What Sort of People Take French Wine Tasting Courses?

At first, naïveté makes everything like Christmas - all newness and wonder. But when it comes to wine tasting, after a while you get tired of knowing less about wine than even your glass does.

When we lived in France, every night at dinner, my French husband Maxime would retrieve a bottle of wine from his wine safe. Then he'd hide the label, make me taste the wine and try to guess what it was. These incessant wine tests and my incessant failing of them reached the point where I’d had enough. I didn’t want to stop drinking the lovely French wines, but I did want to stop getting a headache every time I did.

So I came up with a plan:

‘Tonight, I’M choosing the wine,’ I announced to Maxime one evening. ‘I mean, it’s not fair, you get to choose every night!’

And if I chose it, I was certainly not going to test myself on it.

Maxime looked at me dubiously. ‘OK …’

I grinned triumphantly and jumped up to grab a bottle. But um … which one? Oh God, I could feel another headache coming on. I could imagine several things happening:

a     a. I’d inadvertently choose a sweet wine

b     b. I’d inadvertently choose something that wasn’t ready to drink

c     c. I’d inadvertently choose something Maxime was saving for a special occasion

Luckily I had a solution. It was to say ‘oh bugger it!’ and pick a wine at random.

I ferried the random bottle to Maxime, flinching a bit as I handed it over for inspection.

‘This is undrinkable,’ he announced.

Oh. At least that particular answer was unexpected.

‘Well, what are you doing with an undrinkable wine in your fridge?’ I answered back.

‘I was given it by a friend.’

The poor friend, I thought.

‘You can drink this if you want, but I’m not,’ Maxime said, and marched stiffly off back to the wine safe.

I sighed. Here we bloody go again. Then something occurred to me. Maxime couldn’t have been born knowing about wine (although you could certainly be forgiven for thinking so). He must have learnt somehow.

‘How come you know about all these wines?' I asked him. 'How come whenever anyone makes you guess a wine, you always get it right?’ (I can’t tell you how annoying that is. You’re just hanging out for the Wine Lord to take a fall.)

‘I did a wine course.’

Oh. Oh good! I thought. Maxime’s not really a supernatural wine freak. He had to learn like a mere mortal! And … I’m a mere mortal. Maybe I could learn too …?

And so it was that every Friday evening after that, I drove to the Alsatian town of Rouffach on the wine road. I would spend a couple of hours with a room full of others in an building that looked like an old schoolhouse, covered in shaggy stork’s nests, and listen to Alsace’s wine experts hold forth. ‘Apple taste, malic acid, in Sylvaner grape,’ I would write. ‘Chaptalization - adding sugar - what some naughty winemakers do in Alsace.’ After the theory, there was the practice: we students went to our benches, each with a sink for rinsing, and the teacher would pour samples of wine for us to guess and describe. We covered the six Alsace white grapes, learning what makes a good wine, and how to comment on it, judge it and detect a range of defects. Sounds good, right?

Not good. The thing was, the course was in French and the other students all worked in the wine industry. I wondered if I’d bitten off more than I could chew. Would Maxime divorce me if I failed a wine exam?

At the end of the course, I went to the Alsace wine headquarters in Colmar for the wine exam. The interior of the building was UFO shaped and laid out like a futuristic parliament. The examiners were seated in the middle on a dais, dressed in official wine robes. They looked like real wine lords, looking down on us with grave faces. No one said a word as the robed ones got up and walked around, silently filling our glasses. With a shaking hand, I took a large sip of the first glass to settle my nerves (that’s the advantage of an exam in wine. I could've done with a big glass of Riesling in year 12 maths. My answers might have gotten a little more creative than is desired for maths, but hey, it would’ve been a lot more fun).

The first task was to identify the grape varieties, and then guess the defects in various wines the examiners had added things to. The finale was a commentary on a mystery wine to be delivered before the examiners. When my turn came for the commentary, I was left in a room by myself to bond with a glass for ten minutes before being summoned before the examiners. I picked up the glass and found myself sniffing and swirling the way I’d seen many a person I’d assumed to be a pretentious git do, and what Maxime does. (But Maxime, when he tastes, doesn’t seem to be out to impress anyone. In fact, it seems that at that moment, he wouldn’t care if he was alone on the planet.)

