Post by cjm on Feb 13, 2014 4:55:05 GMT
Peynaud p231 et seq
EXHILARATING VIRTUES OF WINE
Brillat—Savarin claimed that coffee was an exhilarating drink; Larousse says the same thing; but it is a long time since coffee made us laugh.
Wine, however, has always been considered enlivening, a drink to raise the spirits. Hundreds of quotations attest to this down the centuries. Is wine really full of good cheer which it spreads through our veins? And is it the alcohol which engenders the sense of optimism? No; alcohol dulls the senses, distorts perception and makes us lose our sense of identity; I cannot accept the notion of euphoria, dreamy or noisy, being linked to a blood—alcohol level of 80 milligrams per litre.
To be merry from too much alcohol is a sad business. What interests me is the effect on the emotions, the happy state of mind that wine causes even before it is drunk. The prospect of wine is so pleasant that it relaxes the face muscles and makes one’s eyes light up. Even before the cork is drawn, a good bottle induces a festive atmosphere of good humour and relaxation. The liveliness of flowing wine is infectious. It inspires winewriters to describe wines imaginatively as frivolous, funny, amusing, roguish, chic, jokey, laughing, naughty. In contrast, some wines are said to be serious; I wonder which these are? Wines that are simply dull, or those few rare and expensive bottles whose prestigious image makes even the lighthearted serious?
The most exhilarating of wines is without doubt sparkling wine. The very way of serving it has a promise of fun: the ice bucket, the napkin draped like a scarf round the bottle, the popping of the cork and the burst of streaming bubbles which make pouring awkward as they spill over the rim of the flute. As an aperitif champagne immediately sets the tone and breaks the ice, something which no other drink can do. If champagne has a happy image, the image of a wine that can be drunk even when one is no longer thirsty, then this is because it is the wine par excellence for happy events.
Wine does indeed have an aura of conviviality. It is enough for a wine professional to identify himself as such for the person he is talking to, to say “So, you’re a winetaster are you!”, along with a knowing wink, implying an appreciation of the supposed delights of the job as he thinks to himself: “work is obviously no problem for you!” He is clearly unaware of the pressure on a taster during tasting, of how tiring repeated tests can be, of the discipline required, of the constant availability and good health that the job demands. Even if he is a teetotaller all he can think of is the jovial aspect of wine.
The journalist Jean Ferniot experienced this when interviewing French people, so he knew what he was talking about when he said: “Stop someone in the street, it does not matter who, and ask what the name Burgundy means to them. They will reply wine. And generally their faces will break into a big smile.”
One morning I was walking along a crowded pavement in Mexico City. The previous evening I had appeared on Mexican television. My interview with Jacobo Zablodovsky, the Mexican Léon Zitrone, had covered the civilization and the humanity of wine, the preferred drink of Latin races, and the possibilities of wine production in Mexico. The average annual per capita consumption of the Mexicans is barely more than a quarter of a litre of wine (they make up for this with other alcoholic drinks: beer, brandy, cocktails and tequila). Afterwards, still in front of the cameras, I had managed an improvised tasting of the wines of five different countries fairly well. So, that morning I was recognized among the‘ crowd and addressed in a familiar way accompanied by a broad smile: “Hey! Are you the Frenchman who was tasting wines on the television yesterday?” I had spoken about the pleasures of tasting to people who had perhaps never drunk a drop of wine, and wine had already created a sense of complicity between us.
Wine’s happy image had shone from their screens and lit up their faces.
I know another country where the beneficial effect of wine is well understood.
It is drunk as a tonic, a stimulant, or simply because one is happy. No, it’s not France, it's Austria.
