The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season

Most important, of course, is the organization of a menu in terms of what may be called a “gastronomic aesthetic.” Whether a meal begins with an hors d’oeuvre or a soup (except for the potées or garbures that are entire meals in themselves), this course must be conceived to heighten—not quench—the appetite. It should be light of body and not overabundant. From that point on, the movement should be from fish or other white delicacies, such as brains or sweetbreads, into meats, and from light meats into dark meats, from light butter or cream sauces into rich dark sauces drawn from stocks and red wines. By this I do not mean to suggest that a dark meat may not be prepared in cream or a fish in red wine, but I do think that it would be a mistake to include these two preparations in the same menu. In the last century it was not unusual to serve fish after meats and chicken after game. To most people today this would seem outlandish.

Repetition should be avoided in a menu. The French claim that the truffle alone may be respectably allowed to appear in more than one dish at the same meal. Though that seems like nonsense, if there are mushrooms in the fish sauce, don’t garnish the meat with mushrooms; if one of the main dishes is rich in cream, don’t serve a dessert based on whipped cream; nor a custard sauce with the dessert if another sauce is thickened with egg yolks. Don’t serve rice with the fish and potatoes with the meat, or watercress with the roast and a green salad after. Don’t serve a gratin based on Swiss cheese and include the same cheese on the cheese platter.

The juxtaposition of cold and hot, crisp and creamy, rough and smooth, sauced and dry, should be considered. Rare venison accompanied by poivrade sauce, which requires hours, if not days, of preparation, is sublime.

On the whole, it seems to me best for a simple meal to contain only one sauce, and for a more complex menu to be limited to two, which should be very different in character, or perhaps three if one includes a sauced dessert.

The cheese course I think of largely as an excuse (and a good one) to drink another wine. In France, if one serves a single cheese, it is invariably a Camembert. I prefer to serve a cheese platter that may include a fresh goat-type cheese, a Swiss Gruyère, a blue, and a softripened variety. One’s guests are happier with a choice.

About desserts, one should remember that heavy desserts should only follow the simplest of meals. Heavy desserts are a tradition only in those countries where a single main dish is also habitual. Something light and playful in spirit is best. Lots of air, perhaps in the form of a soufflé, or a mousse, is usually appreciated. If you want to serve a dessert wine, avoid chocolate at all cost. Ice creams and ices kill wines also (one of the more surprising habits in France is that of drinking brut champagne with desserts—often ice cream). With simple meals, many people are happy with a piece of fresh fruit for dessert.

French Wine (#ulink_347ba0aa-3ba1-5bcc-8b6e-1230f3bd622e)

Wines are of two sorts. The one whose consumption is the greatest—that known as gros rouge in France (its white equivalent is often called pousse au crime), the American counterpart of which would be those gallon jugs of cheap red wine—is a product essentially of the laboratory: a knowledgeable mixture of a number of inferior wines, more or less high in alcohol content. It has been subjected to violent clarification processes (known as “defecatory”), often involving the injection of horse’s blood into the wine. This is less shocking than it seems, for the blood, high in albumin content, acts merely as a precipitant for the impurities contained in suspension in all young wines. (Most fine wines are clarified also—but by the addition of the gentle egg white.) It has been “stabilized” by heating and by the addition of bacteria-killing chemicals. It is not a living thing.

The other wine lives and grows, and although in recent years technicians and winegrowers have come to understand a great deal more about the life of a wine and the different factors responsible for its development, it retains its mysterious autonomy, and even those old men who have nursed the vines and the wines of their fathers since childhood are constantly surprised by turns taken in a wine’s development, whether it be over a period of months as the new wine is refining in kegs or in the course of its life span in bottles. Although, in the large picture, a single wine develops along the same lines from one bottle to another, it rarely happens that two bottles of a very old wine—even though they be from the same keg, bottled at the same time, and laid side by side in the same cellar—present identically the same characteristics when opened one after the other.

