by Peter Mayle
We arrived, as requested on the invitation, at nine o’clock, making our way through a double line of white-coated waiters into a magnificent barrel-vaulted room hung with tapestries. Candlelight flickered on the bottles and glasses and silverware that had been laid out on thirty-one long, immaculately arranged, and surprisingly empty tables. Where was everybody? There was not a sign of our three hundred fellow revelers, and it was then I remembered that punctuality on formal occasions in France is seldom rewarded by a welcoming glass. Politeness dictates that you wait until the other guests have arrived. They, naturally, would prefer to avoid having to endure a long, dry waiting period, and therefore they make a point of always being fashionably late. So there we were, surrounded by glorious but untouchable bottles. “Meursault, Meursault everywhere,” as Sadler said, “and not a drop to drink.”
This would pass, we told each other, and picked up the menus in search of a little encouragement. There was a long and heartfelt sigh from Sadler as he reached the page listing the wines that were on offer that evening: thirty-eight of them, the great whites and reds of Burgundy, donated by growers and négociants, the Hospices de Beaune, and the mayor. Such a list you would find nowhere else, filled with grand cru Chablis, Puligny-Montrachet, Echezeaux, Clos Vougeot—the kind of wine Alexandre Dumas said should be drunk kneeling, with the head bared.
It was half an hour before the last empty seats and the first empty glasses were filled. The great room was a picture of elegance: the bejeweled ladies in long dresses (some of them so long I suspected them of concealing thick socks), the gentlemen in their black and white, hair and mustaches sleek with pomade, cuff links and shirt studs twinkling. It was a scene of refined formality. It was destined not to last.
The crack in the social ice came with the appearance, early on in the dinner, of the cabaret, a male vocal group introduced as Les Joyeux Bourguignons. They were dressed in their best long aprons, red and green pom-poms at their necks in place of ties, glasses and bottles in their hands instead of musical instruments. They set the tone for the rest of the evening with their first song, a perennial local hit entitled “Boire un Petit Coup C’est Agréable” (rough translation: “It’s Great to Drink”). This was followed by an audience-participation session as we were led into the first of many renditions of the Burgundy supporters’ club battle cry. La La’s were bellowed and hands were waggled. Almost at once, formality disappeared, never to return.
The food came and went, the bottles came and came, and inhibitions began to be cast aside like corks. A group at a nearby table stood up to perform a series of Mexican waves with their napkins, while one of the men—intent on striptease, by the look of him—climbed up on his chair and ripped off his jacket and tie before being distracted and ultimately subdued with the help of a bottle of Aloxe-Corton. Toasts were proposed: to the greater glory of the grape, to the continuing success of the Channel Tunnel, to the entente cordiale, to heroes of the Swiss Navy, to anything else that might provide an excuse for glasses to be refilled. Not that excuses seemed to be necessary.
I looked down the table at Sadler, who was investigating a bottle of 1993 Echezeaux. We had often talked about the enormous difference between popular foreign perceptions of the French and our own experience of living among them, and an evening like this emphasized the difference. Where was he, the so-called typical Frenchman, with his humorless reserve and his arrogance and his infuriating superiority complex? He was certainly not here, not in this warm, friendly, relaxed, and, it must be said, increasingly tipsy gathering. It seemed to me, as the Echezeaux took hold and I looked around, that they were all wonderful people, drinking wonderful wine and living in a wonderful country.
Fixing Sadler with a moist and sentimental eye, I was about to propose a toast to La Belle France. How lucky we were to live here, to be surrounded by such delightful people, such splendid architecture, such rich culture, such stirring history, such ravishing countryside. In my wine-sodden French, it would probably have been a disastrously embarrassing moment. Fortunately, Sadler beat me to it.
He raised his glass. I waited for some graceful and appropriate line from Molière or Voltaire or Proust, delivered in perfect, accentless Sadler French. But it was not to be.
“To those who spit,” he said. “Poor sods.”
