Nightmare in Burgundy (The Winemaker Detective Series)

by Jean-Pierre Alaux

  “I’ll think about it, sir.”

  Cooker nodded a good-bye and walked quickly toward the hotel annex. Once in his room, he ran a scalding hot bath and soaked in it for more than an hour while reading the first thirty Psalms of David.

  § § §

  A waft of patchouli incense assailed his nostrils even before he had crossed the threshold. Cooker wiped the soles of his Lobbs on the horsehair doormat, took in one last lungful of fresh air, and dove into the vestibule. Dozens of little candles twinkled on a shelf that ran all along the wall and seemed to come alive under the haunting undulations of an Indian sitar.

  Robert Bressel offered him a cup of green tea and invited him to sit in a heap of cushions with batik covers that looked particularly uncomfortable. The winemaker preferred a carved African stool. Several naively sculpted snakes were crawling along its base. The living room was rather large, but the motley decor devoured the space. Cooker’s eyes widened at the dozens of bouquets of dried flowers, numerous oriental knickknacks, terra-cotta reproductions of Aztec gods, ivy dripping from macramé suspensions, an enormous plastic elephant painted gold, tourist posters of Sumatra tacked on the walls among yellowed posters of Che Guevara, Jimi Hendrix, and Romy Schneider, a Balinese armoire, a yellow-straw Mexican hat, a Napoleon III–era china cabinet, precariously stacked books, CDs strewn everywhere, a copper bowl full of moldy cereal, and a laptop on the floor, which was covered with oriental rugs and hemp mats. The sinuous sitar music irritated Cooker’s auditory passages.

  The journalist poured the tea in Chinese cups while imitating the sweeping ethereal gestures of North African Tuaregs. The mauve scarf knotted around his blond hair was hanging over a mohair sweater that bore a geometric pattern of lamas. He sniffed his cup and raised his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “It’s a gyokuro from Japan. The best!”

  “Thank you very much,” Cooker said politely from his Congolese stool.

  “I prefer it to the bancha from China, which is too fibrous, and the oolong from Taiwan, which is too pale.”

  “I tend to stick with Grand Yunnan, like my father. Or else I make do with any Earl Grey or Darjeeling.”

  “It’s true that it’s the national drink in England,” Bressel said. Cooker noted that Bressel looked a bit disappointed by his placid ignorance of fine teas.

  “Yes, I drink almost as much tea as wine. That tells you how hopelessly Franco-British I am!”

  “Speaking of which, I need some biographical information for a note at the beginning of the interview.”

  “My secretary will send you a whole press kit,” Cooker said, cutting him short. He didn’t care to expand any more on his personal history.

  They spoke quietly, mostly about wine production. Slumped in his pile of cushions, Robert Bressel did not have a tape recorder for the interview, but instead used a big spiral notebook. Cooker gave his cautious opinion on the samples he had had the honor to taste at the Château du Clos de Vougeot. Of the eight hundred and nineteen wines from the 2000, 2001, and 2002 vintages, he admitted that he had tasted only a dozen. But the experience of the Tastevinage had convinced him that he needed to spend part of his visit in the Morey-Saint-Denis area, which he regarded as one of the finest terroirs of the world.

  “No kidding?” the reporter marveled.

  “I rarely joke when I’m talking about wine, unless I’ve drunk too much of it, which, of course, is a hazard of the trade.”

  The interview continued in a more or less relaxed, almost friendly tone. The sitar had ceased its soporific whirling, and Cooker poured himself a second cup of green tea. He expounded on the state of the wine business, the problems of exportation, the specificity of pinot noir—the flagship of the Burgundy grape varietals—the need to age the best wines and the care exercised in decanting, the unfairly underrated communal appellations, the heterogeneous nature of the wine-growing region of the hautes-côtes, climatic variations, the parceling of terrain, the rising values of the Mâconnais, and the new decrees of the agricultural regulatory agency INAO. After all that, Cooker could not resist the urge to ask a few questions of his own. He had talked enough about wines and the wine business. Before the interview ended, he intended to steer the discussion toward other things that were on his mind.