The wine one drinks from one’s glass depends on a vast number of things that make it precisely what it is at that moment. The basic personality of a wine depends, for one thing, on the grape variety; certain varieties seem to be meant for the climate and soil of certain regions—their qualities are either lost or transformed when they are transplanted elsewhere. The age of the vines is also significant. They must be eight to ten years of age before producing a wine of maximum quality (grapes from younger vines are often harvested separately to make a lesser wine) and are usually replaced at the age of seventy or eighty years). Important, too, are the exposure (hillsides or inclines exposed to the south and east being considered the best), the care and pruning of the vines, the weather of the particular year, the care and rapidity with which the grapes are harvested and the weather at that time, the method of vinification and the cleanliness of the vessels in which it takes place (vinification is that part of a wine’s preparation related to the fermentation processes and succeeding purifications). That personality may or may not be developed to its fullest extent, depending on the age of the wine, the care it has received, the temperature at which it is served, the amount of time it has been allowed to breathe and expand between the opening of the bottle and the drinking of the wine, the shape of the glass in which it is drunk, the preparation it accompanies, the condition of one’s palate, and so on.

Not only is vinification an extremely complex process, but, methods vary from one region to another, and the following discussion must, necessarily, be very general in nature.

RED WINE

All the grape varieties used for making fine red wines are whitefleshed and give a transparent juice. The coloring matter comes from the skins. (Certain grape varieties known as teinturiers are red-fleshed and are used to strengthen the color of inferior wines.) The grapes, once picked, are usually passed through a machine that crushes them at the same time that it separates them from the stems. In the past, the stems were left and the grapes were crushed by treading them with one’s bare feet. This is still done on certain small properties, and if economically practicable would still, no doubt, be the best method, for in this way the seeds do not risk being crushed and lending their bitterness to the wine. The removal of the stems is useful in producing wines that are more supple (the tannin contained in the stems does not go into it), and slightly higher in alcoholic content and color, since the water from the stems is eliminated. The crushed grapes are then put into enormous vats, which may be either open or closed; these are traditionally wooden, but today very often of glass-lined cement or stainless steel, which are much easier to clean and maintain. In these vats the juice and the pulp ferment together, the color is transferred to the juice because of the molecular transformation in the pulp, and the sugar is transformed into alcohol. In a normal year– neither too hot nor too cold—the fermentation begins easily and the temperature in the vats does not rise too high (if it goes beyond approximately 95° F., the bacteria are paralyzed and the fermentation is arrested before all the sugar has been transformed into alcohol). In cold years it is often necessary to heat a certain quantity of crushed grapes (pied de cuve), which, when in full fermentation, is then added to the vat in order to launch the bacteria rendered sluggish by the cold. In hot years the fermentation is often too active. The must (grape juice) is aerated and special cooling apparatuses installed in the vats are put into operation to prevent the temperature from rising beyond 85° F. (In the past, all that could be done was to throw in a few blocks of ice—far from the ideal solution.) Normally, the alcoholic fermentation is terminated after five or six days, the wine is left to cool in the vat, then drawn off and put into barrels. In the earlier part of this century, it was standard practice to leave the wine and pulp together in the vat for as long as three weeks to a month, producing a wine richer in tannin. Today, the average length of time is more likely to be from five to ten days. The pulp remaining in the vat is then pressed and the resulting liquid (vin de presse) is, in most instances, mixed with the wine that has been drawn off, but sometimes it is kept apart to make an inferior wine. Certain great wines may gain by not receiving the addition of the pressed wine, but most wines depend on this addition to give them more body. Red wines remain in kegs for from six months (Beaujolais, for instance) to three years (certain of the great Bordeaux), one and one-half or two years representing the average. During this period the kegs must be regularly refilled to compensate for evaporation and protect the wine from contact with air, the wine must be regularly drawn from one keg to another (soutirage) to separate the clear wine from the deposits at the bottom of the keg, and most wines are clarified just before the last soutirage or two by the addition of egg white or another albuminous substance.

A secondary fermentation—once thought to have been the tail end of the alcoholic fermentation, thrust back into action by the presence in the air of the pollen from the grape flowers in the spring following the harvest—has in recent years been identified as a completely separate process, which, however, rarely takes place until the alcoholic fermentation is finished, and because of the cold winter months, without the interference of the technician, waits until spring to go into action. It is known as the “malo-lactic” fermentation and produces a de-acidification essential to the quality of the wine. Nowadays, vinification techniques often permit the rapid termination of the malolactic fermentation immediately after the alcoholic fermentation (by drawing the still warm wine from the vat directly into another vat and keeping the vinification cellar—chais—heated, for instance).

