,” I teased. He didn’t smile.

“God, this is good,” he said when he tasted the wine. I liked it too; it was crisp, with a faint bitterness. Kermit began to mumble to himself and I could see that he was doing some quick calculations. Watching him I thought how unlike a wine merchant he looked, with his curly hair and scruffy beard. But he was all business.

“The restaurant sells this for thirty-four francs,” he mused. “That means they pay about eight.” He stopped for a minute, calculated again, and said, “Great! I could sell it for eight dollars a bottle. It almost makes the day worthwhile.”

“But what about the duke’s wines?” I asked.

“Oh,” he said offhandedly, “I’m not going to buy them this year.”

“I thought you loved them,” I cried.

“I do,” he snapped, “but do you know how much he wants for them? Thirteen dollars a bottle for the Puligny. That’s before shipping, insurance, duties, tax. I like to sell affordable wines. Like this.” He took another satisfied sip of the Crépy.

Then he relented and added, “Besides, I found a better deal yesterday. You’ll see: I’m taking a bottle of Ampeau’s wine to the man we will visit tomorrow, Monsieur de Montille. I removed the label. I want to see what he
really
thinks.”

Monsieur de Montille swirled the wine and watched how it moved. He held it up to the light. He stuck his generous nose into the glass and inhaled the fragrance. He took a sip. He considered. A solid man with a smooth, bald pate and the shrewd look of the lawyer that he was, he threw back his head as he tasted the wine, letting it linger in his throat. From the walls of his dining room, which looked as if it had not changed in centuries, his ancestors looked indulgently down.

“There is sunlight in the glass,” he said finally, “much sunlight. It is from a very good year.” He took another sip, nodded, turned to his wife. They conferred. Not a ’69, surely, it was not that old. A ’71 then, they were agreed. “Such glycerine,” said Monsieur, “what can it be?”

When Kermit told him what it was de Montille cried, “But I have this wine in my cellar!” He turned eagerly to Kermit and asked, “Did Ampeau sell to you?”

Kermit nodded smugly.

“Consider yourself honored,” he said, “and don’t count on it happening again. He has whims.” Kermit looked glum.

“Don’t take it personally,” put in Madame de Montille gently. “He is the strangest man. They say that even when he goes to mass he
runs in putting on his clothes. And as he leaves the church he is already undressing so as not to lose time. He is devoted to the vines.”

Kermit was eager to get down to business, but in Burgundy the meal always comes first. This one had been created to show off the wines. It began unexceptionably with a modest Passetoutgrains and a salad laced with herbs and rich with garlic.

Then there was civet de lièvre. “The specialty of the region,” said Madame proudly as her husband went around the table pouring out a ’64 Rugiens. He sipped the wine and nodded with satisfaction.

The less hardy ’66 Rugiens was served with cheese made by neighbors. And then, finally, Monsieur de Montille brought out a mold-encrusted bottle of ’57 Volnay to serve with the tarte aux pommes. I took a sip and it danced in my mouth. It was alive with flavor, like no wine I had ever tasted. I looked around to see if everyone liked it as much as I did. Monsieur de Montille looked happy; even Kermit looked impressed. Then Monsieur de Montille took a second sip and his smile faded. “Too bad,” he said softly.

I took another sip. The dance had stopped.
“C’est mort,”
said Monsieur de Montille with finality.

Lunch over, we descended into the cellar. It was a low-ceilinged room filled with casks; the bare bulbs cast a dim golden light. We tasted the Passetoutgrains, the Volnay, the simple burgundies. Monsieur de Montille shook his head. “We made a mistake this year,” he said sadly. “We made too much. It was a very big harvest. The wine is fine, it will be very correct, very
comme il faut
, but …” As we moved to the ’78s he nodded appreciatively and said, almost to himself, “This is a wine with character. The ’79s will never be like the ’78s.”

“I wish there were more like de Montille,” said Kermit as we drove to the next appointment, “it’s just so hard to find honest wines nowadays. But I keep trying.” We drove through vineyards that ran
right up to the edges of old stone villages. Fancy new cars careened crazily through streets far too narrow to contain them. It was the same in village after village and then we were in Rully, following the signs up to the church, twisting and turning to the top of the town. The bells were ringing when we got there, the sound bouncing back and forth between the old stone buildings.

“I have a bargain with the priest,” said the courtly old gentleman who came out to greet us. He had pink cheeks and silver hair. “Sometimes when I have guests I ask him not to ring the bells. I was born here and the sound is good to me. But some people do not like them. Come, let us taste the wine.”

Monsieur Monassier was walking as he talked, leading us out of his house, through a courtyard, and down, down into the hill into which his cellars were dug. “The ’79s are not very pleasant right now. Some of them are going through their malolactic fermentation.” He removed the bung from one of the barrels and stuck a long glass pipe into the wine. It was cloudy and even I could tell that it tasted terrible. We sniffed, swirled, gurgled air through our teeth and spit the wine onto the cement floor. Then we poured what was left in our glasses back into the barrel and moved on to the next. This wine was light, fruity, lovely. Monsieur Monassier shook his head. “It’s the same vineyard,” he said. “I wish I knew why this happened.”

We worked our way through the clean cement cellar, tasting the wine from each vineyard. “Now we will go upstairs and taste some older wine,” he said, leading us into the warmth of an ancient room filled with heavy wooden furniture. In the center sat a thickly carved table holding a bottle and glasses and accompanied by a tray full of cheese, sliced sausages, and fat chunks of crusty bread.

The business began delicately. By the time we had reached the ’71s the spit bucket was no longer in use and Monsieur Monassier was
saying sadly that it was too bad that wine had to be sold before its time. “Most wine makers,” he said, “can’t afford to keep the wine until it is ready to drink. My own problem is different. I can permit myself not to sell the wine until it is ready, but I have too soft a heart. When somebody I like asks me for the wine, I cannot say no.”

Kermit permitted himself to think that Monsieur liked him well enough, perhaps to sell him some wine. Alas! Monsieur had the unhappiness to tell him that all his wine was in 73-milliliter bottles.

“Does not the new American law require 75?”