  “And I must also say that there is no lack of excitement in the area,” he ventured.

  “Do you mean what happened last night?”

  “Since my arrival, some very disturbing things have occurred. This graffiti on the walls, the two kids who were shot. Usually this region is rather peaceful and—”

  “Pardon me for contradicting you, but Burgundy has never been a peaceful place. Admittedly, it’s a good life, and I agree that people envy the apparent tranquility, but that’s not the whole picture.”

  “Oh, really? What are you trying to say?” Cooker asked as he poured himself a third cup of tea.

  “I wasn’t really surprised to see that graffiti yesterday morning.”

  “Were you expecting it?”

  “Not at all. I just think it is one more mystery among so many others here,” Bressel said.

  “A rather quickly solved mystery at that, mind you.”

  “Frankly, I find it hard to believe that the two kids could have scrawled those inscriptions, especially in Latin!”

  “And yet they were interrupted while spray painting the walls.”

  “So? What does that prove?”

  “Not much, really,” Cooker said. “Have you heard anything about the injured kid?”

  “He died around eight o’clock at the hospital in Dijon. I found out just as you were arriving.”

  “That’s awful,” Cooker sighed.

  “Absolutely horrible. Ernest Mancenot is in custody now, but he may very well be released on his own recognizance. He had a .10 blood-alcohol level.”

  “That didn’t keep him from shooting straight,” the winemaker said without a hint of sarcasm.

  “They’re a family of hunters. The two brothers are old hardened boys who have nothing else to do but hunt down game, go mushroom picking, and spend their pensions on booze.”

  “What kind of work did they do, exactly?”

  “They drove trucks for a construction company.”

  “And the two kids?”

  “The Bravart cousins? I think they were still in high school or maybe apprentices. To tell you the truth, I don’t know much about them. I should find out. But in my opinion, they were not scholars. I know the parents a little. I wouldn’t think that the Bravart household read much of the Psalms of David. People would know.”

  “Psalms of David, you say?” Benjamin was good at feigning surprise.

  “Yes, Mister Cooker, it’s about two verses from Psalm 101 or 102, depending on which Bible you consult. I learned this from my nephew, Pierre-Jean, who’s a librarian in Dijon.”

  “You don’t think the Bravart boys would have been familiar with it?”

  “As I said, I wouldn’t think so. But who knows? And if they were familiar with that particular psalm, you would have to wonder what their motivation was, and what the texts actually mean.”

  “That’s my opinion, too,” the winemaker said, “But now that they are dead, we’ll never know what they wanted to tell us.”

  Robert Bressel slid over his raft of multicolored cushions and made his way slowly to the stereo. The sitar resumed its moaning. Benjamin Cooker decided it was time to leave.

  5

  The clock struck noon. The station was almost empty when the train from Paris came to a stop on track two. Virgile jumped down from the car with his bag over his shoulder, his sunglasses pushed up on his head, and his jacket open over a fine linen shirt. He had a radiant and always-a-bit arrogant look that young men from the southwest of France have when they cross north of the boundary line drawn by the Loire River.

  “You look good,” Cooker said, shaking his hand.

  “I am in great shape, sir. I slept the whole trip.”

  “
So much the better. I intend to take you on a tour of the grand dukes.”

  “The Dukes of Burgundy?”

  “You hit the nail on the head, my boy.”

  As they left Dijon, the winemaker decided on going the back way and took Highway 122. He followed the signs for the Route des Grands Crus and drove slowly, enjoying the purring of the six cylinders. As they passed through the winemaking villages, Cooker cheerfully narrated without ever adopting the pedantic tone that sometimes annoyed his young assistant. They went through Chenôve, Marsannay-la-Côte, Couchey, Fixin, Brochon, Gevrey-Chambertin, Morey-Saint-Denis, Chambolle-Musigny, and finally Vougeot, which they reached an hour later, even though the most direct roads would have taken them there in no more than twenty minutes.

  “It is really so different from the Bordeaux region,” Virgile declared as he got out of the convertible. “Little convoluted parcels of land, no chocolate-box châteaux every hundred yards, good solid farmhouses. It smells of the earth here!”