It is well known that the better the wine you drink, the less you suffer the following morning, which was just as well. Our previous encounters during Saturday and Sunday—the various tastings and two memorable dinners—were, in a way, just a prelude to the climax of this long weekend, the sixty-eighth Paulée de Meursault, a winegrowers’ lunch attended by the most distinguished local vignerons and their guests. It had started as a small local affair to celebrate a successful vendange (harvest)—so small that it used to be held in the village hall. But Burgundians are hospitable people. The guest list doubled, and doubled again. Eventually, lunch outgrew the hall and had to be moved to the spacious sixteenth-century grandeur of the Château de Meursault. This year there would be six hundred of us, and printed on the invitations was a reminder: “According to tradition, each brings his own bottles.”
Waiting at the entrance to the château were half a dozen of Beaune’s finest, the local gendarmes. One of them told us where to park the car—“And don’t forget where you’ve put it,” he said, looking at the bottles in the back. We told him we were going to be picked up by our wives at the end of lunch. “Of course,” he said, with a noticeable lack of conviction. He saluted and wished us bon appétit.
The estates of the Château de Meursault, which extend to more than 110 acres, produce seven grands crus, and there is never any danger of running short. The château caves normally contain between 400,000 and 500,000 bottles, and many of the guests—growers, by the look of their wind-blasted complexions and leathery, muscular hands—were arriving not with mere armfuls of bottles, but with crates. Sadler and I joined the crush and filed through to the dining hall, an immense cavern lined with barrels big enough to swim in. Signs hung down from the ceiling over the long tables, an illustrious parade of Meursault vineyards: Les Perrières, Les Charmes, La Pièce-sous-le-Bois, Les Genevrières, La Goutte d’Or. The sound level was already high. These are men who normally hold their conversations in the open, across the width of a field, over the noise of a tractor engine, and they sometimes forget to adjust their volume when they come indoors. Even so, it was possible to hear Burgundy’s favorite background music, the steady clink of glass against glass and the irregular fusillade of corks coming out of bottles.
We found our places and took a look at the menu. One of the growers had told us that it would be a modest meal, such as a man might eat after his work in the vines. Judge for yourself. To begin with, there was a terrine of monkfish in bouillabaisse jelly; followed by slivers of fried sole with crayfish dumplings; followed by leg of wild duck, braised in white wine, with stuffed cabbage; followed by filet of venison with red currants and quince; followed by a selection of cheeses; followed by a selection of desserts. And then there were the wines.
A hand holding a bottle came over my shoulder and a voice murmured, “Batard-Montrachet ’89.” The growers were beginning to circulate, distributing refreshment to everyone within pouring range, and I thought that if wines like this were being thrust upon me, the least I could do was to take notes. That first wine was superb—flowery, soft, and dry—and I couldn’t imagine taking just one mouthful before tipping the rest into one of the ice buckets provided for dregs. I was a fool, needless to say, but it was still early.
There were musical interludes between each course, provided by our old partners in revelry, Les Joyeux Bourguignons, who were in remarkably good voice for men who had been singing and drinking for several hours the night before. These useful pauses between eating allowed the growers to keep circulating and pouring, and if my notes are anything to go by, we tasted an average of eight to ten wines per course. It was a slow and delicious business, and two hours into the lunch, we still hadn’t
reached the venison. But we had at least arrived at the point where whites were being replaced by reds, and it seemed a suitable moment to review the score.
My stained scraps of paper, covered in a visibly degenerating scrawl—I can’t keep calling them notes—listed twenty-seven white wines. Some notations were underlined, others marked with appreciative exclamation points or asterisks, but I have to admit that as a detailed and informative record, it was a disaster. I can definitely say, however, that neither Sadler nor I sent anything back.
We rather lost track of the reds, but I noticed that a neighboring chevalier, showing superhuman professionalism, was continuing to take notes. He reached a grand total of fifty-nine wines before his aim faltered and he started writing on the tablecloth and giggling.
Coffee came at 6:30, and we sat back and enjoyed the view. The tables around us had turned into bottlescapes. Never had I seen so many opened bottles in a single room, thousands of them, many still half-full, a fortune in leftovers. I longed for a doggy barrel. One of the growers passed us a bottle of his 1991 Corton and invited us over to his cave for a tasting that evening. He wasn’t joking, either.
