Last year I enrolled on a wine tasting course at Tours on the River Loire. It was targeted at people who love wine and wanted to learn more about how to taste it, what to eat with which wine and a crash course in wine making and its economics! We were nine who sat down to each session with our teacher, Mr Christiane Pechoutre (a sommelier professor from the local catering college and wine judge as we found out later).
He carefully took us through each stage of the process, NO, I stop myself in fear of retributions from the hundreds of wine growers and makers I know,
I’ll start again THE ART of winemaking, it became clear that this subject is not a subject at all but is LOVE, with a PASSION greater than that of Romeo and Juliet and all of the great Bronte sisters romantic figures joined together and raging like the nuclei of the sun.
For five weeks my colleagues and I turned up religiously at the “Académie des Vins de Loire” and were well educated by our tutor, And spitting such fine wine was a real hardship……….but necessary. At the end of our fifth session we were subjected to a gruelling exam and then had the tension, just like the students waiting for their “A” Level results, of waiting a whole week for the results.
We did not have to go back to school for our moment of truth which would lead to tears of joy or cries of anguish but to a Chateau in Montlouis to see the final stages of the “vendage” and taste the newly made wine. This wine would not grace the table of many, I am certain! It is still yellow (or pink) and not very clear, in fact it is cloudy, and bubbling as it is in the full throws of fermentation, only five days since the grapes where picked and at about 5% alcohol. But very interesting as a drink. In parts of France some villages have a fete to celebrate the young wines arrival (normally two to three weeks after the harvest
We continued our tour of the château, visited the house, heard the family history, talked amongst ourselves and the owners and passed a very pleasant evening. The visit was to be crowned with a meal cooked by the young “BIO” organic wine maker’s wife to complement the estate made wines the he had selected.
Before the starter, the moment of truth, the results, the room fell silent; you could smell and taste the tension. Our replacement tutor (who knew none of us) explained that our guide along the long line of vines for the previous five weeks was judging this night. The tension mounted even more as he started to read the results. MARTIN Andrew 19.5/20, I had achieved a 95% pass mark, in an exam in another language, in fact my first exam since I took the 11 plus, (Oh! That gives away my age!) my colleagues congratulated me; and said not bad for an engleesh, they were genuinely pleased for me as I was for them, we had all passed.
The meal started and conversations were taking place across the table, the wines were interesting, the foie gras was wonderful. I was chatting away to the winemaker, a nice guy in his early thirties who had taken over the business from his dad. He told me that this was his second vendage on his own and he explained that in Montlouis he is getting a lot of help from the other organic producers and from the fraternity of winemakers. He was being very dynamic and I wish him well. And now for the funny experience.
I live in France and I have spent 28 years coming here on holiday before that, so I do speak OK French; but not perfect. I have been mistaken as Belgian, Swiss, Dutch and even German; if people are unsure they politely ask me which “departement” I am from.
During the main course (crayfish crumble), as the group started to talk amongst themselves, I quipped that crumble is an English word and that I had never seen crayfish crumble in England; rhubarb crumble yes; and then mischievously asked for the “crème anglaise” THE CUSTARD, our host laughed and then reeled out a list of bad meals he had been presented with in England and Scotland. All the other diners were giggling quite loudly; his wife was kicking him under the table and had turned the colour of the crayfish she had cooked. Of course I was laughing as well. Finally the centime dropped that I was “un anglais”, he blushed and coloured the same shade as his red wine. I continued to laugh and sympathised with him.
We parted as friends and of course I will go back one day.
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