  “It is very different,” Cooker said. “I thought it would be good for you to experience this terroir for yourself. Traveling can be an excellent education for young people. Besides, my grandmother always used to say: ‘A change of pastures fattens the calf!’”

  “Thank you for taking the trouble,” the assistant said as he buttoned up his jacket and rubbed his hands together to warm them. “And to think that yesterday I was eating outside. Honestly, it’s beautiful here, but you freeze your butt off.”

  “That’s also part of the charm.” Cooker smiled. “I don’t think those sunglasses are going to be very useful.”

  They dropped Virgile’s bag off in the room reserved for him in the annex, which was across from Cooker’s.

  “You’re spoiling me, sir, with this view of the vineyards and the Clos de Vougeot château!”

  They both stood at the window, arms crossed, gazing over the ocean of grapevines where the silvery sparkling of the trellises met with the milky luminescence of the sky. The field hands, in groups of three and four, were bending over the rows, straightening the wooden stakes, and stretching wires to attach the branches. Others were burning armfuls of vine shoots pruned over the winter. The plumes of white smoke skimmed the earth, refusing to rise. Pointing toward the horizon, Cooker launched into a long history of the Clos de Vougeot that Virgile found fascinating.

  The centuries filed by with a richness of detail and anecdotes reminiscent of alter candles and ancient parchment. Cooker enjoyed telling Virgile about the monks who founded the Molesmes Abbey on the marshy grounds where nothing grew but thin reeds known as cîteaux. Then he described the rock quarries not far from the hamlet of Vooget, where the first acres of vines were planted at the very beginning of the twelfth century. He recounted the rivalry with the monks of Saint-Germain, who settled in Gilly, the successive land acquisitions, the donations from the lords, and the protection by those in power. He spent time explaining the construction of the Clos de Vougeot château in 1551 by the abbot of Cîteaux, Dom Loisier, who had to stand up to his Cistercian brothers because they criticized him for squandering God Almighty’s funds.

  “I won’t go into the seizure of the château during the revolutionary period and all of the buybacks and shady financial negotiations, and how it was made into a hospital at the beginning of the Second World War, and the terrible explosion under the German occupation, which damaged the roof. Not to mention the fact that the four magnificent wine presses almost ended up as firewood. The Americans also requisitioned it to house prisoners after the Liberation, before the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin became the proprietors and undertook the restoration of the buildings. You see, Virgile, what fascinates me the most in all this history is the permanence of the traditions and the winemakers’ attachment to this unique piece of land, their fierce protection of the appellation, and the level of quality, along with superior wine-making standards and the manual harvesting. And then there’s the unalterable boundary of the terroir.”

  “It hasn’t changed since the twelfth century?” Virgile interrupted.

  “It’s difficult to push back stone outer walls. The vineyard covers exactly fifty hectares, ninety-five ares, and seventy-six centiares, which makes upwards of one hundred and twenty-seven point two acres.”

  “I admire your precision, sir,” Virgile said with a touch of impertinence.

  “Make fun if you like, my boy. I am always careful to leave nothing to chance, as Francois Mauriac wrote.”

  “And how many people own the Clos de Vougeot?”

  “About eighty sharing a hundred parcels with sixty different vinifications.”

  “When you say about eighty, would that be more or a bit less?”

  “Well done, Virgile. You’ve caught me. I don’t have the exact number in my head anymore. It changes, depending on sales and divisions that take place when parcels are inherited. On the other hand, I can tell you that the vineyard produces about two hundred tons of grapes, and from that, depending on the year, two hundred and fifty thousand to three hundred thousand bottles.”

  “And is their quality equal?”

  “Not really. The nature of the terrain obviously has a determining influence, as you would suspect. The vineyard has a gradient of just three to four percent, but that is enough to create important differences. In the upper section that you see back there, the ground is stony, mainly limestone. Toward the middle, the loose layer of earth becomes somewhat thick and dense. At the bottom, the pluvial erosion has accumulated sediments, and because the constant moisture results in a thick silt, they have to drain it sometimes.”