Having finished my git-like wine swirling routine, I went back into the UFO and stood before the robed examiners. I was to start by giving them a visual description of the wine. We had been taught to begin by saying ‘I am in the presence of a white wine’. But I simply couldn’t bring myself to say something so bloody naff. I said I thought the wine looked dark gold instead. Luckily the wine lords didn’t appear to mind. I moved to the nose, the bouquet.

‘I can smell mushroom,’ I announced. Not very bouquet like, that wine.

‘OK,’ said one of the examiners. ‘And does the wine also taste like mushroom?’

I couldn't taste any mushroom. I panicked. Oh God, should it taste of mushroom? Should it? Maybe he was trying to trick me?

‘No,’ I said finally.

‘Good. It shouldn’t taste like mushroom.’

Phew.

My palms were sweating like two little fountains by the time we finished. Feeling faintly sick after the harrowing session with the mushroom wine (drinking at nine in the morning may also have had something to do with it), I milled about with the other wine students while the examiners marked our papers. Eventually, we were called back into the UFO. The examiners announced who had passed, and who had got the highest mark. Well! Let’s just say the result was a turn up for the books. I came out wearing a smile wide enough to crack my face. I had done EVEN BETTER THAN MAXIME! It was a real David shoves it up Goliath moment.

So Maxime wouldn’t have to divorce me after all. Wait a minute, I thought - Maxime got a lower mark than me, so maybe I should divorce him? Or at least make him do the vacuuming.

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French Tips on Mixing Business With Pleasure (a.k.a. Food and Wine)

The other day, my French husband Maxime observed rather mournfully that Australians don’t do business lunches very often. Personally, I'm not so keen on business lunches - I’d rather have a break at lunchtime, and do business meetings at a table without getting crumbs in my computer and sauce on my reports.

‘But it’s the ambience,’ Maxime said. ‘It’s nicer to be in a restaurant than a sterile office. And the good food makes me feel happier.’

‘Business meetings aren’t supposed to be about pleasure,’ I said.

Or are they?

When we lived in France, Maxime had ‘business’ lunches every day. His calendar was planned months in advance,detailing whom he would meet at which restaurant. I would ask each night how the business lunch went, and Maxime’d go into raptures about the food and tell me which wine they chose. So not much business got done then, I thought to myself. Unless it was the business of eating and drinking. Maybe his business lunches should have been called 'pleasure lunches'.

Of course, in Australia, things are different. Maxime has been forlornly lunching alone and wineless. But now it seems things have taken a turn for the better: Maxime came home from work yesterday brandishing a bottle of 2003 Pinot Noir from Orange, NSW, and grinning from ear to ear.

‘It’s for work,’ he explained.

‘Is it?’ I said doubtfully.

‘We found dozens and dozens of crates of wine in the warehouse!’ Maxime’s eyes were shining like stars. ‘And my job is to taste it to make sure it’s OK!’

‘And who decided that would be your job?’

‘Me.’

Surprise, surprise.

Maxime's work for the weekend

But now that I come to think about it, wine has been very helpful to Maxime at work. He's always been respected for his wine knowledge by his bosses. What's more, he's used wine in recruitment: when we lived in France and Maxime held job interviews, he always asked the interviewee if they liked wine. 'I need to know if they'll fit in the team,' he would say. The German who replied to the question 'do you like wine?' by saying 'yes, when it’s mixed with coke' did not get a job.

What is worse, (or perhaps better?), Maxime also uses wine to decide how to vote. He was delighted a few years back when he read in a French wine review that the people he favoured in French politics were those who most liked wine, and was thrilled and vindicated when he read that François Bayrou got drunk on pacharenc (a fortified wine) to cure a speech impediment.

Sarkozy, the teetotaller, is of course completely despised by Maxime. 'A bit of a yobbo,' Maxime calls him, showing how well his Aussie slang is coming along. Sarkozy is 'totally lacking in culture'. Not only is Sarkozy a teetotaller, but Maxime suspects that when Sarko was president, Carla Bruni, who knows her wines, was drinking the French presidential cellar dry together with hordes of Italian interlopers.

Then, horror of horrors, president Hollande sold off the rest of the presidential cellar to the Chinese! Maxime was incensed when he heard. 'But that's the French patrimoine!' he cried.

