Paris_ The Collected Traveler - Barrie Kerper [108]
Here in Bordeaux, as in Burgundy, lines are sharply drawn in the soil. Just beyond the priceless vineyards of Château Lafite Rothschild in the commune of Paulliac, for instance, is land where no grapes deserving of the name Bordeaux may be grown. It’s only a stone’s throw from the most esteemed vineyard land in the world to the domain of reeds and bullfrogs.
If all French wines, Bordeaux in particular, were born beautiful, they’d be less wondrous when they come of age. In fact, there’s nothing meaner in the mouth than young Bordeaux from a strong vintage. In my own cellar is a cru bourgeois called Château Marsac-Séguineau, from the intense 1975 vintage, bought when it was young. A brilliant royal purple, it ripped my gums with its tannin—the vinous equivalent of an assault rifle. The wine stayed that way for more than a decade, and I gave up hope that it would ever mellow. But then, after a long hiatus, I gingerly tried another bottle. Eureka! That snarl had turned to silk. Well, almost. At sixteen years of age, the wine was still angular enough to provide the classic contrast to the rich taste of roast leg of lamb.
As we get older, there’s something deeply affirmative about the progress of well-aged Bordeaux. We hope that as the sap of our youth is left behind, we will show greater depth of character, soften our sharp edges, and become more interesting people. In short, we want to believe that with age we can still bloom. That’s precisely the path of a fine claret from youth to the fullness of age. We drink it overtly for pleasure. But we also drink it as a reminder that we can get not just older but better.
Usually it’s red wines and such sweet wines as Sauternes that we save for aging. A very few dry white wines can also improve with age. My memory settles on a dusty case of 1964 Corton-Charlemagne, a grand cru Burgundy from the esteemed shipper Robert Drouhin, that a friend and I found forgotten in the back of a wine shop in 1977. The proprietor, happy to get rid of wine he presumed to be over the hill after thirteen years, sold us the case at a bargain. We’d planned to hold off until dinner before trying a bottle, knowing that the wine might indeed be over the hill. Instead, on the way home, we pulled over to a shaded roadside picnic table. Out of the glove compartment came clear plastic cups and a corkscrew.
The smell of that wine mingled oak, freshly toasted country bread, and an elusive tang of lime. In the mouth came a rush of flavors and a texture that was simultaneously stony and unctuous. I’d be more specific, except that it is better to marvel at a great old white Burgundy—or red, for that matter—than to dissect it.
A year or so later, during a visit to Burgundy, I mentioned this marvelously youthful Corton-Charlemagne to a winemaker working in the Roman-era cellars of Drouhin located in Beaune. We were only a few miles from the hill of Corton.
His eyes lit up. “Ah, yes,” he exclaimed. “In 1964, you know, the secondary aromas never really gave way to the tertiaries. It was most unusual.”
The winemaker was alluding to the three phases into which French enologists divide a wine’s evolution—as perceived by le nez. Primary aromas are those of the fresh juice of the grape. Secondary aromas develop with fermentation, the smell of young wine. The best wines go on to develop a bouquet in which multiple scents perform a dance as complex and as evanescent as a Balanchine ballet.
You needn’t speak wine techno-talk to appreciate a wine like that ’64 Corton-Charlemagne. But the precise terminology does drive home a point: the best French wines are not produced by happy little peasants. They are an expression of the unique French blend of sensuality and science. It wasn’t by chance that fermentation