Right in the middle of Mozart’s C minor Mass, the devout lady in front of me fainted, collapsing onto the flagstones of Salzburg’s baroque cathedral. There was nothing surprising about this unhappy incident; the heat of that July Sunday was suffocating and the sound of choir and orchestra of the Mozarteum made the whole building as well one’s eardrums resonate. The crowd of people standing in the naves and chapels of the church filled it to bursting. A few of them moved aside and tried to help the woman up, to sit her down and give her room to breathe. She had fainted during the powerful hallelujahs. The sacristan, tapping his staff on the marble, forced his way through, bent over the woman, diagnosed the problem and set off towards the sacristy. He came back carrying on a plate a goblet and a flagon of altar wine. He carefully made the woman drink a few sips of the beneficial liquor, and she opened her eyes at the moment when the last bars of the Ite Missa Est were reverberating round the vaulted roof. She already felt better. All that was needed to revive her spirits were a few drops of Gumpoldskirchner. Lucky parishioners whose sacristans know that there is no more delicious and effective first aid for fainting than a little local white wine!
Café Winckler is famous; it dominates the town of Salzburg. You reach this viewpoint via a lift tunnelled in the rock. Night or day the view is unique and spectacular. One evening I dined there. Quite late on a whole group of happy young couples burst into the room. The young men and women sat down at table and ordered wine. No doubt they would be brought some of the toothsome pastries which are Austria’s speciality, and they would have chosen a few bottles of Steiermark Traminer to accompany them. Not at all. They were brought only wine, many bottles of it; and which wine? Beaujolais! This group of Salzburgers knew that a few glasses of wine shared would warm their hearts and faces, and that was all they needed for a celebration.
I thought to myself one day, wine is still the best utilization of solar energy that we have found. Millions of vine leaves per hectare absorb the sun’s rays, turned first towards the morning sun, then heated by the midday sun and finally following the setting sun in the evening. The vine stores this energy in the tastiest form, in its ripening grapes, and not only as sugars. In fact it is the formation of substances other than sugars which is of more interest to us: the anthocyanins of colouring matter, the tannins with their savoury astringency and the aromatic essences concentrated in the cells of the skins.
Later on, in the vat, fermentations will liberate this unstable energy. Then one day, several years or several decades later, the product obtained, purified, refined and settled, will reconstitute those beautiful rays of summer sunshine in your glass in an explosion of smells and flavours. Old wines are always a reminder of fine days, the past regained. Popular wisdom is right: wine really is bottled sunshine; that is why it is a cheerful drink, warmth to the heart and soul.
EXHILARATING VIRTUES OF WINE
Brillat—Savarin claimed that coffee was an exhilarating drink; Larousse says the same thing; but it is a long time since coffee made us laugh.
Wine, however, has always been considered enlivening, a drink to raise the spirits. Hundreds of quotations attest to this down the centuries. Is wine really full of good cheer which it spreads through our veins? And is it the alcohol which engenders the sense of optimism? No; alcohol dulls the senses, distorts perception and makes us lose our sense of identity; I cannot accept the notion of euphoria, dreamy or noisy, being linked to a blood—alcohol level of 80 milligrams per litre.
To be merry from too much alcohol is a sad business. What interests me is the effect on the emotions, the happy state of mind that wine causes even before it is drunk. The prospect of wine is so pleasant that it relaxes the face muscles and makes one’s eyes light up. Even before the cork is drawn, a good bottle induces a festive atmosphere of good humour and relaxation. The liveliness of flowing wine is infectious. It inspires winewriters to describe wines imaginatively as frivolous, funny, amusing, roguish, chic, jokey, laughing, naughty. In contrast, some wines are said to be serious; I wonder which these are? Wines that are simply dull, or those few rare and expensive bottles whose prestigious image makes even the lighthearted serious?
The most exhilarating of wines is without doubt sparkling wine. The very way of serving it has a promise of fun: the ice bucket, the napkin draped like a scarf round the bottle, the popping of the cork and the burst of streaming bubbles which make pouring awkward as they spill over the rim of the flute. As an aperitif champagne immediately sets the tone and breaks the ice, something which no other drink can do. If champagne has a happy image, the image of a wine that can be drunk even when one is no longer thirsty, then this is because it is the wine par excellence for happy events.
Wine does indeed have an aura of conviviality. It is enough for a wine professional to identify himself as such for the person he is talking to, to say “So, you’re a winetaster are you!”, along with a knowing wink, implying an appreciation of the supposed delights of the job as he thinks to himself: “work is obviously no problem for you!” He is clearly unaware of the pressure on a taster during tasting, of how tiring repeated tests can be, of the discipline required, of the constant availability and good health that the job demands. Even if he is a teetotaller all he can think of is the jovial aspect of wine.
