by Jim Harrison
It is understandable indeed to drink the wine of forgetfulness. I’m somewhat of an expert in this area. How can one combat the feeling of helplessness in being mere photons within the berserk fate of nations? Some of us were not willing to accept that the French, Germans, and Canadians were collectively less intelligent than Texans. Often my rebellious nature is reduced to smoking in nonsmoking motel rooms, but recent events fueled my rage, which is that of a forest fire—and they are always described as “raging.”
So in May I took myself and my wallet to France in protest over being told by the media and government that I shouldn’t drink French wine. I wanted to encounter these “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” at close hand, though in truth I’ve made at least twenty trips to France and this one had the unpleasantness of a book tour.
But France! How I love even its occasionally caustic nastiness. At de Gaulle I wilt in relief to be temporarily out of the Holy Roman Empire (even Jesus has lately become an oil guy), though some of the wilting might be ascribed to the nice wines I drank en route on Air France. Due to the acutest claustrophobia, I have to sit up front. Many years ago when I sat in back, the sweat of my animal fears soaked through my new clothes. It is hellish to be a sensitive poet with partly canine genes.
To keep my rebellion aggressively fresh, I walked over to the lavish Bon Marché food court, luckily a scant block from my hotel, where I bought a smallish picnic brunch of several cheeses, a slab of foie gras, bread, and a couple of bottles of Gigondas, nothing fancy, though at the checkout line I trotted back for several varieties of herring to be safe. These picnics are a habit, and I have to eat everything because my room has no refrigerator. The wine will keep a couple of hours but not much longer. Because forests and greenswards are in short supply in Paris, I have my picnics in my room overlooking the garden of the Hôtel Matignon, where I watch birds cavort and also politicians doing extremely low-impact exercises. Michel Braudeau, the editor of La Nouvelle Revue Française, once told me that “it is unthinkable not to have a decent lunch,” but then I’m booked for seventeen dinners in a row, and I can no longer be absolutely free with my tummy twice a day. For a change I only drank one of the bottles of Gigondas before my après-flight nap. I very much wanted to say, “Give me freedom or give me death” while I drank the wine, but I’m superstitious enough not to taunt the gods who manage such things.
An attractive aspect of Paris is the freedom of the press. I’ve been told the press isn’t as free as it seems, but if you consider the many cities in America that have been reduced to a single newspaper that may not wish to quote you exactly, it is wonderful to shoot off your mouth without regard for propriety. For instance, years ago in Chicago I was asked for my feelings about the recent death of Nixon and I said that a wooden stake should be driven through his heart to make sure. The newspaper refused to quote this! In Paris, however, when I said that as a gourmand, I couldn’t be a politician because they regularly shit out of their mouths and that would taint my dining experiences, the newspaper quoted me in full.
You safe souls in a neutral country might wonder what it’s like to lead this life of foreign intrigue, fraught with danger and the tension of walking into the Select or Montparnasse and boldly ordering “un verre de Brouilly.” To work up an appetite, I walk relentlessly, picking out a pert bottom to follow though these young ladies walk so fast it’s a real workout. Soon enough, though, my thoughts naturally turn to jambon persillé.
Frequently in Paris I dine at L’Assiette on rue du Château. Alain Senderens of Lucas Carton is often there, and Catherine Deneuve, unlike her American counterparts, may be eating heartily in a corner. Years ago I took an actress-model to dinner in New York City, and she ate only a single oyster and a single shrimp on a paltry bed of arugula. Her meal cost me forty-two bucks, an unlucky number, and she put ice in her Meursault. On this current imperiled trip, I had fresh hand-caught turbot two evenings in a row with a group of wine-drinking French leftists. I always have a secret side dish of potatoes Parmentier in which is hidden a large artisanal boudin noir. As a chain-smoking heavy wine drinker, I am not concerned with such trifles as vache folle (mad cow disease). In Burgundy, for instance, my breakfasts always include five different kinds of fromage de tête from the butcher shop of M. Dussert in Arleuf. A glass or two of Collioure or Domaine Tempier Bandol defends my body from viral intruders.