In 2011, Maxime announced to friends that if it came down to a choice between those two wine dingbats Sarkozy and Hollande in the 2012 French presidential election, he would emigrate to Australia.

And of course, he did! Now that's how to take wine seriously.
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France versus Australia: Who Will Win the Argument?

I was a bit disappointed with the trip away on the weekend. Me and the Frog (my French husband Maxime) and our kids had travelled far, far away from the bright lights of Melbourne, and more importantly, far from the bright lights of its restaurants. I expected that being out country, we’d have some spectacularly dreadful meals and Maxime would say spectacular things about them, seasoning his sentences with French insults concerning people’s grandmothers in shorts - thereby giving me fantastic material for this blog post. But the food was good, damn it! (We were too close to Daylesford, apparently.)

And so, sadly, there was no parmigiana Parmageddon.  But then on Sunday, we stopped at a winery on the way back home and, oh joy! The winery delivered!

The Wintry Way Home, Warmed by a Winery

 It wasn’t the food or the wine – they were fine. Nevertheless …

Maxime and I had made our workmanlike way through the list of wines on offer. And of course, the ciders, due to the Frog’s rather dubious predilection for them). But at first I was worried: during the tasting, Maxime was calm; polite; complimentary. Don’t tell me everything’s OK?! I thought.

Then afterwards, in the car, it all came out. Not the wine - the French rage.

‘I couldn’t stand that guy!’ fumed Maxime (referring to the man serving us in the wine tasting). ‘He only served borderline acceptable amounts in the glass. And he knew nothing, nothing!’ (The hapless winery bloke had told us, ‘I only pour the wine, I don’t know about it.’ Which I think was a joke. But if you’re French, wine is not the stuff of jokes). ‘AND,’ Maxime went on, ‘after the sweet cider, he didn’t give me a new glass for the dry whites!’

‘Serve you right for drinking lolly water!’ I laughed.

‘So I used the Pinot Grigio to wash my glass out.’ (Which Maxime thinks is as good a use as any for Aussie Pinot Grigios. He prefers the French-spelled ones.)

But here’s the interesting thing - Maxime didn’t actually say anything to the winery bloke’s face.

This is something of a first for Maxime. He has – or at least used to have - the Gallic way of venting when something is bothering him. You just yell. And getting yelled at doesn't bother you, because you know not to take it to heart. In short, the French believe in letting off steam instead of stewing, and there’s something to be said for that. Except if you're not used to French culture and you're on the receiving end. For instance, instead of suggesting that perhaps it might not have been such a good idea to leave the foil on the bottle neck, Maxime would cry ‘what the hell are you doing!? You’re completely deranged!’ Then, having screeched at me for ten minutes, he would put his arm around me and suggest trying the wine. I would look at him in amazement. ‘What?’ he’d say in surprise. ‘Are you upset?’ I’d be almost lost for words.

‘Of course I’m upset! You just said I was deranged!’

‘Oh is that all? Of course I didn’t mean that, I was just angry. Why do you take everything so personally?’

‘You called me deranged! How much more bloody personal can you get?!’

I would stick to my guns and insist that Maxime may not have meant to hurt my feelings but he nonetheless had, and demand an apology. To give the Frenchman his due, he always gave me one. But even when I was furious, I was curious. The French way of seeing things was so different. (Curiosity kills the K, I thought.)

The Anglo-Saxon – French differences in argument style were a problem for Maxime at work too, when we lived in France. Anglo-Saxon colleagues sometimes felt he was too harsh.

‘What exactly did you say?’ I asked Maxime on one such occasion. He told me. ‘OK … you know, there are other, gentler ways of telling people they could do better,’ I suggested. ‘You shouldn’t really say to an Anglo-Saxon things like, “this document is a piece of shit and working with you is a complete nightmare.”’

But now that we’re in Australia, it seems the Frog’s French edges have become softened with Anglo-Saxon restraint. Well, that’s all to the good. I won’t get called deranged anymore! Until I run into another Frenchman perhaps.
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What Do the French Hate About the French?

Last night, my French husband Maxime went out for a night on the town with fellow French engineers. They went, predictably, to a European beer bar. Maxime said he had chicken parmigiana.