The journalist Jean Ferniot experienced this when interviewing French people, so he knew what he was talking about when he said: “Stop someone in the street, it does not matter who, and ask what the name Burgundy means to them. They will reply wine. And generally their faces will break into a big smile.”
One morning I was walking along a crowded pavement in Mexico City. The previous evening I had appeared on Mexican television. My interview with Jacobo Zablodovsky, the Mexican Léon Zitrone, had covered the civilization and the humanity of wine, the preferred drink of Latin races, and the possibilities of wine production in Mexico. The average annual per capita consumption of the Mexicans is barely more than a quarter of a litre of wine (they make up for this with other alcoholic drinks: beer, brandy, cocktails and tequila). Afterwards, still in front of the cameras, I had managed an improvised tasting of the wines of five different countries fairly well. So, that morning I was recognized among the‘ crowd and addressed in a familiar way accompanied by a broad smile: “Hey! Are you the Frenchman who was tasting wines on the television yesterday?” I had spoken about the pleasures of tasting to people who had perhaps never drunk a drop of wine, and wine had already created a sense of complicity between us.
Wine’s happy image had shone from their screens and lit up their faces.
I know another country where the beneficial effect of wine is well understood.
It is drunk as a tonic, a stimulant, or simply because one is happy. No, it’s not France, it's Austria.
Right in the middle of Mozart’s C minor Mass, the devout lady in front of me fainted, collapsing onto the flagstones of Salzburg’s baroque cathedral. There was nothing surprising about this unhappy incident; the heat of that July Sunday was suffocating and the sound of choir and orchestra of the Mozarteum made the whole building as well one’s eardrums resonate. The crowd of people standing in the naves and chapels of the church filled it to bursting. A few of them moved aside and tried to help the woman up, to sit her down and give her room to breathe. She had fainted during the powerful hallelujahs. The sacristan, tapping his staff on the marble, forced his way through, bent over the woman, diagnosed the problem and set off towards the sacristy. He came back carrying on a plate a goblet and a flagon of altar wine. He carefully made the woman drink a few sips of the beneficial liquor, and she opened her eyes at the moment when the last bars of the Ite Missa Est were reverberating round the vaulted roof. She already felt better. All that was needed to revive her spirits were a few drops of Gumpoldskirchner. Lucky parishioners whose sacristans know that there is no more delicious and effective first aid for fainting than a little local white wine!
Café Winckler is famous; it dominates the town of Salzburg. You reach this viewpoint via a lift tunnelled in the rock. Night or day the view is unique and spectacular. One evening I dined there. Quite late on a whole group of happy young couples burst into the room. The young men and women sat down at table and ordered wine. No doubt they would be brought some of the toothsome pastries which are Austria’s speciality, and they would have chosen a few bottles of Steiermark Traminer to accompany them. Not at all. They were brought only wine, many bottles of it; and which wine? Beaujolais! This group of Salzburgers knew that a few glasses of wine shared would warm their hearts and faces, and that was all they needed for a celebration.
I thought to myself one day, wine is still the best utilization of solar energy that we have found. Millions of vine leaves per hectare absorb the sun’s rays, turned first towards the morning sun, then heated by the midday sun and finally following the setting sun in the evening. The vine stores this energy in the tastiest form, in its ripening grapes, and not only as sugars. In fact it is the formation of substances other than sugars which is of more interest to us: the anthocyanins of colouring matter, the tannins with their savoury astringency and the aromatic essences concentrated in the cells of the skins.
Later on, in the vat, fermentations will liberate this unstable energy. Then one day, several years or several decades later, the product obtained, purified, refined and settled, will reconstitute those beautiful rays of summer sunshine in your glass in an explosion of smells and flavours. Old wines are always a reminder of fine days, the past regained. Popular wisdom is right: wine really is bottled sunshine; that is why it is a cheerful drink, warmth to the heart and soul.