Adventures on the Wine Route: A Wine Buyer's Tour of France (25th Anniversary Edition)

by Kermit Lynch

I have, perhaps, been especially grateful for the discovery of certain wines from the less hallowed viticultural regions—inexpensive, clean, refreshing, and undemanding, ideal daily aperitif and summer luncheon wines; typical are Jean Berail’s white, Roque Sestière, and Yves Laboucarie’s vin gris, Domaine de Fonsainte, both from the southwest Corbières appellation.

in those days the California palate (mine included) demanded big mouth-filling wines at the expense of any other virtues, including authenticity. For the most part négociant-bottled Burgundies enjoyed a near monopoly, so one lacked a point of reference. And of course the California palate had been formed by the big, gutsy, sun-drenched local wines. Burgundy is not sun-drenched.

It tasted exactly as it had in his cellar. After that experience, I used nothing but reefers for all my wine shipments, be they rare, expensive Burgundies or cheap little country wines.

The difference between a wine shipped at cellar temperature and one shipped in a standard container is not subtle. One is alive, the other cooked. I can taste the difference. And one never knows exactly how much the wine will suffer, because the climate en route cannot be predicted. It might arrive dumb like those first de Montilles, or it might arrive dead. By reefer the shipping costs are higher, but the wine is not damaged.

A wine can only be judged as it relates to the environment in which it is served. The Chardonnay that looks best in the context of a comparative tasting is not likely to win next to a platter of fresh oysters. I began to notice that most of the blind-tasting champions in my own cellar remained untouched, because I had no desire to drink them. Just as they had overwhelmed the other wines to win a blind tasting, they overwhelm practically any cuisine. Drink with Stilton? lamb fat? enchiladas?

He brought out a platter of cheeses on a bed of autumn-colored grape leaves and uncorked a 1969 red from nearby Bandol. It sounds simple, but I was astonished by that marriage of wine and cheese (mostly mild chèvres of various ages). And by that wildly delicious red wine!

Wine is, above all, pleasure. Those who would make it ponderous make it dull. People talk about the mystery of wine, yet most don’t want anything to do with mystery. They want it all there in one sniff, one taste. If you keep an open mind and take each wine on its own terms, there is a world of magic to discover.

Thus began my love affair with the Cabernet Franc of Chinon and Bourgueil, wines which at their best have such a strong personality that novice tasters are often startled. After that initial taste, it will be love or hate.

The wines I bought were not monuments to the vintner’s art, but they were unlike the California reds of the day, which seemed to be the result of a contest to see who could turn out the biggest alcoholic monster.

One restaurateur called me to say that he had always loved the Chinons that he tasted in France and that Joguet’s 1976 was the finest he had ever tasted.

Loyau is a man worth listening to. He speaks with the wisdom of nine decades. Unfortunately, repeating his words does not convey the wonderment and awe he expresses when he discusses just about anything. For René Loyau the real world is the most incredible thing one could possibly imagine. It is miraculous, mysterious, profound. He sometimes flashes a look of pure amazement, like a baby who has just discovered how to rattle a rattle. Beaming forth from the visage of a ninety-year-old, it is an unforgettable expression.

Love

They took my third son to Germany. We had to suffer ghastly horrors. My father had to be committed; he lost his mind. But my wife, she was extraordinary, very patriotic, very courageous. We survived. But, you know, all of that forms a man, it gives a man character. You have spirit, you resist, you fight, but you become more generous, nobler in a sense, because you have seen such misery.

“It is a memory for tastes. There is a certain aftertaste in which the character of a wine manifests itself. The 1906 still had a little taste of wild plum and a suggestion of hawthorn blossom that reminded me of the cuvée Le Coudreau that Monsieur Landry sold to me.”

“There is only one possible explanation for this mysterious transfer of aromatic quality from one type of vegetation to another. Bees! The bees gather nectar from blossoms—in this case, wild-currant blossoms—then they alight on the grape blossoms, their little legs fuzzy with pollen from the currants.”

Finesse is a word that does not have much meaning to American tasters, who use it when they are trying to find something positive to say about a light-bodied wine, but to a serious French winemaker it is one of the most complimentary words in the vocabulary, and to appreciate the noblest French wines one must learn to recognize and appreciate finesse. Most important, finesse is not another word for “light.”

When I say that no one in the States would believe that twenty-seven-year-old dry Vouvray could still be drinkable, Loyau leaps up with the agility of a man sixty years younger and grabs me by the arm. “But, monsieur, I have bottles over a hundred years old.

That is just amazing.

There, look at the vintages: 1874, 1858, 1847. In all the world of wine, Vouvray and Sauternes are the two that age the longest.”

Underground there is a confluence of factors beneficial to a healthy evolution: the cold temperature, the humidity, the mineral walls. Vouvray’s wine is born underground where the vine roots suckle the cold, humid, chalky earth. The roots are wood. And there you have the constituents of a good cellar: low temperature, humidity, earth and wood smells.

Wine is incredibly impressionable. It is influenced by the most subtle details, from the soil in which the vines grow to a neighbor’s black-currant patch. Squeezed through the sterile pads, the poor wine expressed sterility and cardboard.

So I bribed them. I would pay a higher price, I offered, if they would continue to vinify grapes from their best parcels of vineyard in barrel, and bottle it unfiltered with a minimum dose of SO2. They agreed, and this special bottling, which is labeled Cuvée Speciale, is an example of Pineau de la Loire at its best, as it might have tasted a century ago.

For the white, however, she no longer uses oak. “For white wine,” she says, “I think oak is harmful because one has a good white wine when there is the taste of the fruit, and if you put it into wood the flavor of the grape is masked.”