Memory fails me somewhat after that, although I vaguely remember making plans to go to the pharmacy in the morning for aspirin and before seeking out a medicinal bottle of champagne. When we finally left the hall and emerged into the cold November night, we found ourselves in a crowd outside the entrance, listening to an exchange between a gendarme and a gentleman who was complaining that he had mislaid his car. Given the car owner’s condition, I thought he had perhaps chosen the wrong person to complain to. But there was no hint of official censure in the gendarme’s voice.
“Oui, monsieur,” he was saying with as much patience as he could muster, “you have told me that your Renault is eluding you. But as you can see, there are many Renaults here. A clue would be helpful. Do you have any recollection of the color?”
Our car found us, and we settled in—replete, drowsy, and profoundly grateful that we didn’t have to drive ourselves back to Beaune. “That,” said Sadler, “was a hell of a way to spend Monday.”
Rendezvous in a
Muddy Field
I have a great fondness for boudin noir, which I think of as one of the aristocrats of the sausage family—a blood sausage made with pork, usually served on a warm bed of thinly sliced cooked apples. Smooth and rich and dark, it is a dish to be eaten in front of the fire on a day when there is frost on the ground and an icy wind butting against the shutters. Comfort food.
It was winter, and lovers of the blood sausage were coming from every corner of France to take part in the thirty-eighth Foire au Boudin at Mortagne-au-Perche, not far from Alençon, the town of lace. The fair was a three-day spree, a kind of extended sausage beauty contest, with breaks for a pig race, a hog-calling competition, a soirée disco, and several other delights. It sounded wonderful. Unfortunately, the dates clashed with another, much more modest boudin festival in the village of Monthureux, north of Dijon, and this was the festival I felt I had to attend, for a single reason.
The great draw, and the highlight of the event, was to be the appearance of the Grand Mangeur de Boudin—a human boa constrictor, a one-man sausage demolition squad, a gentleman who, so it was claimed, could eat a meter and a half of boudin in fifteen minutes. A meter and a half is a fraction under five feet, and the circumference of a competition-standard boudin is approximately the same as that of a fifty-gauge Havana cigar. That’s a lot of sausage.
I couldn’t believe that any man was capable of dealing with it in a whole day, let alone fifteen minutes. Did he bite, chew, and swallow, or did he just suck it down inch by inch like a giant strand of spaghetti? Whatever his technique, watching him do it would be a memorable sight, one I felt I shouldn’t miss. I made travel plans, promising my wife that I’d bring home enough boudin to last us until spring.
The Grand Mangeur was scheduled to appear at 11:30 on Sunday morning, and to make sure I didn’t miss the first bite, I decided to go to Dijon the night before, which involved an hour’s drive to Avignon station and then two hours on the train. When I arrived, I rented a car. Judging by the map, Monthureux looked to be about two hours from Dijon, so I’d have plenty of time to get there in the morning. I even found a restaurant not far from the hotel that had boudin on the menu. Everything was under control. For once, the assignment was proceeding like clockwork.
The next morning was foul: gray skies and driving sleet, nobody on the streets of Dijon, very few cars on the road. It was a truly miserable start to the day. Never mind, I told myself. This is ideal weather for lunch, and there will undoubtedly be some kindred spirits in Monthureux, a glass or two of wine, and more boudin than most people see in a lifetime. I drove on. The sky grew darker, the sleet more intense, the countryside emptier.
I stopped in a small town for coffee, and to buy a local paper, expecting to find some reference to the boudin festival: an advertisement, perhaps, or a prebout interview with the Grand Mangeur. But curiously, there was no mention of historic events in the boudin world. I returned to the car, set the windshield wipers on overdrive, and pressed on through the sleet.
It was just before eleven when I reached Monthureux. I had planned to spend half an hour or so getting the feel of the place and talking to other boudin-fanciers before the excitement started, but it was curiously quiet for a village en fête. Actually, it was quieter than quiet—it was completely deserted. The mayor must have been overwhelmed by the number of people who were coming to the fair and had therefore decided to hold the celebrations in a hall outside the village, somewhere large enough to accommodate a crowd. That would explain why I hadn’t seen a single soul on the streets. I drove on.
