Read Online I'll Drink to That by Rudolph Chelminski - Free Book Online
Authors: Rudolph Chelminski
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completely and cheerily as in the Beaujolais.
There’s always a certain amount of luck and serendipity in matching a terroir with exactly the right grape to produce the finest wine possible. Year to year, vintners in the Bordeaux vineyards are constantly fiddling with the blends of the five grapes (cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec and petit verdot) from which their vast palette of red wines is assembled, but if this juggling strikes anyone as complicated, it is as nothing compared to what it was in the old days: toward the end of the eighteenth century, their ancestors were dealing with no less than twenty-seven varieties of red wine grapes. Today’s very popular Côtes-du-Rhône red wines are composed from a bouquet of thirteen different varieties, or cépages , as they are called in French. There’s no lack of choice, because the number of varieties of Vitis vinifera , the European winemaking grapevine, is enormous; more than six thousand of them have been named and classified.
Considering the dizzying number of possible permutations between cépages and terroirs , it is an extraordinary testimony to human ingenuity, perseverance and powers of observation that the Beaujolais and the gamay grape should have come into union, because this particular varietal is extraordinarily sensitive to terroir and generally performs poorly in soil other than the granite, limestone and clay in and around the monts du Beaujolais. It had to be found in the first place, then brought there, planted, pressed, vinified and given a long trial run before anyone could tell whether it was worth the trouble. It was long thought that the gamay had originated as a vine growing wild in the coastal area of Dalmatia (present-day Croatia), across the Adriatic Sea from Italy of Caesar’s day, and that the Romans, as curious and enterprising as they were imperialistic, had brought it with them in their baggage to Gaul and planted it in order to make wine near their garrisons. But recent American DNA research has shown that three of France’s (and the world’s) most extraordinarily useful cépages —gamay, chardonnay and pinot noir—are descended from two parents: a prototype pinot and a grape called gouais blanc. The hamlet of Gamay, adjacent to the very noble Burgundy town of Puligny-Montrachet, may have taken its name from the hybrid that originated there, either by some accident of nature or the experiment of some unknown horticultural genius. One thing is sure, though: it is the Romans who first used the gamay vine to make wine.
“No wine, no soldiers,” Napoléon famously remarked, and it was as true around the year zero as it was in Bonaparte’s time (or today, for that matter, with the sole adjustment of substituting beer, whiskey or vodka for non-Latin soldiery). The Romans almost got it right, too, when they stuck the gamay into the ground in the hills around Lugdunum (present-day Lyon), capital of the Gauls. If only they had done it a few dozen miles farther north, they would have hit the jackpot, and the story of Beaujolais would be several centuries older.
After the collapse of the Roman empire, the various barbarian invasions, the Dark Ages and all the dimly perceived history attendant to that period, the Beaujolais began evolving as an organized entity with the appearance of its first Christianized lord, Bérard, and his wife Vandalmonde, who in the year 957 set up shop in the rough fortress-castle they called Pierre Aiguë, a Gallic Wuthering Heights anchored on a high escarpment above the poor settlement that was later to become the town of Beaujeu. New to the faith and fired with touching evangelical enthusiasm, this worthy couple made a pilgrimage to Rome and returned with a load of holy objects for the chapel they had ordered built on their vast estate. The collection they proudly brought back with them consisted of the usual religious flimflammery of that period, and included hairs from the Virgin Mary’s
There’s always a certain amount of luck and serendipity in matching a terroir with exactly the right grape to produce the finest wine possible. Year to year, vintners in the Bordeaux vineyards are constantly fiddling with the blends of the five grapes (cabernet sauvignon, cabernet franc, merlot, malbec and petit verdot) from which their vast palette of red wines is assembled, but if this juggling strikes anyone as complicated, it is as nothing compared to what it was in the old days: toward the end of the eighteenth century, their ancestors were dealing with no less than twenty-seven varieties of red wine grapes. Today’s very popular Côtes-du-Rhône red wines are composed from a bouquet of thirteen different varieties, or cépages , as they are called in French. There’s no lack of choice, because the number of varieties of Vitis vinifera , the European winemaking grapevine, is enormous; more than six thousand of them have been named and classified.
Considering the dizzying number of possible permutations between cépages and terroirs , it is an extraordinary testimony to human ingenuity, perseverance and powers of observation that the Beaujolais and the gamay grape should have come into union, because this particular varietal is extraordinarily sensitive to terroir and generally performs poorly in soil other than the granite, limestone and clay in and around the monts du Beaujolais. It had to be found in the first place, then brought there, planted, pressed, vinified and given a long trial run before anyone could tell whether it was worth the trouble. It was long thought that the gamay had originated as a vine growing wild in the coastal area of Dalmatia (present-day Croatia), across the Adriatic Sea from Italy of Caesar’s day, and that the Romans, as curious and enterprising as they were imperialistic, had brought it with them in their baggage to Gaul and planted it in order to make wine near their garrisons. But recent American DNA research has shown that three of France’s (and the world’s) most extraordinarily useful cépages —gamay, chardonnay and pinot noir—are descended from two parents: a prototype pinot and a grape called gouais blanc. The hamlet of Gamay, adjacent to the very noble Burgundy town of Puligny-Montrachet, may have taken its name from the hybrid that originated there, either by some accident of nature or the experiment of some unknown horticultural genius. One thing is sure, though: it is the Romans who first used the gamay vine to make wine.
“No wine, no soldiers,” Napoléon famously remarked, and it was as true around the year zero as it was in Bonaparte’s time (or today, for that matter, with the sole adjustment of substituting beer, whiskey or vodka for non-Latin soldiery). The Romans almost got it right, too, when they stuck the gamay into the ground in the hills around Lugdunum (present-day Lyon), capital of the Gauls. If only they had done it a few dozen miles farther north, they would have hit the jackpot, and the story of Beaujolais would be several centuries older.
After the collapse of the Roman empire, the various barbarian invasions, the Dark Ages and all the dimly perceived history attendant to that period, the Beaujolais began evolving as an organized entity with the appearance of its first Christianized lord, Bérard, and his wife Vandalmonde, who in the year 957 set up shop in the rough fortress-castle they called Pierre Aiguë, a Gallic Wuthering Heights anchored on a high escarpment above the poor settlement that was later to become the town of Beaujeu. New to the faith and fired with touching evangelical enthusiasm, this worthy couple made a pilgrimage to Rome and returned with a load of holy objects for the chapel they had ordered built on their vast estate. The collection they proudly brought back with them consisted of the usual religious flimflammery of that period, and included hairs from the Virgin Mary’s
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