“Mes gourmandises poétiques et viticoles” (My poetic and viticultural treats)
… ” One year doesn’t count, 10 years are nothing, to be an artist,
to be a winemaker, is not to count, it’s to grow like
the tree that doesn’t press its sap and that resists the great
winds of spring, without fearing that summer may not
come; summer comes but it comes only for those who know
how to wait, I learn this every day at the price of suffering
which I bless, patience is everything…. “
Rainer Maria Rilke 1875 – 1926
Ladies and Gentlemen of the Academy Good morning,
How could we not begin this poetic and viticultural intervention here in Geneva, the seat of this illustrious academy, with an excerpt from Rainer Maria Rilke’s “Letters to a Young Poet”….
Born in Prague in Bohemia in 1875, this lover of Switzerland ended his days in his beloved Valais… He died in Montreux in 1926, and is buried in RARON, a small Valais village a few kilometers from SION. Last October, this high Valais was the setting for one of my most beautiful poetic and viticultural delights, which I’d like to share with you.
We went on a tour with some Beaujolais winemakers, the Geoffray family, Château Thivin, Côte de Brouilly and Marie Lapierre, Domaine Lapierre, Morgon, to name but a few, and after saying hello to Raymond PACCOT, your Chancellor, in Féchy, in his vineyards during the grape harvest, we left for RARON where we were invited to lunch.
RARON, the little village where RILKE is buried. A short moment of meditation before the poet’s tomb, set against the church, which stands on a rocky outcrop overlooking the village and surrounded by the magnificent Valais countryside. We then took a small, hazelnut-scented path, winding along a stream above the church to climb up to Clos Joséfine. Clos Joséfine, 28 ares of Pinot Noir, walled in; harvest and lunch break.
Welcomed by the winegrower’s sons, Hans Peter Baumann, Roman and Diego, they offered us a raclette under the arbour, melted over a vine shoot fire, with a glass of the delicious Clos Joséfine 2010 Pinot Noir in which we were sitting. Just imagine: a wood-fired raclette in the open air, with the church and the poet’s tomb below, surrounded by mountains silhouetted against a royal blue sky. I was right in the middle of one of those poetic, winegrowing treats I love so much.
And that afternoon, I regretted not speaking German, in order to declaim one of Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous VALAISANS quatrains:
“And out of the earth comes
This submissive greenery
Which by a long effort
Gives the cluster taken
Between us and the dead”
“There is a civilization of wine: one in which men seek to know each other better in order to fight less” Gabriel Delaunay
I’d like to thank you for inviting me to make your acquaintance, not in the sense of combat of course, but perhaps in the sense of jousting, tasting jousting, as I’m sure you’re all serious amateurs with a keen sense of taste and palate.
For as Jacques Puisais says: “If you don’t put words (words or writing) on the wine you drink, that wine doesn’t exist”.
Which logically leads to exchange and brings us back to knowledge. “One is a gourmand as one is an artist, as one is a poet. Taste is a delicate organ, perfectible and respectable like the eye and the ear” Guy de Maupassant
And for Paul Claudel, “Wine is a teacher of taste and, by training us in the practice of inner attention, it is the liberator of the spirit and the illumination of the intelligence”.
And what would taste be without certain flavors, such as bitterness: “Understanding bitterness is the highest degree of refinement for any taster” Jacques Puisais, or acidity: “Acidity, the agent that provokes us, the key ingredient for asking questions of our palates” Hugh Johnson.
It’s through salt that I’d like to return to our origins, to the land, to terroir, to birth…. Didn’t Aubert de Villaine say: “We’re just midwives of the land, we give birth to vintages”?
In his book AMPELOGRAPHICA, illustrated with superb drawings by Christine Colin, André Ostertag talks to us about the earth.
Earth: “Behind the fertile mantle of dusty rocks, After the deep silences of stone herds Hides the mysterious bedrock of origins.”
