French Lessons (20 page)

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.