Moveable Feast

October 18

When we visited the Beaumes de Venise co-op the other day, we saw a short film about the area and its grapes. For instance, the co-op was started in the ’40s, but the tradition of wine-growing in the this country goes back at least 2,000 years.

The film also mentions that once a year the co-op sponsors an off-road journey to various vineyards and farm houses for special pairings of Beaumes de Venise wines and dishes designed to go with them. Of all the weekends in all the year that we could be here, this is the one. They call it La Semaine du Gout, which may best translate as The Week of Flavor.

We got to the co-op parking lot at half past nine Saturday morning. We were in the first group, which was to start at ten. A second group would start out on the same route about 45 minutes later, and a third about 45 minutes after that one. There will be more on Sunday and maybe even Monday and Tuesday. I’m not sure.

We were in Claude’s truck, which led a convoy of six four-wheel drive vehicles. 

To get to the first stop, we left the road and climbed a steep, unpaved lane to an orange building on a terrace that may have been built a thousand years ago. The vineyards stretched in all directions.

Here we had the first course, three small appetizers and four wines. One appetizer may have been made with crab and butternut squash. The first wine was a sweet muscat. Then they poured a dry muscat. There were also two rosés.

We drove for, I dunno, half an hour, two days, whatever, over loose stone lanes between vineyards on one side and sheer drops into the abyss on the other. There were hairpin turns that took two tries, and every once in a while, Claude would talk to someone on the cell phone and then stop, counting the cars as they caught up with us. Four. Five. Six. All right.

We came to the second course. This consisted of three dishes, one of guinea hen (“pintade” in French), a second of quail, and a third with veal and mushrooms in a rich wine sauce over a puree of celery root. This was my first time trying guinea fowl, which was wonderfully gamy, almost like duck. 

The quail was dark meat, and very tasty. If I ever had quail before, I don’t remember it. It doesn’t taste like chicken. 

Either the pintade or the quail was served with a wild cereal, maybe barley.

The veal dish was very rich and delicious. The wine reduction for the sauce was almost bitter. 

The wines with these courses were the Terroir series that Larry poured at the cave the other day. The pintade went with Trias, the quail with Bel Air, and the veal with Ferisiens.

The cheese course was a soft sheep cheese, a sample of a strong Swiss style cheese, and a blue cheese. The wines were another sweet muscat de Beaumes de Venise and a sweet rosé.
.

The real treat of this stop was the view. We were on a hillside overlooking a valley. The vineyards lay in rows everywhere, along with pockets of trees and small hills with villages. There was even a castle.

Claude parked the truck near a structure that looked like a stone beehive maybe nine feet high. It was at the corner of a low stone wall with a fence on top. We could see through the fence that the beehive was hollow.

A man heard us talking about it. Was it a shrine? A tool shed? A novelty?

He told us it was a shelter for shepherds. In the old days they would be here with flocks, and if it rained, they could take shelter in a place like this one.

We went back to the co-op for the dessert course—four little pastries, a lemon tart, a pastry shell with dark chocolate, a little cake iced with honey and almond slivers, and a macaron with raspberry filling. These were paired with more versions of the Beaumes de Venise sweet muscat, including Paparotier, which is made of grapes from a vineyard owned by Claude’s family. 

Joanna drank most of the wine they poured for her, so she was ready for a nap when we got back to the house. Larry and I went to Gigondas to taste more wine.

Most of the independent caves are closed on Saturday afternoon, but Montvac was open. We were met and served by a lady whom Larry had met at a wine tasting in New York several years ago when he was working in the wine business. 

We bought two bottles there. One, called Arabesque, I enjoyed right away. It had no burn or bite, but still had plenty of flavor and I could still taste the rocks in the soil after I swallowed it. The other, Adage, was a little sharper. 

Oddly enough, the one that Larry expected Sophie to like better was Arabesque, which she tasted at dinner and said was too light. So Larry and I had to finish it.

We stopped at a cave in the village of Gigondas.

Let me stop here and stress that you’re supposed to act spoiled and snooty when you taste wine. Otherwise you will go broke buying two of everything. There are no bad wines in this country. At least none of the several dozen wines I’ve sampled in the past week has been anything but good.

Some are milder or sharper than others. And so far, there isn’t a red here that won’t go great with a steak or pasta, pintade or whatever.

So you’re looking for reasons to pick one good wine over another one.

The reds at this place were not as much fun as those we’ve been drinking all week. A white, Cairanne, was very good, so we bought that.

The town has a store where you can taste the wines from most of the local producers. They pour the samples from small decanters, shaped like miniature wine bottles. I think we tried three, and it was a close race. We wound up going for a 2010 from Domaine le Peage that is mostly grenache grapes.

Dinner was roast pork with fennel, and some other dishes of vegetables because Sandrine was going to join us and she is in training for the New York Marathon.

Sandrine is Sophie’s former step-daughter. Sophie was Sandrine’s father’s second wife. Sandrine is a delightful woman who smiles a lot, but also has an intense side.

This is a lady who, several years ago, went diving for the first time and came home to announce that she wanted to become a diving instructor. And she did.

She took lessons, got a certificate, and landed a job teaching diving for a while at a Club Med somewhere.

A few years ago, she decided that she wanted to lose weight and get into better shape. So of course she became a competitive marathon runner.

We had a bottle of white, either the Sablet or the Cairanne, or maybe both, with the pork. Rhone Valley whites can hold up to meats that usually cry out for reds. I might not try it with a steak, but with “the other white meat” the Rhone white works fine.

Dinner just about did me in. It must have been the fennel.

Good night, all.

Harry