Which brings me back to Michel Onfray, who talks about the “forms of time”: “Before any crawling, shuffling or trading life, stone expresses presence, what philosophers call pure presence in the world. Blind and devoid of consciousness, sketchy in its vitality and energy, stone contributes to a grammar and syntax that allow for a style, what in other words is called terroir. A terroir is an identity, and an identity doesn’t suffer from changes. What is said in geological lenses, which make this or that wine, is unspeakable elsewhere. Unique, the soil calls upon quintessences that in turn provide the material to maintain its exceptional character.
I’ll leave it to Colette la Bourguignonne to conclude this earthy chapter with an extract from “Chéri”, set in 1920. ….
“Vines and wine are great mysteries. Alone in the plant kingdom, the vine makes intelligible to us what the true flavor of the earth is. What a faithful translation.
What cloudless day, what gentle late rain, decides that a year of wine will be great between years?
Human solicitude has little to do with it; everything here is celestial sorcery, a planet passing by, a sun spot. Through the cluster, she senses the secrets of the soil. Flint, through it, lets you know it’s alive, fusible, nourishing. Ungrateful chalk cries golden tears in wine…”.
“Wine is the earth speaking to us, drunkenness is when we know how to hear it”.
It’s with this maxim, taken from a film script, that I’d like to tackle this other flavor, alcohol, in this poetic taster’s journey. But before I give the floor to some heavy drinkers, since we’re talking about alcohol, I’d like to draw your attention to abuse, because there was a time when you could lose something other than points, a license or even go to prison.
…. The year was 1570, and the Edict of François 1st
Any man convicted of being drunk will be sentenced:
For the first time: to prison, bread and water.
For the second time: to be whipped in the inner courtyard of the prison.
For the third time: to be publicly whipped
For the fourth time: to be banished from the kingdom of France, after having both ears amputated….
And what do you call a “two-ear wine” for those who still have them?
The answer is given by Claude Duneton in his dictionnaire des expressions imagées et leurs histoires, entitled “la puce à l’oreille”, first published in 1978.
“In 1555, following a rotten summer, the grapes ripened very badly, producing a green, acidic wine. When people drank it, they shook their heads under the violence of the sourness, like a dog snorting. This is what we call “a wine with two ears”.
But let’s get back to this small selection of poetic drinkers, who certainly won’t contradict Charles Baudelaire when he says: “Wine is like man: we’ll never know to what extent we can esteem or despise it, love or hate it, or how many sublime deeds or monstrous crimes it is capable of. So let us be no crueler to him than to ourselves, and treat him as our equal.
The same Baudelaire, who didn’t hesitate to set off on horseback on wine for a divine, fairytale sky. And then there’s that other Michigan horseman, Jim HARRISSON, who has a reputation for never ordering a glass, but a bottle, when he’s alone in a restaurant. He speaks of the latter as a peace pipe: “The basic physical act of opening a bottle of wine has brought more happiness to mankind than any government in the history of the planet”.
Gérard OBERLE’s “Spirits Itinerary” includes Jim HARRISON, with whom he has maintained a fascinating, long-standing correspondence. Erudite, gastronome, cook, antiquarian bookseller, Gérard Oberlé is the author of a book unique in the world: “Histoire du boire et du manger en EUROPE, de l’antiquité à nos jours à travers les livres”, the fruit of a census of 1181 gourmet books. He tells us about his way of soothing himself: “I know of nothing more reassuring than a pot-bellied crystal decanter in which a mature wine is sipping”.
And how can we fail to mention François Rabelais, born in 1493:
“I drink for the thirst to come
I drink eternally
This is eternity of drinking for me
And drinking for eternity “
And last but not least, he died of alcoholism in Montmartre in 1981, far less famous than his songs. A poet, lyricist and film dialogue writer, he wrote “Mon truc en plume” (Zizi Jeanmaire), “Syracuse” (Henri Salvador) and “Si tu me payes un verre” (Serge Régiani), among others.
It’s Bernard DIMEY: “Drunkard and why not? I know a hundred times worse; those who don’t drink, who fuck by chance, who are ugly in herds and who have nothing to say Come drink with me, we’ll be bored later…. “
Two little nods to these poets:
The first is by Georges Courteline, the famous French playwright:
“To know that a glass was too much, you have to have drunk it.
And the second from actor Jean Carmet with his fundamental question:
“There are white blood cells, there are red blood cells, but are there also pink blood cells?”
