by Jamie Ivey
As I approached, Manu lifted his visor and extinguished the blowtorch. He did most of his mechanical work in an old barn which divided the two sides of the farmhouse. Various pieces of equipment hung from the beams – a yoke for a donkey, heavy iron chains and a plough. In one corner there was a rusty tractor and the barn as always smelt heavily of diesel. Nails, screws and other pieces of metal covered every surface. Rakes, hoes and a scythe fit for the Grim Reaper rested in a bundle against the wall. A severed finger or toe was only a misplaced hand or foot away.
'Bonjour!'
'Bonjour.'
'Tout va bien? Est-ce qu'Elodie est toujours sage?'
Having a baby in his house hadn't been part of Manu's thought process when he rented it out to us. Although the walls were thick and the division between the two sides of the mas well constructed, he was still paranoid about Elodie's crying. Hence the first question every time we met these days was, 'Est-ce qu'Elodie est toujours sage?' – 'Is she still behaving and sleeping well?' Only once his mind had been put at rest could we continue.
'Toujours sage,' I reassured, catching a strong whiff of garlic, a foodstuff which Manu insisted was 'très bon pour la santé'. The smell was sometimes so overpowering that I wondered whether, in private, he chewed on raw bulbs.
We moved outside into the bright sunlight. A small stream had sprung up outside our house. After years of drought this winter's rainfall had exceeded all records. Rocks in the hills wept and water played along forgotten riverbeds. Jumping over the stream, Manu opened the door to his chicken coop. Ten birds immediately huddled around his legs, clucking hungrily. As Manu tipped seed to the ground I explained my idea for a tasting. Ducking into the hen house he began collecting eggs; only the odd grunt reassured me that he was still listening.
'And so that's it – a blind tasting of an English rosé against a local French one. We'll hold it on market day for a bit of fun.'
Thousands of small white snails clung to the fence which enclosed the chickens. Manu casually plucked them and tossed them to the birds. He still hadn't said a word.
'What do you think?' I prodded.
Ten more snails met their end.
'You'll be wasting your time,' Manu finally confided. 'The people here know their own wines.'
'But you don't object.'
Manu shrugged his shoulders, indicating indifference or perhaps even a little hostility to the idea. After the chickens it was the turn of the hunting dogs. Manu kept three of them in a large cage. In the season he would depart before dawn, and I often saw him returning home in the misty half-light, gun cocked over his arm, dead game slung over his shoulder and dogs circling adoringly around his ankles. Such was his command of the animals that he could silence them with a glance.
'We'll enter Christophe's wine,' Manu grunted as he forked leftover meat into the dogs' bowls. 'It won a silver medal at the Orange Concours des Vins.' He might not have let it show but secretly I believed Manu was looking forward to the tasting, hence the sudden change of mind: rugby, football, tennis – beating the old enemy was always amusing and here was an opportunity for the Provençal vigneron to add to the glory of France.
At just before midday on the following Wednesday morning I stood in the village square. Underneath my jacket my woollen jumper had absorbed the water from the air and the knitted cloth was wet against my skin. I shivered with the cold. The plane trees that bestowed a dappled effect on the marketplace in summer had been pruned back, and now the stunted branches reached heavenwards in supplication, like the upturned fingers of a penitent. Puddles from the previous night's rain dotted the gravel and forgotten Christmas decorations creaked in the wind. The breeze shifted and the smell of burning damp leaves replaced wafts of strong tobacco. The morning was drawing to a close and the agreed hour for the tasting approaching.
On the table in front of me were the two competing wines, French and English, both shrouded in tissue paper. When poured, one had the colour of ripe cherries, the other vibrant pink coral, but neither showed that well against the grey sky. The two were notably different in taste. The a'Beckett's estate rosé from Devizes in Wiltshire was light and fruity and relatively low in alcohol at 10 per cent. Made from a mixture of Pinot Noir and Reichensteiner, its closest comparator in France was a Marsannay rosé, which many in Burgundy regarded as the country's finest. The Côtes du Ventoux by contrast, a Syrah and Grenache mix, was a much more robust wine, more aggressive on the palate and a better accompaniment to food. Choosing between the two should have been easy.
A group of local vignerons, including Manu, had gathered around my stall to watch. Their faces were red and stained with grime, their hands raw from a morning sawing last year's excess growth from the vines, but their mood was upbeat and expectant.
'I wonder who will vote for the English,' said one.
'Only people with colds,' Manu chirped up and the group dissolved into laughter.
The members of the cave cooperative had every reason to be confident. Typically a French child has his first glass of wine at the age of five. Perhaps a little Sauternes to go with some foie gras, a sip of a buttery white with some smoked cheese. From that moment on the child's taste buds are educated with more fervour than his brain. Can't add up? Never mind. Can't tell a corked wine? Go to bed and as a punishment memorise each of the 472 different appellations.
