A Good Summer Read — and Drink


• By Allen Dale "Ole" Olson   |   Monday, July 26, 2010 at 8:48 pm   |     |   Print   |   Permalink

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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