WHITE WINE

The white grapes, used in making white wines, are pressed immediately after having been picked, and the unfermented juice is put directly into kegs where the fermentation takes place—much more slowly and over a longer period than with red wines because of the smaller size of the kegs. Many experiments have been made with rapid fermentation of the juice in large vats, but the quality of the wine always suffers; however, this is the way in which cheaper white wines are made. White wines, with a few exceptions (such as the great Sauternes, for instance, and Château-Chalon, which is discussed further on), never remain in kegs more than a year and a half, and, more often than not, are put into bottles after six months. They receive the same kind of care in kegs as the reds, and, being more susceptible to disease, are treated with sulphur, often, unfortunately, to excess.

ROSÉ WINE

Rosé wines are made from red grapes or a combination of red and white and are vinified like white wines. A few start out their career in a vat like the red wines, which lends them a deeper color, but then are pressed after a few hours and run off into barrels or other vats to finish their fermentation. The bulk of them are treated like cheap white wines—pressed immediately, fermented in large vats, and stored in vats, as well.

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Since World War II, a great deal of experimentation in techniques of vinification has taken place, and most, although not all, winegrowers have altered their methods in order to produce less tannic wines that mature more rapidly both in kegs and in bottle. On the whole, the results are satisfactory, the general level of quality, year after year, bad or good, being higher than before, but it is to be feared that the sublime peaks of the past may never again be reached, and that thirty or forty years hence, the wines of great recent years will bear no comparison with the ’26s, ’28s, ’29s, and ’34s, whose beauty at present is often so astonishing.

The world has changed, and economic pressures force the winegrower to change his methods in order to satisfy a wine-buying public far larger, and far more modest in income and wine knowledge, than their predecessors. Few have cellars and fewer still are willing to invest in wines that must be put to rest for ten or twenty years. Even with “improved” methods that bring rapid maturing, most of the great wines are drunk before they are ready, engendering disappointment in those consumers who had hoped to find more than a famous label and who do not understand the reasons for their disappointment. More than once, friends have told me apologetically that perhaps they are wrong, but they prefer a Beaujolais to one wine or another of prestigious reputation; this is not astonishing, even though Beaujolais are nearly always drunk too old in America!

The vintage, or year, counts for a great deal in the aging of a wine and constantly deals surprises even to the most accomplished of winegrowers. Different years develop more or less rapidly and often in an unpredictable way. At the moment of this writing, for instance, the, 61 Bordeaux are not ready to drink, nor are many, 57s (both in Bordeaux and Burgundy), whereas, most ‘58s and some, 59s are on the downward path, and the, 62s are at their peak, in many instances, with a few declining. Many, 37s remain young, but astringent (probably they never will develop), and, while most, 47s and, 49s have long since taken the fall, the, 45s remain generally solid, and many, 48s (which everyone thought to be a nasty, thankless vintage) have begun to open out beautifully.

Wines freshly bottled often suffer from “bottle sickness” (maladie de bouteille) and any shipment, as well, temporarily unsettles a wine’s equilibrium. Put to rest in a good cellar, these wines regain all their qualities after a few months and then continue to develop in a normal way.

Wines that have traveled, or that have been kept in a poor cellar, or that have been changed often from one cellar to another, age more rapidly and less perfectly. Thus a fine wine from a recent year, opened and drunk at the vineyard, may still have the cool, deep color of youth, retain a great deal of fruit, and remain tannic and jealous of its bouquet, whereas the same wine bought from an American dealer is apt to be lighter and warmer in color, suppler, with its bouquet in full bloom. Its qualities at this early peak, although characteristic, will lack the depth eventually to be achieved by the companion wine that has never left the home cellar.

A good cellar is not a luxury or a fantasy but an absolute necessity for anyone who loves wine. In city apartments, where such a cellar may be out of the question, one has no alternative but to buy wines in small quantities at a time from a dependable dealer who has a good cellar and store them in the darkest, coolest corner of the apartment. If the central heating equipment is in the cellar, an old-fashioned “cave,” like that in which our grandmothers kept preserves, may be the best solution. It is relatively simple of construction. Many Americans are experimenting with air-conditioned cellars. This, too, might be interesting for those who can afford such an installation. The ideal temperature is 50-55° F., but a cellar that is cooler is better than one that is too warm. Above all, the temperature should not vary more than a few degrees from one time of year to another. It should neither be too humid nor too dry, but an excess of humidity is less harmful than too little. There should be some ventilation. Foods that may lend an odor to the air should never be kept in a wine cellar, for the gentle development of a wine depends on a slow breathing process through the cork (it is for this reason that half-bottles, bottles and magnums—different capacities related to identical corks—age more or less rapidly, other circumstances remaining the same). Bottles must always be stored lying down. A cork that is not constantly in contact with the wine loses its resiliency and allows too much air to enter, and the wine spoils.

