French Lessons

by Peter Mayle

  Gérard held up his glass, which was filled with Château Lynch-Bages 1985. “En plus,” he said, “the refreshments are particularly agreeable.”

  Among Flying Corks

  in Burgundy

  “Whatever else you do,” I said to Sadler, “remember to spit. Otherwise, we’ll never get through the weekend.”

  “I’ll watch you,” he said. “We’ll spit together, like they do in synchronized swimming.”

  We were in Burgundy, with our wives to keep an eye on us, to attend the greatest wine auction in the world, held each year in Beaune. I had been once before, with another friend who was a chevalier du taste vin, a knight of the grape, and the experience had taught me what had to be done if you wanted to survive: spit. Spattered trousers and purple shoes are a small price to pay for the continued health of your internal organs, your ability to focus and to speak, and your reputation as a civilized man able to hold his alcohol.

  The sadness is, as I told Sadler, that you will often be spitting when every taste bud in your palate is begging you to swallow, because in Beaune, during this one long weekend, you will be offered dozens, if not hundreds, of some of the finest wines in France. Those names that you gaze at wistfully on restaurant wine lists—those three-hundred-dollar bottles of Burgundian nectar—are uncorked and passed around with the generous abandon normally associated with lemonade on a hot day. But spit you must. There are three days of this to get through, and you’ll never be there at the finish if you swallow everything that’s waved under your nose.

  The tradition started, oddly enough, with a hospital. In 1443, Nicolas Rolin, chancellor to Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy, founded the Hospices de Beaune and endowed the foundation with vineyards to provide it with income. Other charitable Burgundians followed his example, and today, more than five hundred years later, the hospital costs are still covered by revenue from the wine. Every year, traditionally on the third Sunday in November, the wine is sold at auction. And every year, on the days before and after the auction, the local winegrowers arrange a few diversions of their own.

  We were invited to one of them on our first night in Burgundy, a diner dégustation at the home of René Jacqueson, a grower in Gevrey-Chambertin. It was to be a gentle introduction to the bottles that lay ahead, and it began in Monsieur Jacqueson’s private cave.

  Down a steep flight of steps we went, inhaling the subterranean bouquet, a wonderful musty mixture of oak, wine, ancient cobwebs, and chilled stone. The cave wasn’t large—by Burgundian standards at least—but it had been beautifully furnished with several thousand gallons of Gevrey-Chambertin, stored in barrels that lined walls furred and blackened with cellar mold. On top of another barrel in the middle of the room were glasses and half a dozen bottles, each identified by the wine maker’s shorthand of chalk squiggles. But I saw nothing in the way of spitter’s comforts.

  “There’s no bucket,” I whispered to Sadler. “I think it would be rude to spit on the floor. We’ll have to swallow.”

  He took the news bravely. “Just this once,” he said.

  There were two other couples with us, and we gathered around Jacqueson as he uncorked the first bottle and started to take us through the vintages. At most other tastings I’ve attended, this is as close to a religious ceremony as you can get without actually going to church. The wine’s age and pedigree are announced in the manner of a bishop murmuring a benediction. The assembled congregation sniffs and gargles with furrowed brow. Then it’s time for prayers, in the form of solemn, muted comments about the wine’s quality: “Exceptionally self-assured.… Marvelous finish.… Classically structured.… Amen.”

  Jacqueson, however, was not at all of the reverent school of wine makers. He was a man with a twinkle in his eye and a great sense of humor, particularly when he started talking about the overblown language often used on these occasions.

  “This one, for instance,” he said, holding his glass up to the light, “is what you and I might simply call ‘a promising young wine.’”

  We all sipped and gurgled. At this early stage in its development, there was enough tannin in it to pucker the liver, although it would probably be wonderful when it grew up.

  Jacqueson grinned. “An expert has described it as ‘having the impatience of youth,’ whatever that means.”

