I stumbled across a quote from the writings of Colette the other day.  Colette was a rather prolific French writer who grew up in Burgundy during the late 1800’s (for more information click here).  She is famous for much of her fiction, but I enjoy reading her writings about her life in Burgundy, and also those about her mother, Sido, a practical woman who was in tune with nature and its cycles.  In this passage, she talks about her introduction to wine and her wine “schooling” as a child:

     It was between my eleventh and fifteenth years that this admirable educational program was perfected.  My mother was afraid that I was outgrowing my strength and was in danger of a “decline”.  One by one, she unearthed, from their bed of dry sand, certain bottles that had been aging beneath our house in a cellar—………—I drank Chateau Lafites, Chambertins, and Cortons which had escaped capture by the “Prussians” in 1870.  Certain of these wines were already fading, pale and scented like a dead rose; they lay on a sediment of tannin that darkened their bottles, but most of them retained their aristocratic ardor and their invigorating powers.  The good old days!
     I drained that paternal cellar, goblet by goblet, delicately…My mother would recork the opened bottle and contemplate the glory of the great French vineyards in my cheeks.
     Happy those children who are not made to blow out their stomachs with great glasses of red-tinted water during their meals!  Wise those parents who measure out to their progeny a tiny glass of pure wine – and I mean pure in the noble sense of the word – and teach them:  “Away from the meal tale, you have the pump, the faucet, the spring, and the filter at your disposal.  Water is for quenching the thirst.  Wine, according to its quality and the soil where it is grown, is a necessary tonic, a luxury, anda fitting tribute to good food.”  And is it not also a source of nourishment in itself?......It is no small thing to conceive a contempt, so early in life, not only for those who drink no wine at all but also for those who drink too much.
     The vine and the wine it produces are two great mysteries.  Alone in the vegetable kingdom, the vine makes the true savor of the earth intelligible to man.  With what fidelity it makes the translation!  It senses, then expresses, in its clusters of fruit the secrets of the soil.  The flint, through the vine, tells us that it is living, fusible, a giver of nourishment.  Only in wine does the ungrateful chalk pour out its golden tears…..

Can we take claim to any of these theories in modern day America?  Wine as medicine?  Teaching our children about respect and responsibility for alcohol?  The transference of the qualities of the soil through the vine into a form that is not only useful to the body, but also a unique, singular expression of it’s elements?

From reading these old words, I realize that most folks in France at the time who were probably more agrarian in those days, accepted these ideas without question.  Here in the modern America, we have to analyze, debate, pour money into an organization in order to test an idea, etc. about all of those “contentious” topics:  underage drinking,  wine and health, “what is terroir?”.  I realize debate is a democratic principal, but these days, I prefer to keep it simple and just read Colette and enjoy a glass of wine.  How about you?  Bon Sante!   

 

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 18th, 2006 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.