The e-mail from David

I have decided to post a subsequent e-mail from David regarding my last post...

The pacherenc was super, it is usually slightly sweet by the way. The madiran must rest a week or so after its journey, it is five years old, just about ready to drink but old wine doesn't like any kind of journey - even from wine merchant to your home. I used to tell people to let any good bottle rest for as long as had been travelling.

I have done some research with my books, Lembeye was never in my memory but I see it as 'vinously important'. It may be a three bar, two baker shops 'bled' (Arabic word used in French slang - meaning a small village of no account) but it is also the postal address of two very large and prestigious producers of madiran and pacherenc du vic-bilh (wine producers here always produce the two wines, one red the other white) Next looking at my books I see that one is Chateau de Peyros - and that name I do remember, because long ago I did set out to get their madiran sold to wine merchants here and so we (self and my senior partner in a French wine agency - which sells on behalf of French 'principals', shipments to the UK Wine Trade) 'shew' the wine to trade buyers at the London Wine Trade Fair in 1990.

The USP of madiran ('unique selling proposition' in case you are not familair with adspeak?) is that the principal grape variety used is called 'tannat' , an appropriate name since it makes the wine tannic in its youth. SW France/Gascony being the only place in France (therefore the World) where tannat is grown. Except extraordinarily - Uruguay! Yes, because of French emigrants in the 19th century. We didn't learn this until the mid 1990s. (all of this information is true and correct, totally useless though unless you are - and I know that you are - addicted to fine wine) Chateau de Peyros then had about 150 ha and their madiran was pricey (all madiran is and deservedly so) Ch.Peyros compares favourably to fine claret (but with its own gascon style)

The other, much bigger operator with a Lembeye address is at Crouseilles ( a co-op with maybe 400 members, high standards and by now maybe 4-5000ha.) It was their pacherenc du vic-bilh we drank, it was about four years old, and at 13% and just the right bit of (natural) sweetness. Now - what an unusual name for a wine, it doesn't sound French at all? Well it isn't 'langue d'oil' , the classic French of the North and above all the Loire Valley. It is a (gascon) dialect form of 'langue d'oc' which itself evolved from 'dog' latin and has hard terminal consonants. Let's dissect. Vic-bilh - ' Vic' is a place name, of a small mountainous region. 'Bilh' simply means 'vieux' in this old dialect. Pacherenc is the name of the principal grape variety, which is now called 'arruffiac' or 'ruffiac' (also once known as 'peau de chien'!) Originally this might have been the only grape to have been used, and it was also the first wine grape ever to have been planted as single vines, each with its own stake (like a standard rose tree) For going back 400/500 year all vines grew 'a la foulee' - all over the place just like wild blackberries . Nowadays pach /vic-bilh will have other cépages - gros manseng, peit manseng, sauvignon, semillon. We should pass from technical stuff...

So from fact to fantasy. In one of my books I read of Dumas, who wrote about (invented?) the most famous gascon ever. The author complains however that he did not ever write of D'Artagnan drinking pacherenc. He goes on to write that D'Artagnan lived in the Chateau d'Arricau, near Lembeye But wasn't D'Artagnan a fictional hero? Ans. Not for me. He really lived. Finally the same author reckons that whenever one drinks pacherenc one will hear the tinkling of rapiers 'le tintement des rapieres'. I heard no such thing, did you? I just revelled in the envelope of flavour.

I could go on endlessly , but won't.

David

P.S. Today would D'Artaganan be a fly-half. Gascony and all of SW France is rugby country.