It started with a ’99 Margaux, which commanded general agreement from the Brits around the table. Nose, length, balance, harmony: all delectable. It was a velvety, feminine wine, full of promise. Even so, the home team concluded, it was not really ready. The Frenchman in our company could not have disagreed more. ‘You English — you are a nation of necrophiliacs. This wine is excellent; how could you say that it isn’t ready?’ I gave battle. As the fruit and the tannins had not fully come together, we were only drinking 70 per cent of the wine. Give it another three or five years, and they would make love in an ecstatic consummation.
The Grenouille shook his head. ‘Pauvres Rosbifs; you come from the cold North and you can never escape it. You don’t know how to enjoy yourselves. You think you like wine, but you make it an arid subject surrounded by technicalities. You turn the joys of the sun and the South into a Presbyterian religion. Read Ronsard; learn to embrace the pleasures of the day. Five years: we might all be dead.’ At that moment, an enchanting young girl glided by, shyly — and slyly? — aware that she was the cynosure of every eye. Una donna a quindici anni — she cannot have been much older — making us all wish that we could reconnect with our inner 17-year-old. As she evanesced out of earshot, the Frenchman warmed to his theme. ‘I suppose you think that no one should take her to bed until she’s 60?’ ‘I’d settle for a three-year delay,’ said one of our number who announced himself as the Faun’s father. ‘But I doubt I’ll get it. Her current boyfriend’s a lecherous young dog if ever I saw one.’
The rest of us envied the youth. Someone told the story of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, aetat 90, chatting to a fellow judge of the same vintage: let us call him Smith. A girl law clerk sashayed past them. ‘Ah, Smith,’ said Holmes: ‘to be 70 again.’ The oenological argument continued. I am sure the British side was right about the Margaux, but the Frog would not countenance it. Like most of his male fellow-countrymen, he is convinced that only the French know how to appreciate wine, and women.
A few days later, more discussion of France, abetted by a lesser wine that was also perfect in its way. We were eating brisket, and agreeing that we ought to do so more often, especially in winter. It was cooked to perfection, and accompanied by a Savigny-les-Beaune 2009, from the Domaine Jean-Jacques Girard. This would not pretend to be a great wine, but it is beautifully made and did just what it ought to do: suffuse and delight the palate with glorious Pinot Noir. We all agreed that this was a classic French repast: comme chez grand-mère. There was another Frenchman present who shook his head, not in derision, but in dismay. ‘Alas,’ he said, ‘much of this bourgeois cuisine is now under threat. Young girls go out to work. They don’t have time to spend hours in the kitchen, as their mothers did. The skills will be lost.
‘As for restaurants, there are two problems. The 35-hour week has messed up restaurant economics. So has female emancipation. Those old places in the provinces: le Patron mange ici. So he did, and he didn’t half mange well, while sa femme, ses filles and every other family female he could conscript travaillent ici. And they didn’t half travaille. Le Patron would be offering his copains another Armagnac at gone three o’clock while the girls were finishing the dishes and starting on dinner. Now, the younger generation would not stand for it.’
We have to preserve French culinary culture. Civilisation demands no less. So I offered a concorde to the second Frenchman. We will acknowledge your supremacy in female husbandry, including the drinking age of that most coquettish of clarets, Château Margaux, as long as you will ensure that the French kitchen remains an emancipation-free zone.
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