Orange and Limon

October 20

“Oranges and lemons, say the bells of St. Clement’s.” Well, yesterday we visited the place that gave all the Oranges in New Jersey their name.

It’s less than an hour from Beaumes de Venise, and it has a reasonably good pizza shop, where we had lunch, and the best-preserved Roman theater in Europe. I believe the only other one in as good a condition is in Asia Minor.

The pizza was OK, the flavors not as strong as I would want, but tasty enough. I haven’t had pizza in weeks. This one was called Diavola, and had pepperoni on it. There was some heat, but not as much as I’m used to. This may have been a traditional Continental style, but for my taste the tomato sauce needed more oregano and basil.

The flavor gained a great deal, though, because we were sitting outside, under an awning, by a street named for the Princes of Nassau, the family that eventually became the rulers of the Netherlands. They also held title to the city and territory of Orange, which didn’t become a part of France until maybe the 18th century.

One of the Nassaus became William III (just like me, almost) as the king of England. It was to kiss his ass, I imagine, that all those Oranges in New Jersey got named.

The theater in Orange is a semicircle of stone bleachers facing a huge wall. 

It would be impressive to see by itself, but the addition of the audio guide makes it fascinating. The city began as a Roman colony, created by veterans of Julius Caesar’s army. The theater was neglected, then burned by marauding barbarians, and has been partly reconstructed. The place is still used for performances. 

Seating was arranged by class. The top few levels of seats were reserved for slaves, prostitutes, other fringe groups, including foreigners. So that’s where I’d have to be, and it sounds like great place to hang out.

Historians believe there were relatively few traditional Classical tragedies played here. The crowds tended to favor comedies, and there were several kinds of those. I’m not sure what the evidence for that is.

Some farces had stock characters, identified by their costumes as a glutton, an old man, and so forth. Blond hair signified a simpleton. Dumb blond jokes go back that far.

Most of the female roles were played by boys, but at least one genre of mime had women taking roles. These were very popular because the women wore little clothing to begin with, and the crowds would encourage them to take that off too.

Then the Christians took over and shut it all down.

A hundred or so years later, the Visigoths plundered the city and set fire to everything that would burn, including the wooden parts of the old theater, mainly the stage and roof beams. 

The stage has been rebuilt and the seats may have been, too. There is an etching from the 18th century that shows the theater in detail. The seats, which are now made of stone or conctete and go up in steps, appear to have broken down into a bank of rubble, like much of the Roman Colosseum today.

The structure of the wall behind the stage is largely complete, although almost all of the elaborate decoration is gone. An imperial statue in a large niche was recovered in a dig and reassembled. Portions of original columns also were unearthed and put into place.

About three-quarters of the way up the rows of seats, you come to the entrances to an enclosed gallery. Off the gallery are smaller areas that look like caves. The theater is built against a hill, so for all I can tell, these may have been developed from natural caves or maybe they were built to look that way.

In some of the rooms are short films combining conventional video and holographic projections, so sometimes transparent people step out of the screen. I don’t know how the Romans did that.

One showed what one of the Roman farces might have been like behind the scenes and on stage. Larry and I were a little disappointed in that one because the girls kept their clothes on.

Another was a collection of brief excerpts from opera performances at the theater.

We went across the street to the museum, where we saw a few more fragments recovered from excavations at the theater. And many etchings of Nassaus, generally not a handsome bunch, but there was one of a princess with frizzy hair that kind of gave her the swagger of an affluent hooker.

We stopped at the cave of the Beaumes de Venise co-op on the way back. I bought two bottles of the Trias wine, one aged in oak and one not. 

Joanna wanted a bottle of the sweet muscat to take home. There were several types, and she couldn’t remember which one she preferred. So she tasted a few. I took a sip frome a couple of her samples.

So far on this trip, it has been the other way around. I was tasting wine to see which one to buy, and Joanna would take a small sip from my glass now and then. Here, Joanna was the taster and I was the sipper.

Dinner was a kind of a surprise. Remember the dog food? Larry bought beef at the Vaison market on Tuesday morning. We thought he said “dog” but actually he said “daube,” a traditional Provençal dish.