TEMPERATURE AND SERVICE

The myth that all red wines should be served at “room temperature” has ruined more great wines than any other single mistreatment. It dates from the nineteenth century, when, for venerable wines, it was a valid dictum, as central heating did not exist and room temperature was closer to 60° than to 80° Small red wines, drunk young, gain by being served slightly cooler than cellar temperature. Fairly young Burgundies are perfect drunk at cellar temperature. In general, Bordeaux should be served slightly warmer than Burgundies and older wines slightly warmer than young, but never should they be reduced to that horrible, tepid brew that wine stewards regularly blackmail their clients into accepting.

White wines should, of course, always be chilled, but never iced. They should be chilled as rapidly as possible; the classic ice bucket is still the best method. A couple of hours in the refrigerator or a half hour in the freezer (provided one does not forget it is there) will do the trick; but a prolonged stay in the refrigerator will rob a wine of all its qualities—it is cassé—broken.

Any old wine, white or red, should be uncorked a couple of hours before serving. If this is not feasible, it should be decanted before serving, for the aeration or “breathing” is essential to the development of the bouquet. Even in restaurants, if I know in advance what I want to drink, I always telephone several hours ahead to ask that the wine be uncorked in time, for I have too often known a great wine to begin to open out only as the bottle was being finished.

White wine rarely contains sediment other than an occasional deposit of tartar crystals, which, being relatively heavy, do not disturb the wine. A red wine that contains a certain amount of sediment must be handled very gently from the moment it leaves the cellar to the moment the last drop is poured. (Often, in restaurants, one sees bottles turned upside down, shaken, tossed around, before being thrown into their wicker cradles, then poured with the greatest of “loving” care and ceremony before the client; the liquid that comes out, of course, is mud.) If possible, the bottle should be stood upright for a couple of days before it is to be served; otherwise, a cradle into which it may be slipped sidewise without disturbing the sediment is the best solution. If it is not decanted, it should be poured slowly and regularly without ever returning to an upright position until all glasses have been filled. To decant a wine, a candle or a small light bulb should be placed behind the decanter and slightly to the right (for a right-handed person) so that, while pouring, the light is directly behind the neck of the bottle. Tilt the bottle slowly with a steady hand and pour steadily, watching the transparency through the neck of the bottle. The moment the wine becomes troubled, stop pouring. Properly poured, the wine in the decanter will be completely limpid and only one-third to one-half glass of liquid and residue will remain in the bottle.

The glass from which one drinks should be uncut, undecorated and uncolored, so that the color of the wine may be properly admired. It should be stemmed and large enough to hold approximately one-half cup when less than half filled. The form may be that of a tulip or a ballon; the essential thing is that the circumference of the lip be somewhat smaller than that of the rest of the glass, so that when the glass is from one-third to one-half full, the bouquet may develop in the space above. It is attractive, but not necessary, to serve white and red wines in differently shaped glasses. Traditionally, Burgundy and Bordeaux (as well as many other wine regions) have their own glasses, but, in practice, “claret” glasses are too small to serve for anything but water and Burgundy glasses are too large to avoid ostentation.

To taste a wine properly, I do not feel that it is too indiscreet to pucker one’s mouth (the French say that one forms one’s mouth in a cul de poule) and suck air through the wine before letting it spread to all corners of the mouth and tongue (although, admittedly, one’s table companions may be surprised at this performance).

