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In September 1986 I sat on the stage of the Strasbourg Convention Center listening to Robert Mondavi, whom I had just presented to the delegates of the International Wine and Food Society. Next to me was Johny Hugel who had just told the audience that “there is no such thing as a winemaker.” His comment and Mondavi’s speech provided fodder not only for the entire conference but for wine-producing professionals and consumers to this day.
Mondavi was explaining that “making good wine is a skill; making fine wine is an art” He said that for years he had felt that wines should be made completely naturally without working them. He said that wines “are like untamed human beings” in need of civilizing.
Hugel had just told the audience that grapes know best but admitted, as anyone who had ever seen him at work in Riquewihr would testify, that the grapes often need encouragement and tender loving care.
Both men deplored the increasing involvement of technology and chemistry in the production process. Too often, Mondavi added, “technicians look at the chemical composition of the wine and if it’s in balance, they are pleased — but it’s as if the wine was made by a computer.” To him, these wines do not have a soul or a heart.
Hugel had found that too many people were complacent in their wineries, unwilling — occasionally unable — to change with the times so they remained content with what they had always done. Tradition is important, he had said, but each year, each season is different, and each generation of people who drink and buy wine is different.
Mondavi had gone to Europe for the first time in the early 1960s and learned first-hand that Cabernet is made differently from Pinot Noir, Riesling from Chardonnay while “we in California were making all our red and white wines the same,” and so they did not vary in taste as much as they should have.
Hugel and Mondavi agreed that climate, soil, and grape variety are extremely important and depend a great deal on one another for the final product. Hugel insisted that soil (terroir) is all-important. Mondavi agreed — to a point. “We are looking for wine that has better balance, harmony, with proper fruit, structure, backbone, and complexity, with a good clean aftertaste… even when relatively young and better tasting through its lifetime.”
Much of what the two men told us a quarter-century ago has come to pass. There really is more good wine available, even fine wine, than ever before. Good wine is coming from many different places and from many different grape varieties. Technology is more widespread and is generally working for the good of the producer. But we still love arguing the merits of terroir versus the variety regardless of where grown. And we continue to compare each vintage year with past vintage years, “because like children, each wine is different from the other.” As Mondavi summed things up: “Producing wine is never easy, but it can be a lot of fun.”
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I shall reach Crissier in late September, just when the harvest begins in the vineyards overlooking Lac Leman (or Lake Geneva; as everyone knows, everything in Switzerland has at least two names). These vineyards are not really known outside Switzerland, and on the face of it, for a Midwestern American these wines would be unremarkable were it not for the spectacular character of the vineyards themselves – and the exceptional harmony the\ wines form with traditional Swiss food.
Crissier is home to Philippe Rochat’s restaurant, known to locals simply as the Hotel de Ville because it’s housed in the former town hall. Those who know about such things tend to call Rochat the best of all chefs. (It was in this restaurant in 1970, under the deft hand of Rochat’s predescessor and mentor, Fredy Girardet, that CBS called attention to “The French Paradox” and the wondrous health benefits of red wine. Of course I shall dine with Rochat and experience again how joyful it can be to drink Swiss wine.
But this is not about Rochat; it is about Swiss wine, underappreciated and generally unavailable outside this small Alpine country in the middle of Europe. Yet anyone who has downed beaker after beaker of Fendant with a Fondue or Raclette knows how delicious this little white wine can be. Fendant is really Chasselas, a grape all but banished from Alsace and most other white wine producing regions. The Swiss name derives from the verb se fendre meaning to burst open when ripe. But the wine exemplifies what is meant by “one man’s meat is another man’s poison.” In the faux tropical exoticness of the Alpine lakes, Chasselas transforms itself into a delicious, quaffable wine.
The entire nation produces only 27 million gallons of wine a year, hardly enough to supply its own people, let alone export to a snobbish world market thirsty for Bordeaux, Burgundy, Napa, Tuscan, and so on. Red wines enjoy similar lives in the Cantons in which they are produced. Mostly Pinot Noirs, they in no way resemble their cousins in Burgundy or Oregon or even in nearby Alsace. They are light, both in color and in weight, but when blended with Gamay (yes, another banished grape except in Beaujolais), they pair well with thinly-sliced veal schnitzels coated with local cheese or with cubes of beef dressed in a frothy, creamy red wine sauce.
All 23 Cantons produce some wine, but the most — and arguably the best — come from the Vaud and the Valais in the upper Rhone Valley just where that mighty river departs Lac Leman en route to Lyon and eventually the Mediterranean. But labels tend to be modest. They are mostly content to include the name Dorin, meaning simply a Chasselas from Vaud, Terravin, a sign of quality, or occasionally the name of a village. Red wines are often labeled simply as Dole.
In country you can find wines of great variety — Reze, Himbertscha, Lafnetscha, Gwass, and Freisammer, but only if you pronounce them correctly. Schweizer Deutsche ist nicht Hoch Deutsche!
Zum wohl! or Sante or Salute depending on the Canton and its official language, of which there are four in Switzerland. I have never learned Romansch, but those Cornalin and Humagnes red wines that struggle through the icy chills of the Engadine Valley are wonderful in front of a roaring fire no matter what language you speak. I can hardly wait!
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In spite of our hot summer, I began to crave a red wine. (In spite of my consistent declarations that if one wants a red wine, he should drink a red wine regardless of weather, I confess to using more whites and roses when the weather continues hot and humid for a long time.) I turned to my reliable Beaujolais. Light and fruity, pleasing purplish color, and liking to be served cool.
Sipping a fragrant Julienas, I added I’ll Drink to That to my summer reading list — again. I’ve read it every summer since it came out in 2007. While I can’t claim author Rudolph Chelminski as a friend, we have met and under memorable circumstances. It was in the fall of 1982 when I was finishing my own book Dining in Europe’s Greatest Restaurants.
My wife asnd I had an appointment with Paul Bocuse who suggested we come mid-morning before his lunch service got started. We found him seated with a man in the entrance of his hallowed restaurant. The great man leaped from his seat, ushered my wife and me to a nearby table and told a receptionist to bring us each a coupe de champagne.
With that, the other man, a long-time friend of Bocuse, sneered out loud that Bocuse had only served him a simple white wine, but he gave us vintage Champagne. That led to interesting conversation and to my meeting with Rudolph Chelminski. He was putting the finishing touches on his very informative and often hilarious book The French at Table, published in 1984. We spent the morning mooching Bocuse’s Champagne and sharing stories about the great meals and chefs we had known and how we were both going off to see Georges Duboeuf later that day. Duboeuf, as most of you know, is “the King of Beaujolais.”
I’ll Drink to That is a an entertaining book about Beaujolais and, as Rudy puts it, “and the French peasant who made it the world’s most popular wine.” He tells about the New Beaujolais phenomenon and the joys and perils of producing wine from the Gamay grape in vineyards right next to the most prestigious Pinot Noir vines the world has ever known.
All this is woven around the life of Duboeuf and his friends and neighbors in the Beaujolais business. Just under 300 pages, I’ll Drink to That is an easy read and is best read with a bottle or two of Beaujolais-Villages at hand. Together, the book and the wine make summer worthwhile.
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