This alchemy, this fermentation, this transformation, this maturing, this aging inevitably leads to memory, to secrecy. If I had to name just one wine that perfectly illustrates this memory, it’s Gérard Valette’s “Le clos de Monsieur Nolly”. A pouilly-fuissé from Chaintré in southern Burgundy, aged with virtually no human intervention from 84 months to over 10 years in some vintages. This wine presents itself as an example of wisdom, perfumed with the extraordinary, for it has gone through, and I quote Gérard Valette, “all the ages of man”, youth, ardor, despair, maturity, funniness, joy; it has been able, during this long, very long silence, to run aground with tranquillity and keep its enthusiasm and present itself in our glasses all borrowed from the taste of its fabulous immobile epic…
Jules Renard would say “he’s past the age of dying young”, and Sainte Beuve would conclude: “Growing old is boring, but it’s the only way we’ve found to live a long life”. With Monsieur Nolly’s Clos, we’re touching on the science of knowing how to drink, and I’m reminded of Salvador Dali who said: “Who knows how to taste, never drinks wine again, but tastes secrets”.
The link with Francis Ponge is obvious: “As with all things, there’s a secret to wine, but it’s a secret it doesn’t keep. 0nly you can make it tell you: all you have to do is love it, drink it, keep it inside yourself. – Then it speaks.
After the love of the bottle, let’s approach the final chapter of this journey through the bottle of love, inspired by Nicole Croisille’s song, whose refrain describes this man: “Gai comme un italien quand il sait qu’il aura de l’amour et du vin” (“Gay as an Italian when he knows he’ll have love and wine”).
And that other Italian author, Leonardo da Vinci: “I believe that happiness comes to men who are born where good wines are found”.
And as an actor, it’s hard not to quote Molière:
“Goods, knowledge and glory
Don’t take away troublesome worries
And it’s only by drinking well
That we can be happy”
In conclusion, here’s a story of love through flasks, with a happy ending: I’ve got a story that I’d like to give you, if I may say so, the “scoop” on.
It was some time ago, at the Nuits “Saint Georges” ball, that I met the little “Juliénas”, a girl with a lot of “Gignondas”, a damn fine “Meursault”, well-structured, and under its vermilion robe, a great “cru classé”, with aromas of blackcurrant and wild strawberry.
We danced “Anjou” against “Anjou” on a fashionable “Sylvaner” and later when I offered to take her to my “Chateauneuf-du-Pape”, she went all “Croze-Hermitage”!
Just enough time to fetch a “Chablis” from the checkroom, put a little “Corton” in his hair, climb into my “Banyuls” and drive off into the morning.
Ah, what a beautiful day! We went for a walk in the “Entre-deux-mers”, the weather was fine, we had “Vacqueyras” on the beach, our feet in the “Clairette” water, then we had “Pouilly-Fuissé” in the dunes and as the “Mercurey” was seriously rising and we were starting to get the “Côtes-Rôties”, we decided to head back.
But then, as we were leaving, we got stuck in traffic – well, “traffic jams”, that is! I started to “Minervois” seriously and then “Juliénas” and I started to “Chinon” each other.
In one fell swoop, she slammed the “Corbière” into the “Banyuls” and off she went!
I found myself like “Macon”. But she’ll see what kind of Arbois I am!
What, I said to myself, she’d already “Sauvignon” before I even had time to “Sauternes”! But, I “Jurançon” you, I already had her in the “Pauillac”, in fact, I was already so “Tokay” of her, that I ran after her in the “Lalande” and the “Chardonnay” to catch up.
When we met again, and I saw her in front of me in “Gros-Plant”, I said to her: “Don’t be a “Pomerol” and don’t go away “Gamay”! Crying, she fell into my arms in “Madiran”: “Don’t be angry with me, I just wanted to be sure that your “Saint-Amour” was really “Sancerre”. Since then, we’ve never had a drink together again.
Collectif
And as MARIVAUX said:
“Let’s drink to make our friendship go faster”.
And I’ll conclude with a sentence in Latin to raise the cultural level of the intervention
Abusus Non Tollit Usum
(Abuse does not exclude use)