Two and a half weeks in France went swiftly, with my third eye ever alert (I actually have only one) and trained from my time as a private detective in Key West. I admit most of those who followed me merely wanted a book autograph, but then there seemed to me an uncommon number of men in their thirties in butch haircuts and wearing Haspel drip-dry suits, a virtual CIA uniform.
Unlike life herself the best came last. After an exhausting time at the Palace Hotel in Lausanne (Bush himself was at a meeting at the far end of Lac Léman but chances are he wasn’t following me) where I had a wonderful goat stew (cabri) with hot peppers, I went to Burgundy for a few days of restful serious eating. In Burgundy I stay with my friends Gérard Oberlé and Gilles Brézol, who are renowned left-wing trenchermen. They also have twenty-five thousand books in their manoir so that I have something to read. More important, they are close friends of Marc Meneau, who owns L’Espérance in Vézelay, my favorite restaurant in France. Marc had planned a special lunch to help us recover from the collective brutality of life in our time. Such a meal requires a lengthy period at the table and this one took six hours during which all world problems were gracefully resolved. My French is poor, which enabled me to eat more than the others. Marc had butchered a little cul noir, a local black-assed piglet, which set a theme for the lunch. We began with some amusettes: choux au boudin noir jus de pomme, melon en gelée à l’anis, oreille de porc braisée aux fèves. Everyone seems to understand that eating pigs’ ears restores morale. We drank a Bourgogne Vézelay La Vigne Blanche bottled by Meneau, also a Sancerre Le Chêne Marchand 1990 by Lucien Crochet.
Now it was time to get serious. Next came gelée d’homard aux filets de sole en chaud froid et petits pois, after which there was tête de porc cul noir à la broche vol-au-vent aux pieds de porc et herbes du jardin. I began to flag a bit but Didier Dagueneau’s Pouilly-Fumé Silex restored me, along with a Château Montrose Grand Cru Classé de Saint-Estèphe 1986. Marc knew I was missing morel mushroom season back home, so was kind enough to prepare a paume de ris de veau rôtie aux morilles galette de pomme de terre au jus de morille. I ruined an eight-dollar shirt when I punctured the faux potato, and morel juice squirted out with enormous force. I slowed down with the many desserts and cheeses, taking a thirty-yard walk in the garden. I recall that there was a three-year-old cantal made from the milk of cows with lyre-shaped horns (poetry!), two more wines, and a goblet of ancient Calvados. When we got back to the manoir in the twilight, we decided against preparing any supper.
I promised at the outset of this column to tell you what the United States is going to do. It turns out it’s too expensive for us to eat the whole world. The total check for the Iraq war and restoration will be six hundred billion dollars. If only this much money had been spent on French wines for our entire populace, there never would have been a war, only well-oiled diplomacy.
Odious Comparisons
While deeply embedded in Paris I awoke from a strenuous post-lunch nap and wondered if we humans had a more than nominal connection to the universe. It was as if the gods had decided to burn a giant question mark on my mental lawn. “Wherefore art thou, Jimmy?” I asked myself. Modern man is always at the crossroads when he should be doing something sensible like floating in a boat on a river. The Seine just down the street didn’t present an immediate possibility so I had a hasty cup of coffee and turned to the alternative that God has always led me to in a lifetime of bitter conundrums. Wine. Yes, gentle reader, wine. When troubled, just have a glass of wine. The truest thing Ernest Hemingway ever said was “Good is what you feel good after.�
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However, a large step away from the delicious world of sensation is the world of criticism. Whether you are drinking wine or reading a book, quizzical man who has no particular idea why he is alive will ask himself if the wine he is drinking or the book he is reading is any good. Here I must present my trump card rather than waiting for the questionable timing of conclusions. I recently read a fine book by Lawrence Osborne, The Accidental Connoisseur: An Irreverent Journey Through the Wine World, wherein he quotes the garagiste Pierre Siri as saying, “You can’t really describe wine, you can only remember it,” to which I would add, you can’t really describe literature, you can only experience it.