The curious thing is that, in terms of climate, Napa Valley most resembles southern France, yet efforts to grow Grenache, Mourvèdre, Cinsault, or other varietals from the warm climate zones of France are rare.

He is convinced that Meursault’s distinctive character and flavor are due to the presence of that mineral in Meursault’s soil. Everyone speaks of goût de terroir; François Serre says he has isolated one. He seems convinced that, by tilling this mineral into the earth at Puligny, a wine could be made there which would resemble Meursault.

Cabernet Sauvignon is a variety whose flavor tends to dominate environmental factors, unlike the Pinot Noir, Syrah, or Mourvèdre, for example, which express environmental factors. I buy an Italian white wine from a vineyard in which the vines share space with locust trees, and one can smell the opulent perfume of their cascading white blossoms in the wine. It fills the air; it fills the wine.

Domaine Tempier today makes the finest red wine of Provence, but it was not always that way. Up until 1941, the appellation Bandol did not even exist.

What good is a red without a white to precede it?

Love this philosophy!

A rosé can never be a great wine, but once in a while you want something to quench your thirst.”

“People around here always say, ‘She has an ass like the Porte d’Aix.’ I wanted you to see it so you’ll know what they mean.”

Aïoli is Provence’s garlic mayonnaise. Some poor souls find it indigestible; others feel their blood stir with excitement as they wolf it down. This aïoli had an entire head of garlic in it, two egg yolks, a pinch of salt, and a liter of Domaine Tempier’s own olive oil.

Meanwhile, there is a humble vin de pays, or “country wine” (an upstart, an outcast, because its vines lie just outside the official Côtes du Rhône zone), whose wine can outluster a good many of its titled neighbors. The vineyard is the Domaine de la Gautière, near Buis-les-Baronnies. Paul and Georgette Tardieu are the proprietors of the Domaine de la Gautière. It is worth visiting and they look forward to visitors. Paul especially likes Americans. He gave me a discount because I am an American. He remembers the war.

“How do you think it is transmitted?” I asked. “By the atmosphere, the air, which is impregnated. The vines breathe through the leaves, you know. Everyone who visits says it smells good here. We’re surrounded by wild hyssop, sage, lavender, pine, thyme, rosemary, broom in blossom … all that counts enormously. I think there is an osmosis of perfumes, of aromatic qualities.

the northern Rhône is easy. There are but a handful, including some of France’s noblest: Saint-Péray, Cornas, Saint-Joseph, Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Condrieu, Château Grillet, and Côte Rôtie. And in contrast to the numerous grape varieties permitted down south, the northern Rhône reds are the result of a single variety, the Syrah.

Auguste Clape has Syrah growing on both terrains, and he says of his flatland wine, “It makes a decent table wine, but nothing more, and yet it is exactly the same Syrah clone that makes my Cornas. The only difference is the terroir.”

Vinification in wood,” he says, “allows a better development of the aromas because there is a phenomenon of osmosis in the wood that you don’t have in glass or metal. In stainless steel, the wine remains more anonymous. It does not reflect the originality of the appellation, by which I mean those characteristics that make Hermitage Hermitage.

Today, from all the appellations of the northern Rhône that produce white wine, there is only one sure thing year in and year out, and that is the quality of the Chave Hermitage blanc. Be it 1986, 1985, 1984, 1983, 1982, 1981, or 1980 (picking the decade I know best), it is a white to be enjoyed young, old, and in between.

A Côte Rôtie is by no means light stuff; it is a substantial wine, but what is unusual is this saplike quality combined with a certain finesse, a certain delicacy. Top it off with that amazing perfume of Syrah fruit grown in this special terroir and you have a wine set apart from all others. Anyone can make a heavy, oaky wine. All you need is a new barrel and sugary (or sugared) grape juice. But a Côte Rôtie that tastes like Côte Rôtie can come only from the terroir of the roasted slope and from the traditional vinification developed over the centuries in the cellars of Ampuis.

When clients planning a trip to France ask my advice, I try to talk them into going to either Alsace or the Beaujolais.

When traveling by car in France, sample the relaxing pleasures of roadside dining as the French themselves do. A picnic is so much more rewarding than the hazards of French fast-food stops. (Ours are gourmet treats in comparison.) Shop for provisions in one of the villages: some local sausages and prepared salad from a charcuterie, bread from a boulangerie, cheeses, plus an apple or pear from a fruit stand. When you see a winery sign, pick up a bottle of local wine, because once you’re outside Paris, wineshops are rare.

Others have made beautiful Pinot Noirs, but none arouse the passions like a true Burgundy. And no other wine seems so French. California has produced some remarkable bottles, but California Pinot Noir is to Burgundy what the Empire State Building is to the Notre-Dame.

Then how should one enter the complex world of red Burgundy? I would advise a full case, twelve bottles of a single wine, a Savigny or Pernand, a Mercurey or Rully, something like that. Go through the case, bottle by bottle, before moving on to another. Unless it is flawed of course, do not judge it one way or another. Rather, listen to it, see what it has to say, get to know it. Next try one of the premier cru vineyards from Volnay or Pommard, Chambolle or Nuits, for example, always listening to the wine instead of imposing upon it your own preconceptions.

Do not demand thick, heavy Burgundy. More often than not, this is a sign of overchaptalization. Instead, look for personality, aroma, lucidity, finesse, wonder, and magic. *

The Côte d’Or is largely, almost exclusively, planted in Pinot Noir until you arrive at Meursault, Puligny, and Chassagne, today’s great white Burgundy villages. Here are the Chardonnays that launched a thousand Chardonnays, which all the wine-producing countries of the world desire to emulate.

Real wine is more than an alcoholic beverage. When you taste one from a noble terroir that is well made, that is intact and alive, you think here is a gift of nature, the fruit of the vine eked out of our earth, ripened by our sun, fashioned by man.