‘To be safe,’ he said.

Safe? I wondered. How can a chicken parma be safe? It won’t blow up on your plate?

‘It was pub food,’ Maxime explained.

Meaning there was danger of the food being sub-frog standard, but, Maxime thought, no chef can stuff up a parma. Actually, I think they can. One day, Maxime will have a rude parma awakening in some godforsaken pub in the back of beyond (and I want to be there to take a pic when it happens).

It might happen sooner rather than later too: this weekend, we’re heading up Bendigo way and staying in some tiny town we’ve never heard of (which Maxime complains is in the ‘arsehole of nowhere’. So refined, my Frog.) We are going to try some ‘safe’ parma at its pub tomorrow night.

Anyway, back to the French engineers' boysy night out. Maxime was a bit doubtful about the first fellow frog he talked to, he said.

‘I thought Olivier was a bit of a wanker,’ Maxime said (he’s really got the Aussie lingo down now) ‘too French.’

‘French people are wankers?’

‘The Franco-French,’ Maxime precised – people who are ultra-French. ‘The ones who think they are owed everything,’ (oh no, not entitlement again. Thoroughly sick of that word at the moment), ‘who are afraid of everything and never go out of their comfort zone, and they have the pensée unique.’

Maxime often brings up this pensée unique thing when he bags his countrymen. He doesn’t mean they have a unique thought – rather the opposite. He means these deplorable Franco-Français think there is only one way to do things. And that’s the French way of course! I wonder what the Aussie version of Franco-French is? Ocker? Someone in thongs holding a beer can who believes in mateship and thinks the establishment can get stuffed? Wikipedia says Ocker means an ‘Australian who speaks and acts in an uncultured manner’ which I reckon is a little harsh.

Anyway, Olivier wasn’t a wanker as it turned out. He and Maxime soon bonded over bitching about England (both had lived there for a year). Olivier told Maxime how he’d moved from Normandy to St. Albans as a teenager, and went to the local bakery to get something to eat and find accommodation. I really can’t say why he thought the baker would give him a bed. Must be a Norman thing. Whatever, the thing was … there WAS no bakery. Olivier ended up without decent bread and in an attic being sublet by a Pakistani. Before moving into a share house with a muslim fundamentalist who insisted on reading the Koran to him every morning over brekkie.

Maxime had things a little better during his stint in London. He shared with an Italian who stayed in bed most of the day and who cooked fabulous pasta. He and Maxime even invented a dessert together, a regular Escoffier and Carème:

Maxime and Guiseppe’s Killer Dessert

1 container of yoghurt (large)

5 spoons of honey

1 bottle of rum (large)

1 aspirin (for later)

After Maxime and Olivier had reminisced about their time in Old England, they moved on to having a dig at those wankerish ‘Franco-French’: Olivier had had a short stint in Oz four years ago and then had had to return to Paris. In January. It wasn’t warm and it wasn’t fun. The Parisians got up his nose (the way they clamber up the nose of all provincial French) with their cold hoity toityness. So when Olivier got offered a permanent job in Australia, he booked the tickets the same day.

‘Oh you’re so lucky!’ Everyone said to him. ‘I’d love to live in Australia but I don’t speak English.’

But according to Olivier and Maxime, moving to Australia wasn’t luck, it was hard work (getting engineering degrees and learning English, for example), and if their French countrymen got off their ‘entitled’ bums, they could move to Australia too. Hmm, just think of all the new French bakeries we could have then! Even a few Normandy-style bakery-hotels perhaps.

It’s funny, though, hearing Maxime talk like that. Now that he’s moved here, Maxime talks about moving to Oz as the most sensible, natural step for him to have taken, and is not above looking down at those who have stayed put in Frogland. He has conveniently expunged from his memory the fact that I had to threaten, cajole, emotionally blackmail – use every trick in the book – to get him to even consider moving to Australia. We suffered through years and years of rows and cried buckets of tears (actually those were just my buckets) before he agreed. And now, if someone asks him if it was hard to move to Australia, he’ll just say ‘of course not.’

Arrrrrgh!!!!!!!!!!

OK, OK. I’ll chill. I mean, we’re here now. Even if it’s only thanks to a piece of cheese.
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