Now we are within the desperately familiar arena of human limitations. I recall that one night in Key West I read Knut Hamsun’s novella Victoria in a single sitting and actually sobbed when I put the slender volume down. The first glass of a truly great wine can be as vivid and palpable as sex and, in truth, quite as indescribable unless you wish to resort to “We fell back on great waves of nothingness.”
The existence of much wine and literary criticism seems to presume a stringent orthodoxy, the possibility that there is a perfect scorecard on which one may rate literature or wine, or weigh them on one of those precise gram scales so favored by cocaine dealers in the distant past. This bespeaks the immodesty of the critic, or the reductive capabilities of anyone who shrinks the world to fit into the briefcase of his wobbly ego.
Of course, one occasionally reads a literary or wine critic whose taste or palate is generally admirable. As I’ve often said, Ezra Pound limited his trust to anyone who had created a notable work. Perhaps this is a tad mean-minded. In literature in our time we’ve had Edmund Wilson, Randall Jarrell, and more recently George Steiner who sense an unnerving level of pomposity. I’m just the farmer, not the middleman or retailer. As the author of twenty-five books or so I’ve had hundreds of reviews, essays, even books, written on my work to which I pay minimal attention. The goose trying to lay golden eggs shouldn’t be using a mirror to look at its butt.
The human mind loves to posit absurdities. You can also easily bite off your own fingers, such is the dark power of the human mouth. But this is not to say that wine and literary criticism is without a specific value. This would be to doubt the necessity of plane or train schedules or those teachers who, however unpleasant, made us aware of the range of human mental activity. I recall my excitement on first reading Brillat-Savarin, Lichine and Parker, Edmund Wilson and George Steiner. It would be dumb of me not to check in with Gerald Asher, Frank Prial, Hugh Johnson, or Sven Birkerts. We just shouldn’t confuse educated comment with primary experience.
Meanwhile in Paris I missed the eclipse of the moon because I was inside Assiette Lulu drinking a St. Estèphe, a wine that causes moon dreams. I’m headed for an actual thirty-seven-course lunch in Burgundy with, naturally, at least fifteen wines. I wonder idly if a doctor will be in attendance. Life would be impossible without wine, fishing, and dogs.
On our long circular journey to this lunch which in the future should be an Olympic event we traveled south of Dijon and Beaune passing my beloved Clos de la Roche though I’ve never owned a bottle, only sponged on those whom God has given fat wallets. We stayed at the exquisite Villa Louise in Aloxe-Corton and dined at a roadhouse named La Regalade, a lovely simple supper of pâté, frogs’ legs, and sweetbreads drinking a Nuit-St.-Georges and a Vosne-Romanée. At dawn or a few hours thereafter we sped toward Marseille in order to have the excellent bouillabaisse at Michel’s. Next day Lulu Peyraud gave us an exquisite lunch at Domaine Tempier (urchins, a broth of coquillage, lamb leg done in the fireplace, pied paquets done Provençal style).
This little travelogue is offered for a single purpose. With good food and company the numerical absurdities become more so, a “90” wine becoming a “95” because wine doesn’t exist in the vacuum of charts but at the center of our lives. The professor who marked your essay 78 after a bad dinner may have given it a 91 after a good lunch. A book that is thought a classic in the western states is utterly ignored in Gotham’s verminish cement canyons. To rate either wine or literature as if we were scientists is frivolous. Both are in the humanities, not the sciences. More later.
