Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [55]
When should wine smell of petrol?
IT IS QUITE possible that relatively few people would respond favorably to an invitation to try a glass of wine because it has notes of petrol in the bouquet. The others would be foolish not to grab the glass. Petrol is a benchmark aroma identifying a good riesling with some age. Young European rieslings with any quality at all overwhelm the senses with aromas of flowers and often of lime; those from hotter climates may include tropical fruit in the list. But as they begin to age, they change. The flowers begin to develop into honey, and the notes of petrol emerge more and more. By the time a great German or Alsace riesling is, say, twenty years old—and riesling can age and age—the combination is quite sublime. Many wine drinkers have failed to grasp the pleasures they are missing. The result, for those of us who do, is that the wines can be wonderfully underpriced.
An omelette and a glass of wine?
THE QUESTION—sans question mark—comes from the great Elizabeth David’s collection of cookery and food writing, published in 1984. It conjures an image of perfect simplicity and perfect eating and drinking. We can smell the lavender and the fig trees and feel the heat of the sun. And such perfection requires neither great expense nor great luxury, just attention to detail and the careful matching of ingredients.
Which is odd.
We know, almost certainly, the precise omelette Miss David had in mind. It was l’omelette de la Mère Poulard, as made by the proprietress of the Auberge de Saint-Michel Tête d’Or at Mont Saint-Michel, who died in 1931, age eighty, but not before revealing the “secret” of her celebrated omelettes:
Je casse de bons oeufs dans une terrine, je les bats bien, je mets un bon morceau de beurre dans le poêle, j’y jette les oeufs et je remue constamment.
Good eggs, bowl, mix, frying pan, butter, keep ‘em moving … and that’s that. So much for the omelette. Now: what about the glass of wine?
And here’s the problem: it’s an absolute given that two things that never go well together are wine and eggs.
Contemplate a boiled egg, buttered toast, and a glass of Brouilly, and your mental taste buds rise in rebellion. A Trockenbeer -enauslese with two fried eggs? Oh dear. Scrambled eggs and a fair young Beaujolais? No. No. The palate quite correctly rejects the combination, and it is nothing to do with the choice of wine. Any wine will seem disgusting with eggs, and the taste of both will be ruined. True, there is a French dish, oeufs à la meurette, in which the eggs are poached with wine, but even Homer nods.
Why eggs and wine should not mix is unclear. We suspect sulfur has something to do with it; perhaps, too, that is why the humble (it has much to be humble about) Brussels sprout is also wine’s enemy. As is that signifier of luxury, asparagus.
A shame. But the Brussels sprout, if you must, can be accompanied with a good Normandy cider with no loss of face to either; asparagus can be indulged in before the first wine is poured; and as for the omelette, Guinness Imperial Russian Stout carries away the laurels, lightly chilled on a hot day.
So what was Miss David thinking of?
We should remember that her first book was published in 1950, when Britain was still afflicted with postwar shortages, the hideous memory of snoek and Woolton pie still vivid. Food was fuel, not sensual pleasure, and pretty poor fuel, too. Even acknowledging the pleasures of the table was the first step to becoming a terrible garlic-smelling, tax-evading, siesta-taking foreigner.
Into this gray climate, Miss David brought not so much a recipe book as a glimpse of better things. What could be better, in a nation still reeling from powdered egg, than a perfect omelette? What better to take away the taste of sour, watery war time beer than a glass of wine?