In selecting wines for a meal, it is logical to begin with the lightest and driest of whites (they are also perfect as aperitifs and do not paralyze the palate as do, for instance, dry martinis), which may accompany hors d’oeuvre, light seafood dishes, etc., and work through richer, though still dry, white wines with hot sauced fish dishes and certain other white meats, vegetable gratins, cheese soufflés (fish cooked in red wine are, preferably, accompanied by red wine). In moving from a white to a red wine, neither should suffer by comparison (thus, it would be a pity to leap from a Muscadet into a Lafite or to serve a Beaujolais after a Corton-Charlemagne), and the red wine that follows another should be bigger of body and older. In short, work from white to red, small to large, and young to old. But one must not take all of this too seriously; and it is great fun to make up rules and then disprove them, or attempt to. In general it is easier to marry wines from the same region than those of disparate character, but it is often amusing, and sometimes exciting, to switch from Bordeaux to Burgundy, or from old to young, or from Burgundy to Bordeaux (which is severely disapproved!). Assuming the dessert to be of the right character, one’s pleasure is always enriched by finishing a meal with a great Sauternes. (The name Sauternes when referring to the region in France or wines from that region is always spelled with a final s. The s has been dropped in English when the name refers to American-made wines).

Some French Wines

With some rare exceptions, the finest wines of France are produced in the Rhône Valley, Burgundy, the region of Bordeaux, and the Loire Valley—Champagne being a world apart, although it does produce lovely still white wines, blancs de blancs natures. The term, blanc de blancs distinguishes any white Champagne wine, made uniquely of white grapes, from other Champagnes made of red grapes (blancs de noirs) or of a mixture of white and red grapes. When found on wine labels from other regions, where all white wines are made from white grapes, the term is merely a bit of pretentious nonsense designed to flatter snobbish instincts through its associations with champagne and “elegance.”

Central and southern France produce vast quantities of small wines, many of which carry the V.D.Q.S. (Vins Délimités de Qualité Supérieur) label of quality. Their qualities are best appreciated in the regions that produce them (although I cannot take too seriously the notion that certain wines cannot travel—no wines travel well, but all wines travel. It is, rather, I think, those circumstances that render these little wines pleasant that refuse to travel with them—the abrupt coolness of a cellar on a sweltering, thirsty day and the appeasement lent by a light, young, cool wine, combined with the teasing perfume of the earthen floor, impregnated with wine spilled and spit there by tasters for decades, if not centuries).

The few wines discussed on the following pages are among the best known in France and the most widely exported. They nearly all fall under the control of the French Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (hence, the term Appellation Contrôlée to be found on the labels). When referring to an Appellation Contrôlée d’Origine, I shall, for simplicity’s sake, often use the abbreviation “A.O.”

The order of presentation is unrelated to respective qualities, but follows, rather, a geographical logic. The descriptions of the various wines are, inevitably, vague, and in any case one may come to know wines only through tasting (although it does not follow that those far more experienced than myself can always pinpoint a wine tasted blindly).

THE RHÔNE VALLEY

The southern part of the Rhône Valley, near Avignon, produces one splendid red wine, Châteauneuf-du-Pape, whose qualities are sometimes masked by an excess of alcohol content. A good Châteauneuf acquires a great deal of elegance with age. A few of the Châteauneuf vineyards make a small quantity of white wine—that of the Domaine de Mont-Redon is particularly successful. Tavel, Chusclan, and Lirac produce rosé wines, highly perfumed, with perhaps too high an alcoholic content to drink with the abandon that, well chilled, they incite.

Traveling north, the wines of Crozes-Hermitage and Hermitage, both red and white, are remarkable, less overpowering than their southern neighbors, and finally, as one approaches Lyons, the Côte-Rôtie is perhaps the subtlest of the Côtes-du-Rhône reds. All are made with a number of different grape varieties, of which the Syrah dominates in the Côte-Rôtie and the Grenache (a variety useful in raising the alcohol content of a wine) too often dominates in the Châteauneufs. All are, at best, ideal red meat, game and cheese wines.

A famous white wine, the Château Grillet, is made in the Côte-Rôtie area, but so limited is its production that it belongs, essentially, to the realm of wine literature.

