June Wine and Food
Wine and Food Diary Post Written by Giles MacDonogh
June was again dominated by French food and wine. That is normal enough: France is the nearest place to Britain that makes wines in the full cornucopia of styles. It is also home to hundreds of thousands of British expats seeking a better life. The Domaine de la Météore in Faugères and St Chinian is a case in point. It is owned by two British doctors and a couple based in San Francisco; but the winemaker Simon Frech at the 28 hectare, organic estate, is French. The domain takes its name from a 200 metres by 80 metre created caused some 10,000 years ago, when a meteor hit the surface of the earth at 30,000 miles per hour. The heat generated by its impact and was enough to turn primeval forest into a multitude of minute diamonds. Today the vineyard soil is largely schist and apart from troops of wine lovers, the vines are regularly visited by eagles and wolves. The vines grow in and around the crater, as well as in a plot a little way away in St Chinian Roquebrun. The wines are almost all named after famous meteors. Among the whites, I liked the 2019 Lyrides best, with is savoury, salted almond taste. There was also a pleasant orangey 2022 Sunflowers, made for the Van Gogh Museum in Arles. The red that struck me most (like a meteor perhaps) was the 2020 Léonides, which is two-thirds Syrah. There was a 2017 vintage to taste too. The Parangoa 2018 came from St Chinian.
A Loire tasting revealed the by now familiar truths about climate change: many wines have changed shape because grapes produce more alcohol than they did a decade or two ago. In some instances the results are good: Vouvray used to be largely off-dry, but now there is more of the bone-dry version, as the acidity is no longer as lip-puckeringly high. Other wines, however – Muscadet is a case in point – have become more ponderous, and less successful as food wines. In the past, Muscadet was the inevitable partner to oysters and shellfish, now it is often too heavy. Barrique-ageing doesn’t help much either. The best of the Muscadets were the 2022 Château des Grandes Noëlles sur lie, the 2021 Vignoble Malidain, Demi-Boeuf Côtes de Grandlieu sur lie which had good fruit and a just ever-so slightly oaky 2016 Vignerons du Pallet Muscadet de Sèvre et Maine Le Palle
A lot of the sparkling Crémants shown were a touch too sweet, but three wines appealed: the appley Domaine de Bois Mozé, the creamy Vouvray La Dilletante from Catherine and Pierre Breton with its little taste of salted caramel and the Vouvray Brut from our old friends at the Domaine Champalou. Among the Chenins I liked the 2021 Anjou ‘Wally’, again with a salted almond character, a well-structured 2021 Château du Hureau Argile, the 2020 Domaine de Bablut Petit Princé, and, a notch up, the 2020 Clos du Papillon Savennières with its flinty, creamy fruit. The best of the Touraine Sauvignons were the 2021 Bonnigal-Bodet and the smoky 2022 Baudry-Dutour La Chapinière. Again the Sauvignons were heavier than I remembered. That light, grassy, nettle-like character has largely gone.
A warmer Loire was possibly welcomed by red-wine makers using Cabernet Franc, where most years a little more ripeness would not have gone amiss. The 2020 Domaine de la Noblaie, Les Chiens Chiens – had a slightly earthy raspberry taste, the 2020 Tuffe from the Château de Hureaux, Saumur-Champigny, the 2014 Domaine Fabrice Gasnier, Chinon Signature, 2021 Domaine des Roches Neuves ‘Fruit’, 2018 Manoury Espirit du Lieu Saumur Puy-Notre-Dame and the smoky 2022 Domaine des Bouquerries, Royale were all noteworthy.
A cookery demonstration on the foods of Mexican Yucatan was the only non-French thing I attended last month. The chef Alonso Wilson taught me how to make a black bean tamale. This is Mayan food, and as such surely as ancient as any cuisine in the Americas. We were allowed to leave with our creations wrapped up and sealed with corncob coverings looking like a little dolly and ready to be poached for 45 minutes in salty water. I am not keen on black beans. My daughter ate it for her tea.
At the end of the month I went to France for a short week. I was there to see my ailing mother but we had the chance to roam the city of Paris. The place was heaving, full of new shops selling luxury foods and more fromagiers and posh cake shops than I have ever seen before. On the corner of the Rue d’Assas and the Rue de Rennes I spotted a surviving charcutier – most have gone the way of all flesh. The prices were out of this world, but they didn’t bother the Parisians and there was no question about it: the city had fully recovered from the pandemic and nowhere was there that blighted feeling you experience just about everywhere in Brexit London
We were staying in a friend’s flat just off the Place de Clichy, and the first night we went to Wepler, the local brasserie. At around 50 Euro a head with half a bottle of wine this was a bit of treat but when I got back to Paris after my trip to Gascony I noted that the prices at the famous Coupole in Montparnasse more or less the same.
“These old world brasseries are worth it for the theatre alone with waiters scurrying this way and that buckling under huge plates of seafood. I had a lovely veal kidney à la moutarde and we drank a really exceptionally good bottle of Juliénas he next night we went to the new bouillon in Pigalle.
“A bouillon is a huge cheap restaurant which uses rapid turnover to maintain low prices. When I lived in Paris forty years ago in Paris, they were full of students, and the food was a bit like the student canteen (which was remarkably good). There is no booking, and you wait in a queue until a table becomes available. Being just two we did not have to wait long. Larger parties can hang around for a lot longer. I had a herring in oil, a boeuf bourguignonne and an excellent île flottante. With a bottle of wine the Bouillon Pigalle came to well under 50 Eur for two.”
The third night in Clichy we ate at Ayutthaya, a small Thai restaurant in the rue Houdon, the street behind the bouillon, there was a copious two course menu for 18 Eur. With a bottle of wine it was not much more expensive than the bouillon.
On the Saturday I went to Gascony to stay with a friend who lives in Monségur in the Entre-deux-mers south of Bordeaux. It had been hot in Paris, but now it was positively steaming, nudging 37 degrees. The next day was Sunday and we had lunch in the Auberge les Vignes in Sauternes: a carpaccio of foie gras and duck magret with rocket and pesto, a veal tartare ‘snacké’ (quickly thrown on the grill) and an apricot tiramisu.
“The high point of the meal was definitely the 2015 Château de Cantemerle which I can still smell with its aromas of blackcurrant paste. The next day we had another excursion, driving to St Emilion and eating nems and pho bo at the little Café Saigon, a discrete, upstairs Vietnamese restaurant with its amazing wine list. I left St Emilion with the inevitable box of local macarons.”
The next day was Tuesday and I was back in Paris for a few hours before catching my train home. As my bus entered the Boulevard de Magenta I noticed a suspicious piece of rock in the road. It looked like an omen, but at that stage I knew nothing of the shooting that had taken place that morning. I caught my train and left
That night the riots broke out, and at the time of writing happy prosperous, post-Covid Paris is still under siege, its shops subjected to frequent looting, buses and trams hijacked and cars torched in the streets. In photos, the city looks as if it has been hit by a meteorite. That lucullan image, the land of plenty I had witnessed just a few days before, had gone up in smoke. Let us hope the nightmare ends soon.