  This led to another old classic: “Isn’t this wine a little young to be up so late?” And as more bottles were uncorked and poured, we compared wine-tasting phrases that were unusual or grotesque enough to stick in the mind. Some, like le goût de la planche, were logical and accurate. New wine in oak barrels will often have the woody taste of a plank. Other terms were nothing more than desperately far-fetched and unappetizing comparisons: wet leather, wet dogs, weasels—and, my favorite candidate from the animal kingdom, a hare’s belly. I have never come across anybody who has admitted to being on tasting terms with a hare’s belly—or a weasel or a wet dog, for that matter—and quite how these creatures have crept into the wine taster’s vocabulary is something of a mystery. I suppose the problem is that normal descriptions, those words like fruity, powerful, well made, or complex, are too general. They apply to too many wines. And so the weasels and the hare’s bellies are brought out in an attempt to express the differences between one wine and another.

  This brought the conversation around to professional wine critics, those poor souls who have to strain their imagination and syntax every day in the course of their work, trying to describe what is often indescribable. The prize for the most outlandish description of the evening went to this exchange, reportedly true, between a critic and a grower.

  Critic (having swilled, sluiced, and spat): “Hmm. A distinct goût de tapis.”

  Grower (outraged): “What do you mean, ‘a taste of carpet’? How dare you!”

  Critic (trying to make amends): “But no ordinary carpet, my friend; a very old, very distinguished carpet.”

  Our host was far too discreet to name the critic. All he would say was, “We would prefer him to do his drinking in Bordeaux.”

  And with that, we went upstairs to dinner.

  It was a marvelous marathon of a meal, five courses prepared by Madame Jacqueson, with a selection of Gevrey-Chambertins prepared by her husband. And in the intermission between the duck and the cheese, there was a music lesson.

  It was absolutely necessary, Jacqueson informed us, that we learn the ritual gestures and lyrics of the “Ban de Bourgogne.” This was the Burgundian battle cry, a chant accompanied by rhythmic clapping and arcane signals, a kind of drinker’s hand jive. We were told it would be performed many times over the weekend, and if we wanted to be part of the festivities, we had to know how to join in.

  The lyrics of the chant were no problem: “La la la la” just about covered them, sung or shouted, according to choice, from beginning to end. The hand movements were slightly more complicated. Starting position was with arms bent and the hands, with fingers cupped, held up on either side of the head. With the first chorus, the hands should swivel back and forth from the wrist, as if rotating some circular object, such as the base of a wine bottle. For the middle chorus, the hands should stop swiveling to clap nine times before returning to their original positions for the third chorus. This was to be repeated a second time, at top speed, before participants were allowed to recover with the help of a glass of Gevrey-Chambertin.

  We tried it. Sadler showed himself to be a natural, with a wonderfully fluid wrist action and a fine profundo bawl. The rest of us did as best we could, making the house sound as though it had been invaded by a bunch of well-oiled soccer fans. More rehearsals had us bellowing and swiveling our hands like native-born Burgundians, and by the time we left the Jacquesons’ around one o’clock in the morning, we were judged to be competent enough to perform in public.

  As we walked back through the narrow streets, Sadler and I compared spitting notes, and we had to agree that the evening had been a pathetic failure. Number of wines tasted: approximately twelve. Number
of times wine ejected from mouth before swallowing: nil.

  “We have to do better tomorrow,” I said. “Expectorate or perish.”

  “The problem is,” he said, “that we need something to do it in. A crachoir. Maybe we should buy a bucket.”

  The next morning found us window-shopping for portable spittoons in Beaune, a handsome, dignified town that has clearly enjoyed hundreds of years of prosperity. The buildings are stone-built, thick-walled, often with steeply pitched roofs decorated with polychrome tiles. There are cobbled streets and courtyards, ramparts and Gothic architectural flourishes, and, wherever you look, evidence of what makes the whole place tick: wine. Bottles of it, barrels of it, caves to taste it in, thermometers to check its temperature, glasses of every shape and size, corkscrews ranging from the standard waiter’s friend to elaborately engineered gadgets for the mechanically minded, silver tasting cups, key rings disguised as bunches of grapes, decanters, pipettes, and enough alcoholic literature to start a boozer’s library. I imagine you could buy a box of Kleenex somewhere in town, but the chances are it would have a vintage chart printed on it. Local industry is keenly supported, with one notable exception: An official Burgundian crachoir doesn’t seem to exist. I had been hoping to equip myself with something functional yet elegant, perhaps engraved with the Beaune coat of arms, or an encouraging motto, or the mayor’s autograph, but all we could find were inducements to swallow rather than spit. To his credit, Sadler bore this disappointment well.

