Читать книгу The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season - Richard Olney - Страница 17

With some rare exceptions, the finest wines of France are produced in the Rhône Valley, Burgundy, the region of Bordeaux, and the Loire Valley—Champagne being a world apart, although it does produce lovely still white wines, blancs de blancs natures. The term, blanc de blancs distinguishes any white Champagne wine, made uniquely of white grapes, from other Champagnes made of red grapes (blancs de noirs) or of a mixture of white and red grapes. When found on wine labels from other regions, where all white wines are made from white grapes, the term is merely a bit of pretentious nonsense designed to flatter snobbish instincts through its associations with champagne and “elegance.”

Central and southern France produce vast quantities of small wines, many of which carry the V.D.Q.S. (Vins Délimités de Qualité Supérieur) label of quality. Their qualities are best appreciated in the regions that produce them (although I cannot take too seriously the notion that certain wines cannot travel—no wines travel well, but all wines travel. It is, rather, I think, those circumstances that render these little wines pleasant that refuse to travel with them—the abrupt coolness of a cellar on a sweltering, thirsty day and the appeasement lent by a light, young, cool wine, combined with the teasing perfume of the earthen floor, impregnated with wine spilled and spit there by tasters for decades, if not centuries).

The few wines discussed on the following pages are among the best known in France and the most widely exported. They nearly all fall under the control of the French Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (hence, the term Appellation Contrôlée to be found on the labels). When referring to an Appellation Contrôlée d’Origine, I shall, for simplicity’s sake, often use the abbreviation “A.O.”

The order of presentation is unrelated to respective qualities, but follows, rather, a geographical logic. The descriptions of the various wines are, inevitably, vague, and in any case one may come to know wines only through tasting (although it does not follow that those far more experienced than myself can always pinpoint a wine tasted blindly).