Typically I am not very good at seizing the moment. However, when a fellow student in French class on Monday told me about a wine expo in Paris that had only a couple more hours of life left, I decided to seize the opportunity and have a look. While I expressed hesitation, due to my not so firm grasp of French, as well as flying solo when talking to wine makers, I eventually stopped eating the bowl of pineapple from my fridge, put on some decent clothing, and headed out.
The effort? Well worth it. When I arrived, I walked directly to the table distributing wine glasses explaining my student status, to receive a reduced rate. The woman gave me a typical French confused look, asked if I had paid and upon my "no" answer, gave me the glass and entrance ticket for free. For the first time my naive American stamp on my forehead came in handy.
Upon entering, I did not know where to begin, or really what to do. Rows and rows of booths lined the room, each booth manned with winemakers and six to ten of their wines. People were tasting wines, discussing wines, and dragging along crates of wine on dollies: it is amazing how much wine people purchased. Not knowing where to begin, I initially walked and watched. I stopped at one, timidly asked about her wines, at received a taste. Not to my liking I drank the three generous pours and moved on. It was not until the fourth of fifth tasting that I noticed the black barrels in front of each booth. This is not America. People were tasting for taste, not to get drunk. And that god, because at the rate I was going, a hangover was in its nascent stages of development at five in the afternoon.
It was difficult to know where to begin or what to try. Yes, I had heard of Cote du Rhone; yes I had heard of Bordelais, but Corsican wine? Or Provence wine? Very interesting varieties. Signs also displayed whether a producer was organic or not; but being small wineries, the best way to know remained asking, in my broken and puzzling French of course.
While initially frightful and timid about speaking French, a couple glasses of wine got me flowing. I asked about taste, region,and differences as best I could. When I got stuck, I expressed my new learning status. There was no doubt to any winemaker that I was not French. And actually most of the people walking around were French. I did stumble upon a group of American college girls, in their typically loud form of communicating. Like a rock in stormy waters, I grabbed on and started talking to them. However, they had a different agenda. At a Loire wine stand at which we all stopped, the four of them held out their glasses and asked for a white wine, in English. After being poured, and drinking it quite quickly, they moved on. I asked the winemaker about the differences, had a taste of one, then slowly had a taste of another. The girls moved on, I said I would catch up and never did. In typical American fashion, they were there to drink, may be not to engage, and definitely not there to use the black bins below each stand.
I stayed, and began a conversation with two older and very knowledgeable French men about the differences between Borugogne wine in France and pinot noir California. I could not believe how easy it was. Of course, when the conversation dipped into heavier topics, I got lost. But there I was tasting wines, asking questions, and discussing wine, in French! For five minutes, I truly felt a part of French culture. I envied the way these men were able to converse and talk about the subtleties of wine with the winemakers, and the ways in which the winemakers were both flattered and impressed.
After not being wowed by any of the wines, I moved on, pretty typical in my wanderings from stall to stall (and in my liking of French wine in general). I eventually stopped at a Mediterranean wine stand. While the reds remained too tannicy, the man was nice, and he took out a pink dessert wine for me to try. It was outstanding. I thought the price would be ridiculous since dessert wines are usually pricey. But seven euros I could handle.
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| The three wines I eventually chose. The Mediterranean dessert wine is to the left. |
When I thought I was done, I headed outside, only to notice three more rooms, even bigger, of more winemakers. I had already spent an hour in a room full of over 100 vignerons, but now hundreds more, and where to begin? I narrowed my search, out of time and tipsiness, to organic (agriculture biologique) stands. Provence sounded interesting, I seized the moment.
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| Notice the winemakers names on the label, the same women I talked to at the expo. Also the French organic stamp of approval to the right : AB (Agriculture Biologique) |
What started out as a broken French discussion of their wines turned into a full scale English discussion on EU regulation on organic in France and the rest of Europe. It was fascinating, hearing how much EU regulation is putting such a stranglehold on traditions. Like all large bureaucracies, the need to have uniformity in standards means peculiarities and customs get pushed aside. For these two women, regulations have added more red tape and paperwork. When importing their wine to the states, they no longer put organic on the label. The amount of paperwork to be considered organic by American standards is too costly and too time consuming. While their wine is pushed as sustainable when sold at Whole Foods in New York, they are finding ways to get around the official organic stamp of approval.
The discussion evermore reinforced the complexity involved in knowing where you food comes from and what you are actually eating. The entire expo reinforced, for me the importance of asking farmers about their food, rather than blindly trusting signs and stamps of approval. But in an increasingly global society in which communication occurs through small screens rather than word of mouth, this strategy proves difficult, challenging the very movement of reducing pesticides, eating local, and feeding the world in an ethical manner.
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| The 2008 Provence wine, simply delicious |
After three glasses of very good Provencal wine, I decided to buy their 2009 bottle, the last of anything they had (everything else was sold). The wine maker could tell I liked the 2008; out of kindness, she gave me the rest of the opened bottle, pretty much full. Three days later, and I am still drinking it. The great thing about heavy wines is they age beautifully even when opened and getting minimal amounts of oxidation.
I meandered for another 20 minutes (met a French girl, woohoo French friends!) eventually headed home with my three wine bottles and a head full of new wine knowledge, in French and English.
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