By the time they are young adults, the educated French will have typically sampled wine from each of the major producing regions, and they'll know in which shape of glass, at what temperature and with what food to serve it. For this reason, not one member of the cave cooperative committee had countenanced the possibility that the local wine might lose.
At random I'd asked a group of twenty shoppers at the market to participate in the tasting. One by one they began to sample the wines, sniffing, swirling and finally drinking.
'C'est plus riche…'
'Plus sensuel…'
'Plus capital…'
'Très sincère.'
French is a wonderful language with which to describe wine. Elaborate phrases rolled off the tongue, nobody contented themselves with simple flavours – instead, the wines were imbued with human characteristics, so the tasting almost felt more like meeting a friend. In this case an English friend. Amazingly, the first four tasters selected the Wiltshire wine.
Looking at the gathered vignerons, I realised I was in trouble. These men spent all year toiling across endless fields, pruning, training and finally picking from thousands of individual vines. The enormity of their task was daunting; row after row, with no help, just them and the elements, the wind, the cold, the rain and finally the beating summer heat. Their reward: producing a wine that the local people called their own. How terrible if the villagers actually preferred the English wine.
'That's another vote for the English, and another one,' I advised, trying to prepare them for the worst.
'Probably been gargling,' quipped a vigneron referring to the latest taster.
'Sea-salt spray up the nose,' Manu added.
'Anaesthetic throat lozenges,' said another, joining the sport. It seemed that they were going to list the whole contents of the pharmacy.
As the tasting continued the French wine enjoyed a minor resurgence, but even so the Wiltshire rosé stayed ahead and continued to attract votes. Why were people getting it so wrong? Well, the first and most obvious answer was that it was more suited to what people wanted to drink on a cold wet February morning. Perhaps being from England it coped better with the lack of sunshine, and the lower alcohol percentage made it more palatable. However, even wearing a blindfold, I would have expected the villagers to recognise their own wine and vote for it for patriotic reasons. That they hadn't been able to identify the Côtes du Ventoux was interesting.
Educating a palate is relatively simple; keeping a palate educated takes a lifetime of dedication. Think of what happens to a heavyweight boxer when he gives up his sport. His physique quickly becomes flabby and heavy. It's t
he same with wine tasters. Contrasting wines need to be tasted every day otherwise the skill quickly disappears. Sommeliers will often tour vineyards trying hundreds of different wines a day. Their taste buds are their living and the only way to keep them in top condition is to work them, exhaustively. Stop drinking and the carefully collected archive of thousands of different flavours becomes a confused indistinguishable mass. And that is what had happened to the French as a nation. Collectively they'd stopped drinking. Government health campaigns, when combined with a Frenchman's obsessive concern for his health, had led to a dramatic decline in consumption.
The sickly smell of petrol from the departing van of a trader drifted across the square and the village clock chimed the hour, signalling the end of the agreed time for the tasting.
'Come on, who's won?' Manu slapped me on the back. 'It's lunchtime.'
'Perhaps we'll let a few more people taste. The more the merrier,' I responded.
'Can't hurt.' Manu took a swig of the French wine.
The coquillage merchant was vigorously quartering lemons and sowing them like seeds among rows of yawning seashells. Unlike me he was busy with several customers – men with hardened constitutions happily sucking the innards from sea urchins. Their fridges were presumably full of veal's head pâté, pig trotters and tripe, and to them a dozen oysters before lunch was a stomach settler. Surely they could be tempted into a glass of wine?
'Une dégustation de vin rosé d'Angleterre,' I shouted again.
A shopper turned to face the dégustation, the head of a king prawn poised between his teeth.
'Vin anglais – ça existe?' He dropped the shell of the prawn in horror. Life was uncertain enough without the English starting to make rosé.
'It's down to global warming,' I explained. 'Same soil and climate as Chablis.'
Chasing an oyster on its way with a glass of sharp Picpoul from Sète, the shopper showed no interest in tasting England's finest. 'Soon they'll have cicadas,' he muttered, as he shuffled away, no doubt looking forward to a nice lunch of cow's testicles fried in garlic.
'Allez goûter…' Finally I managed to attract another taster – an unshaven workman in a luminous jacket. Bald head, jowly, jaundiced eyes, yellow complexion of an inveterate pastis drinker – just the wrong type of person.
Like a child offered medicine the man grimaced as he put the glass to his lips. How bad could English wine be?
'An excellent nose,' he declared with the formality of a sommelier. 'Soft and subtle to drink,' he continued, his demeanour emphasising that although he might wear the clothes of a workman, he was in fact a connoisseur. Did I have a real expert?
I poured the second wine. 'It's not well balanced. The first was much better, and definitely French.'
I nodded in relief. A few of the vignerons had already left, the call of their stomachs proving hard to resist, particularly since in their eyes the result was a foregone conclusion.
