ENJOY A GOOD GLASS OF WINE

Collected by Ole Nikolajsen

 

This collecting of how to treat a wine has been adapted from the book

“MONSEIGNEUR LE VIN”

published in Paris in 1927

with text by Louis Forest and drawings by Charles Martin.

 

I find it wonderfully decadent

 

Text Box: Text Box: The civilized drinker This title entails a code of conduct found only among superior beings. There is a potent difference between the ordinary drinker who gulps, swigs, and tosses off his glass and the man of taste who tenderly savours some masterpiece of vinous nature, exchanging appraisals and comparisons with lovers worthy of his confidence. Capturing the bouquet There is, in every great bottle, a marvellous mystery that wine lovers have named the bouquet. This little genie, the fragrance of the wine, is extraordinarily sensitive. It is afraid of humidity, cold, and the heat and will shrivel up and hide for the slightest reason. This timorous creature must be treated with infinite caution.. If you wish the little genie to appear in its full glory, you must coax it in a manner we shall now describe. Just before the meal, fill a decanter with water as hot as the crystal can take without breaking; after a few minutes throw out the water. Then, take the bottle and pour half of a liqueur glass of wine into the scalded-out decanter, swirling it around and thus impregnating the entire inner surface with the fragrance. Then, slowly decant the rest of the bottle. These tips are not, of course, at all definitive; the well-informed wine lover must determine the time of oxidation needed by the little genie of a given bottle in order for the wine to achieve the full measure of its blooming. As a general rule, red Burgundies are not uncorked until the last minute. There are however, exceptions. Sometimes, following a caprice of the thermometer or even of the barometer, wine seems too cool. The remedy is simple: the drinker, as noted, warms the glass in his fingers. Certain experts love to “incubate” their pleasure in this way; they are generally lovers of the vine, people who close their eyes when they drink in order to “hear” the wine! White wines are NOT decanted. How to drink wine I will reveal to you the essential difference between the act of swallowing and the art of drinking. Mental Preparation The wine lover is recognizable by his bearing: he has very distinctive deportment. Monsieur Mathieu, the celebrated professor of oenology, has described him with extraordinary precision. I borrow a few words from him here (for one only borrows from the well-to-do) and I summarize. The drinker gets ready to drink. He concentrates all his faculties of attention on his glass. Pleasure of the eyes The glass is filled halfway up. The drinker tilts it so as to enjoy the colours, varying the strata of liquid. He admires the hues, which range from white, gilt, and pink to ruby red and purplish brown, even to that straw-coloured yellow to which the play of light sometimes adds a ray of emerald. Pleasures of the nose and brain The surface of the wine being kept horizontal, one inhales gently to smell the bouquet. One intensifies the olfactory impression by moving the glass so as to cause the liquid to rotate. To effect this gyratory movement, the law and the prophets recommend taking the body of the glass delicately between thumb and forefinger, the other three fingers remaining free and half bent, fanwise, and commencing the rotation from right to left, that is, counter-clockwise. This agitation transforms the horizontal surface of the wine into a parabolic surface and enrobes with wine the free upper part of the glass’s inner side. Then the olfactory sense is dilated by the gamut of scents, some subtle and others penetrating. Then, too, the wine lover strives to individualize and characterize these fragrances, and to compare them with bouquets gathered in and analysed on previous occasions. It is a delicious moment. Pleasures of the mouth, tongue, and palate At this point one drinks delicately, in sips, like a bird. One lets each mouthful flow back into the mouth, the better to analyse it. It is important to know that “the shores of the tongue have special sensibilities”. The exceptional taster does not fail at this moment to purse his lips; he sucks in a little air to make the wine bubble at the temperature of the mouth. At that instant a new series of scents and tastes rise from the glass to the upper regions of the intellect. Then begins the majestic, religious, ideal, and definitive moment of……… Appreciation The head bends forward, expression grows serious and the drinker, gathering up memories from the depths of his soul and garnering, by means of his intellect, old and long-buried sensations, sets up as a judge. Then he and his companions discuss and compare. They know the great years without going all the way back to the celebrated one of Halley’s Comet (1811)

 

WARNING!