Meeting Your Winemaker

On the weekend, my French husband Maxime and I indulged and took in a few wineries on the Mornington Peninsula. Maxime was struck as always by the contrast to France. In French wineries, you always meet the winemaker or one of their family. He will let you taste everything that’s for sale, whether it be sparkling, or expensive or rare. Sometimes, they become so enthusiastic they bring out vintages not normally for tasting, and give you a free bottle or so if they really warm to you.

New World wineries are often huge megapolises with restaurants and convention centres and swarms of employees in branded aprons who herd you like cattle through the tasting. During a holiday in New Zealand a few years back, I took Maxime to Cloudy Bay in Marlborough. Then wished I hadn't. First of all, Maxime and I were given wine to taste that seemed to have been measured out with an eyedropper.

'This is unacceptable!' Maxime said to me. 

Then he asked the girl behind the counter in the branded apron if he could have a proper amount.

The apronned girl looked at him with a you’re-just-here-to-get-drunk sneer and asked if he would like to see the manager, imagining this would intimidate him into shutting up. She hadn’t had much experience with the French, I guess. They don’t mind making a scene, in fact, I suspect they rather like it.

‘Yes, I would like to see the manager,’ said Maxime firmly.

He then subjected  the manager to a lengthy dissertation about the physiology of wine tasting.

'If the wine doesn’t fill the mouth you can’t taste it properly,' Maxime said, and went on to explain why in great detail.

Eventually the manager grew weary of having her ears bashed and instructed the girl to settle us apart from the other tasters and give us a goodly 50mL or so. The rest of the public, I saw out of the corner of my eye, continued to get the eyedropper treatment as usual.

Enough to taste

I’ve learned the hard way that you have to treat wine properly around Maxime or you cop it. So I’m always relieved (and a just a tiny bit amused) when its someone else on the receiving end of a pasting. Like our Dutch friend Michel when he came to visit us in France. On one such occasion, we were just about to have some nibbles and a nice drop of Alsatian Riesling before dinner when the phone rang. Maxime answered it, and asked me to open the wine in the meantime. Hmmm. I don’t think so!, I thought. Bottle opening sounds way too risky.

'Michel, why don’t you open it?' I suggested.

'OK,' he said, and did so.

Maxime got off the phone.

'Arrrrrrrgh!' he cried.

'What? What?' said Michel, his blue Dutch eyes bulging with alarm.

'What have you done?!'

'Well, I opened the bottle….'

'No, no, no! You didn’t remove all the feuilletage!' Maxime cried. Then he sighed heavily like he was dealing with children. ‘Putain, putain!” (prostitute, prostitute) he muttered as he peeled off the foil from the neck of the bottle.

Michel turned on me accusingly.

'So that’s why you wanted me to open the bottle!'

I smiled, and said, ‘Only the Wine Lord knows how to do it.’

But the evening’s performance wasn’t finished. Later that night, Maxime retrieved a second bottle, produced a cloth and began to polish it. Michel and I both watched in fascination.

'What do you do that for?' I asked in respectful tones, wondering if there was some mystical oenological reason behind bottle polishing.

The Wine Lord looked at me in surprise.

'So it looks nice!'

Given all this, you can imagine that when Maxime first arrived in the land of the corporatised winery with drink now styles and eyedropper tastings, there were going to be teething problems. But on the whole, living in Australia has somewhat beaten the wine fastidiousness out of frog. No longer does he meet managers or fume about foil. He just goes with the flow. Nevertheless, even now, even though he hears it at every single family celebration in Australia, when someone comes up with a bottle of Aussie sparkling and offers Maxime a glass of ‘champagne’, he will correct them quietly.

‘You mean Australian sparkling wine.’

I guess there’s a limit to everything.
IF YOU LIKE THIS POST, SUBSCRIBE FOR FREE (see email subscription box in the sidebar)