Читать книгу The French Menu Cookbook: The Food and Wine of France - Season by Delicious Season - Richard Olney - Страница 22

Alsace, all of whose wines (with the exception of Zwicker, a mixture) are named after grape varieties, produces one, made from the Riesling grape, which, at best, is in a class apart—a splendid wine with light fish dishes and far better than beer with sauerkraut. Gewürtztraminer enjoys great popularity, but its fruit and perfume are so overpowering that, despite its being relatively dry, I cannot imagine it being drunk with anything but a dessert.

The Jura makes a great white wine of a totally different character than that of any other French wine: Château-Chalon. Tastewise it falls somewhere between a fine sherry and the great white Burgundies. It remains in kegs for about six years, evaporation loss is never replaced, and thanks to this particular process of vinification, a layer of special bacteria forms on the surface of the wine that gives it its unique quality. It is powerful and, although very dry, has a rich fruit. It accompanies well certain rich, strongly flavored fish dishes (lobster in various sauces in particular) and can occasionally replace advantageously a red wine—with certain game birds, duckling, or pork dishes whose sauces are slightly sweet, for example. The Jura also produces a very small quantity of vin de paille (“straw wine”), the grapes of which are partly dried on layers of straw before being fermented. I have never seen this wine on the American market.

The Mediterranean coast produces few wines of quality. The white wines of Cassis are pleasant, though a bit alcoholic. (Cassis is the name of the village, and the wine must not be confused with cassis—black-berry liqueur—particularly since one of the favorite apéritifs in Burgundy is vin blanc cassis, a white Aligoté sweetened by the addition of a bit of blackberry liqueur. To an inexperienced ear it sounds much the same as vin blanc de Cassis.) At Bandol, the Domaine Tempier makes a rosé wine as good as any I know and a fine red wine that takes age well. All of the wines of southern France are made from a large number of grape varieties: Grenache, Picpoul, Clairette, Tibourin, Ugni and others. The quality of the Tempier red is due, in part, to the presence of the mourvèdre grape.

Near the Spanish border, in Catalan country, Banyuls enjoyed a great reputation in the past, but a time came when the product had sunk to an indifferent quality. Shortly after World War II, an energetic and impassioned major of Banyuls took the winegrowers in hand, organized impressive installations for vinification and storage, revised vinification techniques, and today the various Banyuls Grand Cru wines are again of splendid quality. They are not “table wines,” although they accompany nicely certain dishes in the preparation of whose sauces they have played a part, but are, rather, of the same family as the great ports, and the vinification is similar. It begins as for red table wines, but the fermentation is “muted” before completion by the addition of an eau de vie, thus raising the degree of alcohol and imprisoning a certain amount of the natural sugar in the wine. Banyuls is aged in kegs out of doors, exposed to the sun. These wines are extremely useful (as is port) in many culinary preparations, and are fine aperitif and dessert wines.