  Even the medical community in Beaune encourages something a little stronger than aspirin and Alka-Seltzer to relieve what ails you. We stopped at a pharmacy near the main square and looked in disbelief at the contents of the window. Normally, French pharmacies go in for tasteful displays of truncated plastic torsos wearing trusses, or photographs of perfectly formed young women toying with anticellulite devices, but not here.

  In the center of the window was a life-size human skeleton, made from cardboard. A sign beside the grinning mouth of the skull read With Moderation, but this was emphatically contradicted (for medical reasons, I assumed) by the rest of the display, which consisted entirely of bottles of wine captioned with their amazing restorative properties. If the pharmacist—a man after my own heart—was to be trusted, almost every common ailment could be cured by the appropriate wine.

  A twinge of arthritis? Drink rosé. Gallstones? Wash them away with a bottle or two of Sancerre. Moulin-à-Vent would take care of your bronchitis, Krug champagne would ward off the flu, and anyone with tuberculosis would benefit enormously from a bottle of Mercurey. Tension would vanish with Pouilly-Fuissé, and, for weight-watchers, daily doses of Côte de Beaune would make “daily slimming certain.” Other afflictions were mentioned, some of an intensely personal nature, and for everything there was an alcoholic remedy. With one exception: Due either to oversight or tact, there was no mention of cirrhosis of the liver.

  There was just enough time before the first tasting of the day to see what was going on in the stands and bars around the place Carnot. It was barely 10:30 a.m., but enthusiasts were already taking a prelunch snack of oysters and chilled Aligoté. A group of Japanese, who obviously never left home without their personal chopsticks, were having some difficulties extracting their oysters, watched with interest by a young man wearing a helium balloon attached to the zipper on his fly. And then, with thunderous drumrolls and piercing whistles, a procession of stilt-walkers took over the square. The sound was enough to cause a sharp pain in the temples, and we were happy to escape to the peace and quiet of a tasting in the caves of Bouchard Ainé & Fils.

  The Bouchard people have been growing and selling wine since 1750, and as you tour their cellars, you cannot help thinking that this may be the perfect spot to sit out a nuclear war or a presidential election. A million bottles, stored in racks, and endless avenues of barrels stretched out and disappeared into the gloom. Famous vineyards, great vintages, the scent of wine dozing toward maturity—the hand felt incomplete, indeed naked, without a glass.

  Our host took pity on us and led us upstairs to the tasting room, where bottles and glasses were laid out next to plates of gougères. These are small, light, delicious nuggets of cheese-flavored puff pastry that have the effect of softening and thus improving the taste of young wine in the mouth. They are also salty enough to encourage a healthy thirst. But this was to be an exercise in connoisseurship, not an occasion for guzzling. We were shown the stone sinks against the wall and reminded that spitting was recommended for anyone who, like us, had plans to attend the auction that afternoon.

  It was interesting to see how a minor sartorial touch separated the practiced connoisseurs from the rest of us. Veteran tasters wore bow ties, or tucked their ties inside their shirts. The wisdom of this became apparent as the first salvo of spitting took place over the sink and the dangling end of the silk tie belonging to a natty gentleman spitting next to me received a direct hit from a shower of Pinot Noir.

  “Young wines to begin with,” our host had said. “Fish before caviar.” And so we started in 1998 and worked our way backward, fortified by gougères and, as far as I was concerned, finding it increasingly unreasonable to spit. Young wines were no problem. The test came when age had smoothed out the rough edges and the wine filled the mouth with a soft glow. Others may have found it possible to consign a big, round, luscious 1988 Fixin to the sink without a sense of loss, but not me. To distract myself, I studied the techniques of other tasters, and they put my simple sniffing and swilling to shame.

