Two Men In a Car (A Businessman, a Chauffeur, and Their Holidays in France). Mike Buchanan
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declared the sign helpful.
Maybe it was the grim outskirts of Bordeaux, but we found ourselves reflecting on moments in history when people might have said, ‘Cheer up, things could be worse!’ We finally attributed the line to the Mayor of Hiroshima, consoling a friend who had just had his bicycle stolen. 8.15 a.m. on August 6, 1945.
We arrived at the Tourist Office at about 7.30 a.m. We passed the café where we’d eaten lunch earlier in the week, where I’d told the waitress she was très belle. She was setting up some tables and when we passed by and said a breezy ‘Bonjour!’ she looked at us and flashed a million-dollar smile of recognition, before returning the greeting. I didn’t imagine she recalled us at all. That’s très belles femmes for you.
The Médoc is a very special region for lovers of fine red wine and I was greatly looking forward to the day. Paul doesn’t drink red wine so he was simply joining me for a day out, saying he’d appreciate the craft skills that went into winemaking, barrel making and the rest.
Napoleon III asked for a classification of the wines of the Médoc and in 1855 this was finished, based on the prices the wines had fetched over the previous 100 years or more. There have been a very small number of changes since 1855, and in general wines higher up the classification will cost more than those lower down. But there are exceptions and Château Lynch-Bages, which was to be the second estate we visited on this day, is one of them, selling for higher prices than most cinquièmes crus.
There were about 30 people on the tour bus, and our first visit was to Château D’Arsac in the Margaux commune. My prime recollection is of a hauntingly beautiful young tour guide, who spoke only French. She took us around the vineyard and explained various matters about the history and technicalities of winemaking at the estate. I’m sure I speak for most of the men on the tour when I say I didn’t take in everything she said, such was her beauty. Who am I kidding? We took nothing in.
A number of the men – myself included – managed to take a photograph of the young lady in the most improbable circumstances. In my own case, whilst she was talking in front of a large warehouse. She gave me a cool look but seemed satisfied when I smiled and uttered the unlikely phrase, ‘magnificent warehouse!’
Madamoiselle Toptotty then took us on a tour of the estate grounds, in which were some very unremarkable examples of modern sculpture. The worse they were, the more inclined Paul and I were to photograph them. But I loved one particular piece which Paul loathed with even more than his customary vigour. This was an enormously long iron girder which was resting against the château, and extended for some distance above it. ‘Looks like the fuckin’ builders forgot to take it away once they’d finished the fuckin’ roofing job’, he commented.
We tasted a glass of the wine. Well, I had two glasses, to be fair, because Paul didn’t drink his. We returned to the coach and resumed chatting to the pleasant couple who’d sat near us, an Italian man and his Australian-born wife, Anthea B. She had the most beautiful pale grey eyes, and was still a handsome woman of maybe 45 years of age. As a younger woman she must have been a Madamoiselle Toptotty in her own right.
I need now to relate an anecdote from the summer of 2005 or 2006. I was lunching at Mamma Mia’s, an excellent and long-established Italian restaurant in my adopted home town, the throbbing metropolis of Bedford. You must visit the place if you’re ever in the area. On this particular occasion, a hot day, the red wine was warm, maybe 23oC – 24oC. I asked Bruno, the proprietor of the restaurant, for an ice bucket to cool the bottle. He was clearly shocked at my request, and said with some feeling that red wine must be served at room temperature.
I explained to Bruno that this idea originated in France in the 19th century, when average dining room temperatures were unlikely to have been much above 16oC in the winter months, but he wouldn’t accept the point. I’ve had the same argument with a number of people over the years, and am now disinclined to enter into a discussion on the matter. It’s up there with religion and politics as a topic to avoid. But eventually Bruno relented and brought the ice bucket, with some theatrical head-shaking.
The reason for relating this anecdote is that when I asked Anthea B. after the tour if she’d enjoyed it, she said she had, apart from the wine being ‘cold’. Her Italian husband agreed, saying strong red wine should be served at 22oC – 24oC. Against my better judgment I argued the point and they clearly considered me a fool, but were too polite to say so. Then I had a brainwave, an increasingly rare event as I get older.
In my bag on the coach I had a copy of the weighty 5th edition of The World Atlas of Wine by Hugh Johnson and Jancis Robinson. I rifled through it and soon came to the section with serving temperature recommendations for a wide variety of wines. The ideal temperature for a Médoc wine is in the region of 14oC – 18oC. I couldn’t resist showing them the table whilst explaining generously that of course the wine would warm in the glass in a warm environment, and Italians in my experience liked their wines a little warmer. The couple read the text and table without a word and were markedly cool – ironically – towards Paul and myself for the remainder of the day.
Château Lynch-Bages is a ‘fifth growth’ in the 1855 classification but for many years has been regarded more highly, and priced accordingly. It is situated in the southern half of the Pauillac commune, the region around the town of Pauillac. Three of the current four Premier Grand Cru estates are based in this commune, namely Château Latour, Château Mouton Rothschild, and Château Lafite Rothschild. The fourth, Château Haut-Brion, is in the Graves region of Bordeaux.
At Château Lynch-Bages the bilingual – and rather solemn – young tour guide of the female persuasion walked us through the on-site winery, and explained everything in the minutest detail, including the change from the wooden vats used for fermenting up to the 1970s, to the modern stainless steel vats. The old wooden vats, and associated equipment, had been retained in an excellent museum. The enormous physical effort of winemaking in the old days, compared with the mechanised processes of the modern era, was apparent.
At various places in the old winemaking area, and particularly on the first floor, were examples of modern art paintings, very large, produced by a German artist whose name I was determined not to record. I remarked to a few of my fellow tour members, ‘German merde. Makes a change from French merde!’, which resulted in some vigorous nodding of heads. I took photographs of several paintings, not quite believing how awful they were. By this time, a number of the tour members – notably the English-speaking ones – had become quite vocal in their criticism of the art. ‘Wouldn’t have one if you gave it to me’, someone remarked. Paul, as usual, had the last word on the subject, ‘The château owners really shouldn’t buy art when they’re pissed!’ I could only agree.
In Bordeaux I had bought a bottle of 1981 Château Lynch-Bages for around 120 euros, and wasn’t about to give up this opportunity to ask our tour guide if she knew the vintage. The timing of my question was very fortuitous, she declared gravely, for she herself had been born in 1981, and she’d drunk a bottle of that very vintage the previous weekend to celebrate her birthday. She declared it excellent, which pleased me. But then, what else would she say? I was reminded of the response I had from a lady working in a wine shop in Burgundy many years previously, after I’d enquired whether a particular bottle – a rather expensive one – was from a ‘good’ vintage. ‘Zey are all good vintages, monsieur’, she had replied tersely. I’m quite sure she believed it.
The lunch at a restaurant some distance from the château was a major disappointment. I assumed someone in the wine tour business had negotiated an onerous contract with the restaurant, and we were to suffer as a result. It emerged that both the starter and the main course were to consist of fish. We hadn’t been informed of this, nor were we offered an alternative. The starter of a tiny pickled sardine, with a little salad, set the tone for what was to come. A young lady from New Zealand picked at it nervously, as if she believed it contained a hefty dose of polonium. She ate a tiny portion of the sardine before abandoning her heroic effort.
A bottle of a modest Médoc was served with the first course, and one of the men on our table somehow managed to divide it equally between the ten people on the table, a