THE BURGUNDIES

North of Lyons is Beaujolais country. Lyons itself claims to be fed by three rivers, of which the third is Beaujolais—in fact, wine to a Lyonnais means Beaujolais, and I have never drunk a bad one in that city—nor one that was over a year old. The wines of Beaujolais are made from the Gamay grape (a small amount of white Beaujolais wine has been produced in recent years—it is of interest mostly as a curiosity), and when honestly vinified in the traditional Beaujolais manner, drunk cool and young, they are glorious. Light and fruity, the French say of them that they are gouleyants, which means essentially that they slide down the throat with ease and in great quantity. The finer ones come from strictly limited areas that take the village names. If one were to construct a “ladder” of the different crus and the perfect age at which to drink them (not, however, to be taken too seriously), Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages might occupy the months of December through March; Chiroubles, Brouilly, Côte de Brouilly and Morgon, April through June; and Fleurie, Saint-Amour, Juliénas and Chénas would finish out the year nicely. Moulin-à-Vent occupies a place apart, as it has more grand vin pretensions and should be allowed to age a bit. Those who “adore” Beaujolais wines know that these should neither be drunk at room temperature nor iced. Brought directly up from the cellar and kept in an ice bucket for five minutes or in the refrigerator for half an hour, they are perfect. They are the ideal accompaniment to simple, rustic dishes (potées, tripes, poule au pot, charcuterie) and grilled meats and poultry.

Many decent table wines, both red and white, issue from the Mâconnais, but the Pouilly trinity (-Fuissé, -Vinzelles, -Loché) are the only Mâcon wines in a class apart. Made from the Pinot Chardonnay grape (the same responsible for the Côte de Beaune whites and for blanc de blancs champagne), they are the ideal “all-purpose” white wines; neither too dry nor too rich nor excessively alcoholic, they have a fresh and exciting fruit when young, and after two or three years in bottle they develop a suave elegance that lifts them easily into the “great wine” category.

A bit before arriving at the southernmost tip of the Côte d’Or, Mercurey and Rully both produce white wines, about which, although each has its distinct personality, the same general remarks may be made as about Pouilly-Fuissé. Mercurey reds are light-bodied and, after a couple of years in bottle, develop a very pretty bouquet. They will keep much longer, but are never better than when drunk two or three years old and at cellar temperature.

All the greatest wines of Burgundy are produced from a strip of land hardly more than thirty miles long, known as the Côte d’Or. It stretches from Santenay to Fixin (just south of Dijon) and is divided into two sections, the southern half of which is known as the Côte de Beaune and the northern as the Côte de Nuits. A mere recital of the names of the villages covering that stretch will excite the papillary glands of a wine lover.

The greatest whites come from the Côte de Beaune (although a few, none the less impeccable, made from the Pinot Blanc grape, are produced in the Côte de Nuits) and are made from the Pinot Chardonnay grape. Montrachet, it is said, finds its peer only in Château d’Yquem. The Puligny-Montrachets, Corton-Charlemagnes and certain Meursaults (-Perrières, -Genevrières, -Charmes, etc.) certainly run close competition and, perhaps by virtue of being slightly less “heady,” are easier to place in a menu. Another beautiful white, less well known, is the Clos des Mouches at Beaune. All of these wines superbly accompany richly sauced fish dishes and chicken in white wine or cream sauces, and they happily precede great red Burgundies.

The Côte d’Or reds are made from the Pinot Noir grape. Those from the Côte de Beaune, with the Volnays heading the list (Corton, which is near the borderline, has a distinctly “Nuits” personality), are lighter in body than the Côte de Nuits, suppler, and on the whole mature more rapidly. They are faultless and often suffer unfairly from the inevitable comparison with the Côte de Nuits.

On the Côte de Nuits side, great red wines are numerous. The wines of the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti are universally thought to be the finest of all, and, of course it is true that they are breathtaking, but with such glories as Musigny and Chambertin (in whose bouquet, many people claim to find traces of the barnyard—that is possible, but it comes about as close as anything I know to Heaven) in the running, it seems unfair to give a place apart to one tiny group of vineyards. Many beauties, besides those mentioned, come from Vosne, Chambolle and Gevrey (which most often add the names of their most distinguished growths to those of the villages). Nor are Echezeaux, Vougeot (these two are both very close in character to the Vosne-Romanées), Fixin, or Nuits-Saint-Georges to be snubbed. The latter have a character apart—perhaps less sophisticated, not so elegant, more “earthy,” a bit harder—it is difficult to touch with words the soul of a wine. As for La Romanée, famous in oenological literature, I have never tasted it, nor even ever seen a bottle of it. One of Gevrey-Chambertin’s best known winegrowers told me recently that he had seen it and tasted it for the first time only a few months earlier on a trip to England!