  “It’s true. It’s fairly flat toward the lower part, and I bet that the contour of the highway, which is a bit elevated, didn’t help things.”

  “Bravo, Virgile. Very good deduction. The water table is not far from the surface in this spot, and it tends to hold more water. Then the construction of the highway exacerbated the problem by interfering with natural drainage. If only the civil engineers had your down-to-earth common sense!”

  “If I understand everything you’ve told me, it is rare in these parts to have this type of château in the middle of a vineyard.”

  “Yes, it’s kind of like something you might see in Bordeaux, but the Burgundians don’t do that sort of thing. They don’t ruin estates. They disturb the least area possible. The vineyard is king here, and you do not dominate it with ostentatious structures.”

  Cooker turned away from the window and went to his own room to get a woolen scarf he had forgotten to take with him in the morning.

  “Okay, let’s not dawdle, Virgile. I have other things to show you.”

  They climbed into the convertible and got back on the highway toward Nuits-Saint-Georges. Cooker apologized for not having offered his assistant something to eat.

  “Don’t worry, I had a sandwich on the train that made the trip worthwhile: tasteless ham on crumbly white bread, barely fresh butter, and a jungle-rot pickle! The worst of it is that, well, I’m a bit ashamed to admit it, but I was so hungry, I thought it was delicious!”

  “Those are the guilty pleasures you should not deny yourself, my dear Virgile,” Cooker replied, holding back a laugh. “You know as I do that there are wines you talk about and wines you drink. They are not always one and the same.”

  They quickly passed through the center of Nuits-Saint-Georges and continued on toward Beaune. They decided that Virgile would visit the Hospices de Beaune, a former hospital for the poor and needy that was now a museum, while his boss would spend that time digging up research at the Athenaeum Bookstore across the way on the Rue de l’Hôtel-Dieu. They looked at their watches and agreed to give each other an hour before meeting in front of the bookstore.

  Cooker rummaged with pleasure through the shelves devoted to wine. They were arranged on a platform, as if a certain homage needed to be paid to the subject. He felt at home in this bookstore that honored his profession and where one could unearth everything published on the topic. He
consulted a good number of oenology treatises, monographs on cooperage, technical publications in English, historical essays, several photo albums on Burgundy, and some guidebooks written by competitors with whom he often disagreed but whose expertise and convictions he respected. He foraged for nearly an hour and decided to buy the latest issue of the magazine Burgundy Today, whose main article was devoted to the rankings of the premiers crus, as well as half a dozen works by Pierre Poupon, including A Taster’s New Thoughts, The Fruits of Autumn, The Wine of Memories, Pleasures of Tasting, My Literary Tastings, The End of a Vintage, and The Vintner’s Gospel. Flipping through the pages, Cooker was struck by the poetry, irony, and erudition—there was, in these little well-crafted books, a spiritual vision of the vine and wine that he could not resist. A winemaker capable of expressing himself with such style was certainly an authentic writer. This Burgundian had as much talent as, or perhaps even more than, certain stunted writers of the Académie Française. One passage made him chuckle: “Smell, sniff, inhale—nothing that is fragrant or that stinks should leave you indifferent. Let odors lead you by the nose.” Cooker would gladly use it in the introduction to the next edition of his guide.

  He looked forward to delving into these simple yet lyrical pages that very night. He had noticed a particularly intriguing paragraph: “Thus, ‘good news’ was gradually revealed to me. A gospel intended for the winemaker is written in my heart. This Bible is open to all. Everyone can enter it, not just to gather the grapes left over after the harvest, but to harvest according to his thirst.”

  § § §

  “Magnificent, sir! It’s really worth a look! I hope I wasn’t too long?” Virgile had never learned to hide his enthusiasm, and that was one of his greatest qualities. He was clearly affected by his visit to the former hospital, where the sisters of the Hospices de Beaune had once cared for the destitute in a magnificent facility that featured a religious polyptych painted by Flemish artist Roger Van de Weyden. Virgile had come away talkative and excited.