  In contrast to the informal tasting of the night before, this was a serious ritual, conducted with immense deliberation. First, the wine is held up to the light—in this case, one of the candles in the tasting room—to assess its color. It is then swirled around the glass to open it up to the air and bring out the bouquet. The nose is applied to the top of the glass for several rapt moments, with the obligatory furrowed brow. A mouthful is taken, the eyes are raised to heaven, and the sound effects begin. Air is sucked into the mouth to join the wine, making much the same noise as a child eating soup. The wine is distributed throughout the mouth, assisted by flexing of the cheeks and exaggerated chewing motions. More gurgling. Finally, when a thorough oral investigation has taken place—the teeth having been rinsed, and the palate imbued with taste sensations—out comes the mouthful to splatter against the stone sink, your shoes, and your trousers. You can imagine how this routine, repeated twenty or thirty times with breaks for learned discussion about the character of the wines, can easily take up an entire morning.

  We left the cave, and had to dodge a second squad of stilt-walkers who were tottering down the street. Cars had been banned from the center of town for the weekend, but there was still a risk of being run over by some of the pedestrians. Many of them were carrying silver taste vins and weaving erratically through the crowd with the preoccupied air of people determined not to miss a single tasting. There were several to choose from—a full day’s work if you were up to it and didn’t have a busy afternoon ahead.

  Over lunch, we were given a briefing by a young and impressively well-informed lady from the Beaune tourist office. This, she told us, was the oldest charity auction in the world, now in its 140th year. The prices paid for the Hospices’ wines would be a guide to the prices of Burgundy generally, and historically they went up. And up. And up. In 1990, the average price of a pièce, or lot, was 350,000 francs. By 1999, it had risen to 456,000 francs ($65,000). Total sales in the same period had gone from 21 million francs to 31 million (more than $4 million). Add to that the cost to the buyer of keeping the wine for several years, bottling, shipping, and a reasonable profit, and it is easy to see why those three-digit prices appear with such horrifying regularity on restaurant lists.

  Even so, there was no shortage of buyers, as we saw when we arrived at the auction. The long, high room was filled with them—mostly professional négoçiants from America, Britain, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, and Switzerland—all bent diligently over
their catalogs. There was also a scattering of black-clad refugees from show business, one or two glamorous women of a certain age who would not have looked out of place at a fashion show as they crossed their legs and adjusted their sunglasses against the glare of publicity, and an assortment of gentlemen from the media, festooned with electronic appendages.

  Bidding began just after 2:30 p.m., with bids being picked up by rabatteurs, the auctioneer’s assistants who were stationed at various points around the floor. Their task wasn’t easy. I looked in vain for any exuberant or even obvious signals from the buyers—a hand upraised, a wave of the catalog, a recurring cough—but there was nothing that demonstrative. It was clear that some very low-key sign language was being used, perhaps no more than the twitch of a pencil or the tap of a nose. It was equally clear that this was not the place to make expansive gestures. One false twitch could cost you dearly, and I noticed that even the French were keeping their hands uncharacteristically still while they muttered among themselves.

  As the bidding continued, the smile grew on the auctioneer’s face. Once again, prices were up. We learned later that the average increase had been 11 percent. A good day for charity, a good day for Burgundy, and, of course, a good day for Beaune. Walking back through town after the auction, we passed the pharmacy with the skeleton, and the skull’s grin seemed to be even wider, as if reflecting the general mood of satisfaction with another record year.

  Our day was far from over. Dinner that night—a gala dinner at the Hôtel Dieu—promised to be the most formal event of the weekend. Tenue de soirée, or evening dress, was to be worn. We were advised to take a large spoonful of olive oil, neat, to line the stomach in preparation for the downpour of wine. This was not to be an evening of spitting. Another essential, so we were told, was a pair of thick socks to ward off the chill from the flagstone floor—a tip that was wasted on our wives, who felt that socks and evening dresses were somehow not what they wanted to be seen in.