Wine Criticism And
Literary Criticism (Part II)
In my first installment on wine and literary criticism, “Odious Comparisons,” I became a bit strident in these contentious arenas, and a small portion of the feedback was aggrieved. The reaction brought to mind the children’s story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” Depending on your religion only Jesus, Muhammad, and the Buddha are faultless. All other mortals betimes lack certain articles of clothing. Once when I was a child fishing with my father he told me to my consternation that the Queen of England had to go to the toilet the same as the rest of us. There is evidence that Einstein was on occasion an unfaithful husband and I recall an article that said, “Picasso was insensitive to the needs of women.” Even so awesome a creature as the president of the United States is occasionally wrongheaded. Earlier in my career my collection of novellas called Legends of the Fall was maliciously attacked in the London press by the renowned C. P. Snow. I yawned and wandered down to the bank to make yet another deposit. We fear the negative but without it there’s no positive.
My main point in both wine and literature was to insist on the primacy of creation over comment. I take as bedrock Benjamin Franklin’s statement, “Good wine is a constant reminder that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” We must remember that we’re not dealing with proud death or the fate of nations, or the dozens of fatal asteroids whirling in our direction. Tastes in wine and literature are as personal as dogs. I can’t quite imagine my response if someone referred to my beloved English setter Rose as a “nitwit fleabag.” If guests don’t like the Domaine Tempier Bandol I serve them they’re no longer welcome in my home. Two years ago I broke off a nascent friendship when the gentleman, a Yale graduate, attacked the work of my adoptive uncle, Henry Miller.
Wine and literature affections are not a science but a matter of taste and emotion. I revere Emile Peynaud, Gerald Asher, Clive Coates, Jancis Robinson, Simon Loftus, and yes, Robert Parker himself in the major books, and Kermit Lynch has also established himself in this austere group of ultra-worthies. I also have five personal friends, Peter Lewis, Guy de la Valdène, Will Hearst, Gérard Oberlé, and Michael Butler, whose personal taste in wine I consider more exacting and elevated than my own. I’m what you call an Ace Consumer in the area of food and wine and a producer in the literary field. This is a disclaimer of expertise in wine but not intelligence.
Both book and wine reviewing, however, bring to mind my memories of the wonderful old comedian Pigmeat Markham and his routine “here come da judge.” Among us mortals even the most profound spiritual experiences are freely marketed. Witness the television evangelists. On a lesser level you can buy a star and name it after yourself. In wine and literary reviewing and criticism we have the questionable relationship with the wine industry and the book industry. The rich, squeaky wheels tend to get all of the grease and one’s credibility feels tampered with. How often in literature have I noted that fine works are basically ignored if not published by the mainstream companies. The lesser, off-brand publishers do not contribute to the advertising revenue of the large reviewing media and cynicism becomes freely nurtured in the savagery of the marketplace. The concept of a level playing field is as laughable as peace in our time.
I’m fairly sure that the numerical system of rating wines was not devised as a marketing tool but that’s what it has become. The truly great Russian writer Dostoevsky insisted, “Two plus two is the beginning of death.” Aesthetic values are decidedly non-digital and can no more fairly be applied to wines than to a thousand or so “top” books a year. I could rather freely trust Parker in most areas but I would prefer a comment to a number. After Parker, however, the food chain descends toward the Proterozoic. Sin
ce this isn’t a science, how does a judge become qualified? In my years in Hollywood I watched hundreds of cads pass themselves off as “producers” to young starlets. Both in the press and on television news there are hundreds of pundits who assume that talking is thinking. Evidently pundits are pundits because they say they are, and the same with many creatures in the wine press.
In a Paris restaurant last November I had a mildly irritating but comic experience. I was seated near an American couple in their mid-thirties and the man was driving the sommelier batshit by looking up the numbered ratings in a book for the wines on the “carte.” By the time the customer finished, his wife looked like she wanted to run for it and the sommelier was searching for a club or at least a riding crop. I’ve seen versions of this before but not to an extent that became so transcendently silly. I could imagine this dweeb going in a bookstore and wondering why the stock didn’t have spine stickers with ratings. French magazines run cartoons about such American “wine lovers.”