Is This Bottle Corked__ The Secret Life of Wine - Kathleen Burk [76]
Now we see that the Parisians were right, and wine is indeed a staple: a staple, in correct moderation, of good living, of good fellowship, of the daily pleasures of the table and the home.
But what have they decided among themselves? Have they changed their minds? Whatever has happened to the Nicolas vans?
Why did the sommelier weep?
THERE ARE TIMES in every life, no matter how well regulated, when we might wish that we were paid to do what we love. For the wine drinker, the glitter of a sommelier’s tastevin—a mere spoon to the outside world, a hard-won badge of honor as noble as an episcopal miter to the wearer—is enough to set off a fantasy of spending one’s life moving, with a certain affable dignity, among pleasant and appreciative diners, recommending a wine here, commending a choice there, guiding the novice and exchanging a few words of mutual respect with the connoisseur.
But the sommelier’s life is not always an easy one. Indeed, the sommelier himself is less frequently seen than previously, as dining out becomes less of a truly special occasion, and as restaurants themselves slug it out in increasingly competitive markets.
Yet there was a time when any eating house that thought itself more than a mere chop house or bistro would have its sommelier, and none more so than those once bleakly grand, now slightly faded, “Business and Commercial Hotels” that stood, immovable as an alderman’s watch chain, in every large British city.
It was in one such hotel that we dined alone one evening. The dining room, which magically smelled as British hotel dining rooms were meant to smell—of gravy, soup, damp, and the poetry of Philip Larkin—was half full; all except one of the occupied tables was taken by a pair of men doing business. It was sad to see these probably harmless chaps spending an evening in the Midlands rain telling lies to each other (“We’re very confident in the prospects statesidewise”), while the one couple, a man and a woman obviously married and equally obviously not to each other, attracted such glances of loathing and envy that we half expected to see them run shrieking from the room.
There was, of course, a sommelier: a worn-down, rotund, small man with a hairdo reminiscent of Dirk Bogarde’s in the last reel of Death in Venice. He moved sadly from table to table like a miniaturized Alfred Hitchcock, gloomily dispensing wine from the lower end of the list to people who swilled it around the glass, swigged at it, and declared whether or not they liked it. This was, of course, lèse-majesté of the first order: according to the old school, the sommelier’s job is to protect his customers from a dud bottle of wine, whether because they are about to make a poor choice or because something is wrong with the bottle they’ve been brought.
But this sommelier had been ground down over the years until he projected himself not as an expert guide, but as a mere delivery system.
Sad and alone in this forlorn morgue, we ordered a bottle of a rather good St. Julien to elevate, however artificially and transiently, the mood. It came. The sommelier drew the cork. His tastevin, we noticed, was tarnished. He poured a little into the glass and waited. We raised the glass to the nose, swirled lightly, and inhaled.
His hand began to move the bottle toward the glass.
“Actually,” we murmured, “perhaps … is this bottle corked?”
His hand trembling slightly, he raised the tastevin on its chain, poured in a few drops, and inhaled. He picked up the cork and smelled that.
“It is,” he said. “Yes. It is.”
He seemed disconsolate and stood there for a moment, silent, what looked like the beginning of tears in his eyes. Had we offended him mortally? Was this the wine on which, to the harsh, money-grasping management, he had staked his reputation? Why was he so sad?
“Do you know, sir,” he said, sniffing, “I have been working here for twenty-eight years and