...of Birthdays and Beer
Beautiful Avril celebrated a birthday recently. I like to think that maybe we qualify as good neighbours since she invited us to dinner.
Like all birthdays there was great company, nice music, good food and wine, and of course Bonny ( Avril’s macho hubby) made sure beer was on hand.
I’ve never been a wine drinker, I am a beer man. The great thing about beer is that you basically drink it, then you pop open another one.
Beer drinkers are nonchalant, laid back, friendly, down-to-earth folk who enjoy talking football or the importance of spin bowling, much like the Hobbits of the Shire.
Snobs who fancy wine however tend to be insufferable in that they sniff at the cork, swirl it around the glass, and go on and on about it while holding it up to candle light, unlike us beer drinkers, who just guzzle it down.
I know I am generalizing here, but I don’t care.
A while ago I decided to see what all the brouhaha was about wine. I rented a three-piece suit and bow-tie and went on to attend the Annual Sommelier Meet held in the humid confines of the French Consulate in Pondicherry.
For the benefit of you rotgut drinkers a “sommelier” is that dignified-looking wine steward with the starched shirt, who looks down his nose at you in expensive 5-star hotel restaurants, hands you the “Wine List”, and when you point to the French writing that actually means,” Taxes and Surcharge Extra” says “Excellent Choice Sir,” then struts off and brings you the iodine-tasting house wine.
A lot of the Pondicherry “elite” who consider themselves wine aficionados were on hand for the Sommelier Meet.
We were served champagne in the lawns and introductions were bartered in the foyer.
We then went in to dinner and to watch the presentation of new wines.
After a few glasses of champagne this takes on an ethereal, immensely entertaining quality, because some of the local Pondicherry Ashramites spoke (I figured they practiced for days in their meditation chambers) with cultivated French accents which were highly comical,.(Sroo-out eestory zee hrole of zee whine mhakar eez to zeelect zee grape zat epeetomizes zee flavore of zee reegeeawn)
Also as an invitee I got to drink a lot of wine, just like beer I would down my glass of wine and look around for more.
Not so the wine-drinkers at my table who swirled their glasses around, sniffed, and instead of drinking the wine, mostly gargled with it, then with studious faces would make remarks like they were selecting applicants for Big Brother ( “I find it particularly intriguing if a trifle facetious.” Or : “It’s cultivated but just a little too puritanical for rhetoric”)
I asked Brigitte, a French lady sitting next to me if the French went on about wine in the same snotty way. “No,” she said, “we just drink it, because that’s why we make it ,no?”
Then came the sommelier competition.
A bunch of them from around the country were quizzed on questions like; which regions with a “B” apart from Bordeaux, Beaujolais, and Baloney produce Pinot Noire wines ( I’m joking about Baloney –that’s where they produce fertiliser)
There was a blind-tasting where we invitees also got to sample a wine introduced from the Golconda region of Hyderabad.
It was rusty brown in colour and everyone at the table agreed it was lousy. “A trifle earthy,” said one lady. “Too efficacious for a Cabernet.” said another. “Like cow pee” I volunteered. The others felt I was being too strong in my opinion, but I was the only one who finished my glass.
Next we got a French wine which was awesome and which I gulped down hastily, but a reporter from the Wine Weekly was upset that instead of it being from the Loire Region as mentioned in the program this wine was from the Alsace region. “They are both haute couture wines but there is such a difference in their personalities.” I was the only one who laughed, although I suspect Brigitte wanted to as well.
For the finale the sommeliers had to match wines with menu selections.
The menus had food disguised with French-sounding names like “ Poisson Marquis de Sade aux Frappe de Merde “ and “ Boeuf avec Coeur de Bastille.”
Each sommelier had to state reasons why he chose a particular wine.
Statements poured forth such as: ”I felt the Chablis ‘69 would have the enhanced bouquet to compliment the Pate’” and “ In my opinion when marrying red herring with melba, the wine has to be allowed to breathe in advance and ….”
It turned out hilarious and entertaining for me, but my table mates were appalled that I had been invited.
In the end the winning sommelier was Alfred Gomes from Goa.
He won the Crystal Carafe’ and an all-expenses-paid trip to France and had this to say: “When I see Turkey on the menu I am reminded of a quote…….”
I say! Capital my man! Now who can argue with a man who is reminded of a quote by turkeys!
Avril’s birthday dinner turned out to be a smashing success, since most of us stuck to drinking beer, ergo there were no controversial issues – except for my references to Divinity and Bacchus in the same breath….
Oh ! and Joe flirted with death on the roof while recovering a ring… but that’s another story.