Nobody. Nothing. No banners, no posters of smiling pigs, no hint of jolly activity. Just one wet empty field after another. I drove back through the village and out the other side before I saw a sign of human life, at a distance, a moving bump on the sodden horizon.
It was a man driving a tractor. Surely he would know where the action was. Up and down the field he went, gradually getting closer. I waited at the edge of a sea of freshly plowed mud, waving at him beneath my umbrella. He stopped the tractor when he was fifty yards away and sat in the shelter of the driver’s cabin, staring. He clearly wasn’t going to get out. I tiptoed through the mud until I was close enough to speak to him.
“I wonder if you can help me. I’m looking for the Foire au Boudin.”
He leaned forward in his seat to study the dripping apparition looking up at him. “Comment?”
“You know, the sausage fair. The one with the Grand Mangeur.”
He pushed his cap back, leaving a smear of mud on his forehead. The corners of his mouth went down; his shoulders came up—every Frenchman’s way of telling you he doesn’t know and doesn’t particularly care.
I felt the beginnings of panic. “This is Monthureux, isn’t it?”
He nodded. “One of them.”
“There are more?”
“This is Monthureux-sur-Saône. There is also Monthureux-le-Sec.” He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “It’s a long way, over near Vittel. For all I know, there may be others.” He nodded again, adjusted his cap, put the tractor into gear, and chugged off to resume his communion with the horizon.
By now, the Grand Mangeur, wherever he might be, would be loosening up with a few chipolatas before moving on to the main challenge. I stood, moist and muddy, watching the tractor disappear into the murk. I had blown it. The expedition had been a disaster, but I was too wet to worry about it. They say that missed pleasures only heighten the anticipation of pleasures to come, but all I wanted was to get back to Dijon and into a dry pair of socks.
A Civilized Purge
It is astonishing how many experts there seem to be nowadays whose mission in life is to lecture us about the perils of pleasure. Scarcely a week goes by without some ominous pronouncement about the price we must pay for our brief moments of indulgence. Even mod
eration, which used to be an acceptable excuse for the beef on your plate or the wine in your glass, is no longer good enough. If we are to believe some of the more extreme disciples of clean living, the only sure salvation for the human body is almost complete denial—no red meat, no butter, no cheese, no fat of any kind, no alcohol, no sugar, no tobacco, no direct sunlight.
I’m a sitting target for the health vigilantes, since three of my favorite sins are wine, a certain amount of fat in the diet, and lying in the sun. These are the habits of a man whose days are clearly numbered. I have this on the authority of our friend Odile, the harbinger of gloom. Strangely enough, I like Odile. She is a good-looking, charming woman, splendid in every respect, except for her well-meaning but infuriating attempts to save me from my wicked ways. She appointed herself some years ago as my gastronomic conscience, and there was even a time when she urged me to follow her example. Here, I have to say, she practices what she preaches. She leads a life of shining intestinal virtue: water by the bucketful, herbal infusions, biologically active yogurt, brown rice, soy milk, shoots and sprouts, one naughty glass of red wine a week, frequent days of fasting. It is a regime that suits her. For some extraordinary reason, she thinks it would suit me as well, if only I would give it a try.
When I started to work on this book, her murmurs of concern about my dreadful habits turned into cries of alarm. To go around France eating and drinking and, no doubt, carousing? Madness! Suicide by knife and fork! I tried to explain to Odile that it was research, no more than a professional necessity, but she wasn’t fooled. She preferred to see it as an invitation to wretched excess: a surfeit of food, a torrent of alcohol, a death knell for the liver. There was only one hope for me, she said, and that was to end my research—if indeed I survived—with a period of exile in a spa, where a thorough cleansing of my internal workings could be carried out under professional, medically approved conditions. I would eat sparingly. I would turn my back on the grape. I would flush my toxins out with water. With luck, I would be saved.