Apart from an old lady huddling under an umbrella struggling with the weight of a basket full of vegetables, the square was empty of potential tasters.
'Venez goûter le vin,' I cried one last time.
The old lady paused and looked up before pulling the umbrella low over her eyes. Putting her bags down, she readjusted her grip and then continued on her way.
It was over. I rechecked the score and called the vignerons over. The least I could do was keep the result as private as possible. Pouring everyone a glass I prepared to make the announcement. A cough stopped me.
'Je veux bien goûter.' Unable to turn directly around, the old lady had prescribed a large circle, ending up behind my tasting stand. I now recognised her as Miriam, the octogenarian head of the village fête committee. If there was a soupe au pistou to be made, or an aioli, then she would volunteer, and just that morning I'd had some of her excellent apricot jam with my morning baguette. As always her eyes were bright and alert.
Gratefully I poured two glasses of wine for her to taste.
'My husband was a vigneron,' she declared, raising my hopes.
With an expert swish she transformed the contents of the first glass into a vigorous pink whirlpool. As a heavy drizzle set in there was a sigh of contentment, and a scarcely audible murmur of appreciation. The process was repeated for the second rosé: a swish and a swirl, a plant of the nose, a sip and suck as she churned the wine through her teeth.
'And?' I asked anxiously, aware of the watching vignerons.
'C'est difficile, mais' – Miriam was obviously enjoying the attention – 'je préfère le deuxième vin.'
'Égalité,' I declared. 'Vive l'entente cordiale.' In gratitude I put corks in the remaining wine and slipped the bottles into her basket. The final result was eleven all.
The uproar was immediate. I was pressed backwards against my table, until I could retreat no further.
'Which wine did you taste first?'
There was no chance to answer.
'What temperature was the wine served at?'
'Did you check it wasn't corked?'
'Everything was done properly,' I reassured the vignerons. 'Tasting glasses, refrigerated for the same length of time…'
'Well, that proves it,' Manu interrupted, 'we were right in the first place – it's the flu, the whole village has got it.'
'Have you seen the queues at the doctor's?' Another took up the theme.
'Can't get an appointment for a week.'
'What do we pay taxes for?'
Gradually the crowd dispersed. Face had been saved. Just.
Chapter 6
March began with a shock of heat, blue skies and an impatient sun. The land blistered with ant hills, bees pollinated the first wild flowers, and a plague of black centipedes marched into every house. South-facing fields of almond trees blossomed first, dressing the land white, pink cherry followed, and on the rare windy days a stream of confetti drifted in the air. Rivers bubbled with energy, swathes of marshy grass erupted along their banks, and broken branches from the winter storms lodged in the riverbeds, creating peaceful pools.
Shutters in the village were thrown apart, welcoming fragrant air into houses. Dormant businesses slowly reopened, one day at a time, so as not to shock the systems of owners or customers. The chairs outside the cafe which had been stacked and chained together once more populated the pavement. Relief rippled through the streets. Everybody agreed it had been one of the toughest winters in memory. Rosé orders for my wine business started to arrive and pink wine once again winked from tables in the weekend sunshine.
A sign for the village vide grenier appeared by the roadside. These attic/car boot sales were a relatively new concept when we'd first arrived in Provence. Since then they'd been embraced by nearly every local village. Rather than carting unwanted stuff into cars and driving to a distant field, the Provençal way was to set up outside the front doors of their houses.
Whole villages were transformed into emporiums of Provençal tat and just occasionally a piece of valuable brocante. The locals loved the vide greniers for the opportunity to sit in the fresh spring air and exchange gossip with their neighbours. Kids swapped toys for a couple of euros and parents scoured the second-hand clothes rails. To the expat community a vide grenier was a chance to outwit the professional antique dealers who often charged extortionate prices for items as simple as a set of copper kitchen pans. Our flat was small and already furnished so we scarcely bought anything, but we always went, welcoming the opportunity to chat to people who'd vanished Elvis-like during the winter. Invites to drinks parties usually followed and a whirl of social activity began as people tried to see each other before the arrival of the hordes of tourists.
With the improved weather came a new found enthusiasm for work, even in the estate agencies. The euphemistic 'en visite' signs came down, lunches were curtailed and cold calls to everyone on the books began. 'Thinking of buying, thinking of selling? Do it with me.'
The agent who called us was Eric Serep.
If agents im
mobiliers are judged by the value of houses they sell, then Eric belonged to the bottom division. His home doubled as his office and he pasted property details onto his living room window. Eric's clients were the locals whom he'd grown up with. In his distant teenage years he'd midnight drag-raced with most of the men and kissed most of the women. Nearly all these old copines had their houses permanently on the market. None of them particularly wanted to move; however, they'd heard stories of people who'd hit the jackpot with a foreign buyer. As a result prices were always inflated and there was absolutely no room for negotiation.