Following Claude’s advice, Larry made the stew on Wednesday and then reheated it for a couple of hours every day until Sunday. Everybody knew it was coming, but I think Larry was a little nervous. This was something that Claude and Sophie had grown up with. Their mothers and grandmothers made it for them from native recipes.

I forget all that went into it except for the olives and dog food. There was a multitude of other ingredients besides. Maybe mushrooms, leeks, garlic, or onions. We had it with plain boiled potatoes on the side, and a bottle of the Eddie Feraud red Chateauneuf du Pape. Then Larry came out with the big surprise, the 2001 Beaucastel. 

When Larry tasted it, he said “leather.” And yeah, once he said it, I could see how you could get that illusion, but I tasted soil and minerals, as well as a certain kind of perserved-fruit flavor that I associate with Chateauneuf du Pape, especially.

One of the remarkable things about the wine—besides its being 13 years old—is that it contains a high percentage of mourvedre grapes, which are difficult to grow in the area. It’s apparently important that the grapes have a hard time. Larry told me that the tougher it is to grow the grapes, the better the wine will be.

The rules say you can blend 13 grape varieties in Chateauneuf du Pape. Most of them don’t use all the grapes, but I think some do, including the Beaucastel. 

Grenache and syrah are the two most common grapes the regional wines we’ve been tasting. It may be different in the northern end of the Rhone Valley, but we didn’t go there and I don’t know.

Because mourvedre is more difficult to grow, it is often 5 percent or less of the finished wine. The Trias that I bought at the co-op consists grenache, syrah, and mourvedre, which is the minority member of the trio.

The Beaucastel may contain 30 percent mourvedre.

Later, Sophie and Joanna were talking about the house, and Sophie brought out a photo album. This wasn’t the first big house that the family had renovated. 

They had bought one years ago in Paris, in a blind auction, placing bids on a property that none of the bidders had seen. The house was unoccupied, and so the doors had been filled with cinderblocks to keep squatters out. One of the photos shows Claude’s mother entering the house for the first time, after Claude and Sophie won the auction. 

A couple of courses of block had been removed and she was climbing through the space onto a step ladder. 

Even so, some squatters had gotten in. One of them, Bozo, had left a message on the wall that Claude preserved in a photograph. Bozo complained about his neighbors who were leaving shit all over the place. “This is my squat.”

The current house had also been officially unoccupied for a long time. It wasn’t actually unoccupied, though, because squatters had moved in. Unlike Bozo’s housemates, the people here were a little more hygienic. They shat into plastic bags that they tossed out of the window.

There were before and after photos. The kitchen roof had been raised about three feet or more. Some windows were turned into doors and I believe some windows were cut into the walls.

When the wine was almost finished, Sophie brought out the bottle of limoncello. They pour it into little egg-shaped cups from a bottle that once held mineral water. That’s because it’s bootleg, made by a friend of the family. I think it consists of neutral spirits infused with lemon zest. 

Anyhow, a good time was had by all. No stew or wine went to waste. Considering all the wine I had, it was a surprise that Harry didn’t even get wasted.

The photo of the day is a selfie by Larry that shows the three of us in front of Claude and Sophie's backyard vineyard.

Bon journee, mes amis.

Harry

October 20

Hey Grasshopper,

How did your voyage to the hotel go today? How are your digs? What's the area around the hotel like?

I've been catching up: laundry, computer set-up (great machine! Thanks again for schlepping for me), moving back into the apartment, etc. I even cooked veal for Weds.

So correct about mouverdre. Yes, the Beaucastel is indeed 30 percent mourvedre. It's one big reason the wine lasts so long and ages so well. And you're correct when you report that very few, if any, producers use all 13 grape varieties. Except, you guessed it, Beaucastel. There might be one or two others, but I don't know them.

It was great having you here. I look forward to our next meet-up, who knows where. But I guess that's the fun of it.

Have a good flight back to the States.

Best,

Larry

P.S. My daube had no mushrooms.