Springtime Adventures in French Wine Country, Two Decades Ago

Author’s note: Long before “Pour Judgement,” I wrote a monthly newsletter for the wine shop where I worked. In March 2005, the store sent me on a buying trip through the Languedoc and the Northern Rhône. This dispatch appears essentially as written back then — sales pitches, fall arrival dates, Buffalo Bills prophecies, and all. Twenty-one years later, the Bills still haven’t won that Super Bowl, the 2003 Condrieu is long gone, and I remain unwelcome at a certain inn outside Tain l’Ermitage.

After four days of traveling through Languedoc, which is a vast appellation in the south of France, we headed northeast to the Rhône valley. But memories of the places we’d stayed at and the folks we’d met replayed in my head like a sepia-colored montage with Édith Piaf crooning in the background:

• My room at the Hotel Ibis in Narbonne, which featured the most fiendish and clever use of space I’ve ever seen: It was essentially a casket with a commode, but I was so tired the night we arrived that my claustrophobia never kicked in.

• Wandering through the chilly, dank subterranean netherworld at Domaine de Fourn, whose cellars seemed to extend several stories into the earth, and where I discovered (not the French version of Batman hanging upside down from a rafter), but that a blend of chenin blanc, chardonnay, and the local fave, mauzac, all combine to make a citrusy, appley, minerally, and surprisingly inexpensive sparkling wine named Limoux.

• Driving through vineyards in Minervois with the shaggy and semi-jovial Luc Lapeyre in an old Range Rover so filthy that even rough-hewn Australian outbackers would demand it go through a car wash with the windows open (and get new shock absorbers). I forgave him for the rough and jaunty drive after he served us a lunch of fettuccine with truffles; a variety of locally made sausages so exquisitely intense that I’m misting up as I write this; and his bottling of a cuvée called Les Clots, a complex syrah/mourvèdre blend that itself tasted of smoked meat and thus created one of those umami (or “ooh, mommy!”) overloads that wound up making this sentence way too long.

The hotel rooms (but somehow not my waistline) expanded as we moved northeast to the Rhône valley for a series of trade tastings, staying at a semi-charming inn (with semi-charming owners) just outside of the twin towns of Tain l’Ermitage and Tournon, which would be home base for three nights.

We went into town for the kickoff event, a dual tasting of Condrieu and Côte-Rôtie, and at the very first table we stopped at, I encountered the greatest viognier I’ve ever tasted, a 2003 Condrieu from Georges Vernay named Coteau de Vernon: this will be arriving in the fall, there’s not much of it and it will be expensive, but anyone who is enticed by this grape should experience something like Vernon at least once in their lives.

The shameless texture and viscosity reminded me of weightless motor oil, as it coated the palate with a slow-motion seduction so enveloping that, though I was surrounded by hundreds of noisy, babbling tasters, their annoying roar disappeared, the lights seemed to dim and I heard Grover Washington start to play a groovy sax solo in the background.

Peaches, mango, and wet stones conquered my olfactories with little resistance: I was putty in this wine’s hands, and struggled to regain my senses and return from my interlude to taste other wines. It was near-perfect: I had to de-fog my glasses.

When it arrives in our store, I’m going to buy a bottle, take it to dinner with my favorite babe and order a series of decadent seafood dishes (crab cakes and scallops and lobster and ahi) and even have dessert with this stuff.

This was the best white wine I tasted during the entire trip. It will be here in the fall for somewhere around $80.

As we continued wandering from table to table and hall to hall, I heard various offhand observations from many heavy-hitters in the Valley: One commented that the use of American oak was “good for my fireplace, but not for barrels.” Another mentioned that they were actually going to start using American barrels, and when I asked why, his one-word, frank reply was “Australia.” In a fiercely competitive wine world, this remark both troubled and delighted me.

There will be a multitude of sexy 2003 (and 2004) Northern Rhônes arriving gradually in the next few months. We’ll keep you apprised in this monthly mailer.

On the last night of our stay at the inn outside of town, we coaxed the owner to prepare dinner for our group in her large country kitchen, and we provided the wines. We’d picked up about a case of samples during the first part of the trip, and after a week, it was time to go through them and see if they were worthy or if we’d been hallucinating during our initial tasting.

It was early Sunday evening at sunset: we popped open the bottles on the patio, and found that the reds weren’t at cellar temp, so we each grabbed two bottles per hand and gripped the necks between our knuckles and gave them a bath in a gently flowing, knee-high, surprisingly chilly fountain in the courtyard. Bent at the knee and hovering over a fountain as though worshipping its streaming waters, we must have looked like some crazed cult (or just loony Americans), and I think Marie (the owner) was offended by what must have appeared from her nearby kitchen, as a fully-clothed mooning episode. She served us dinner anyway.

Marie was a no-nonsense Catalonian woman who spoke Spanish (and her mind), which allowed me to communicate a bit with her, as I dusted off my 30-year-old high school Español and inquired what was in the soup course: “Todo,” she replied, referring to what I hoped was “a little bit of everything good,” and not the remnants from last week’s leftovers puréed carelessly in the Cuisinart.

It was a tomato and seafood based sopa, and paired beautifully with the more delicate reds we’d opened.

The highlight of the dinner was some kind of delicious game bird, but no one could understand Marie as she explained what it was. She went off to the library, found a book with a picture of the fowl, and we suddenly realized that we were munching on (and absolutely enjoying) peacock. It was spicy and somewhat duck-like, and ideal with the ripe, fruit-forward hefty reds that we had on hand.

My only gaffe of the evening was when the señora saw me pour some of her decanted Côtes du Rhône into my glass, and nearly snort it out my nose in disgust, accompanied by dismissive hand gestures that were understandable through any language barrier.

She was suddenly upon me with a “No le gusta?” (“You don’t like my wine?”), and as I backpedaled in broken Spanish and explained that it was, er, merely, just … served in the wrong ORDER, and was quite nice on its own, but had been a bit overwhelmed after the fuller-bodied reds we’d just had, she looked at me and her expression seemed to say, “I should have poisoned your peacock, fatboy.”

My slightly inebriated dining compatriots across the table found great delight as I squirmed under her angry glare.

When we checked out the next morning, in the interest of maintaining good international relations (and because there was no room remaining in the car for all the souvenirs and wine we still had), I left some presents in my room for her and her father: several travel books, a Buffalo Bills t-shirt, and a 46 long blue blazer that no longer fit me after the previous night’s massive degustation.

If I go back, I hope that, in the meantime, Marie has become a Bills fan, and we can converse in Spanish about their dramatic Super Bowl victory of January 2006, and maybe have some Buffalo style Peacock wings with bleu cheese, celery, and a glass of her favorite Côtes du Rhône.

Au revoir et merci!