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Comedy
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| French people don't like wine | |
| By robokent | ||||||||||||||
| 04 May 2006 | ||||||||||||||
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I'm trying to write some articles for an American humor website, about life in France. Before submitting, I thought I'd get your perspective... French people don’t like wine. Like? No, you like lollipops. You like puppies. You like… I don’t know, Frisbee. These are all things you can ‘like’, but besides a few skinny, greasy-haired guys I knew back in college, no one can really have a deep feeling for Frisbee. There really isn’t a word to describe the French passion for the fruit of the vine and work of human hands. It is something akin to a religious experience to drink of the cup here. And if you happen to have infiltrated a Parisian, upper-middle class bourgeois family like I have, you will sooner or later discover this for yourself. Scene: the dining room of a French country house, replete with stone fireplace, in which roars a healthy blaze. A meal, half-consumed, is lain out on the table, in all its regal splendor. Though the conversation has wended its way through a variety of topics among the eight participants, suddenly one senses a change in tone. Bringing about this transformation is the appearance of Catherine, my future sister-in-law, who holds in her hands a bottle of red wine, its label hidden beneath a cloth napkin. Following the orders of her father Daniel, she has brought forth the fifth bottle of wine of the day, the concealed label an open challenge to us by Daniel to divine the region, the grape and the year of this particular bottle. Noticing the contour of the bottle, someone pulls out that cherished old French chestnut, ‘Well, it’s not Alsatian!’ Everyone laughs, knowing that bottles from Alsace resemble the narrower, longer bottles common to German wines. The wine is poured with the delicacy with which one holds a newborn baby in one’s arms. We raise our glasses, and immediately everyone knows something is horribly wrong. Instead of holding the glass by the stem, or even simply grasping it about its… round, wine-containing portion (I’m sure the French have a word for this, but I don’t think we do), each family member cradles the cup with two hands. Geneviève, my future mother-in-law gives Daniel a piercing look. She tsks, ‘But this wine is too cold!’ Truly, it is colder than the temperature at which red wine is usually served, but, hey, it’s not like he had just sanctioned the invasion of Iraq under the guise of searching for WMDs! As we all sit warming the wine with our hands, the smelling begins. You know the drill, sticking your nose as far as you can into the bowl, trying to suck the wine through your nostrils. I always end up thinking the same thing: ‘Mmm… I smell caramel!’ I don’t know why; red wine just always smells like caramel to me. (Actually, since I’ve been living in Paris, I tend to keep this particular idiosyncrasy in my olfactory sense to myself.) I keep quiet, marveling at the responses of my tablemates, at the same time praying that they will not ask what I think. When the wine is finally ready for tasting, I sip it like I’ve been taught, letting it penetrate the front of my mouth, sucking in some air as it settles for a few seconds in my cheeks and the back of my mouth before swallowing. I do all this, because I have learned that wine has different flavors as it hits different taste buds in one’s mouth. I discern that this particular wine is… very good. It tastes… very good. Such an answer would never suffice under the present circumstances, so every time it appears that someone may try to engage me in the discussion, I duck my head, pick up my fork and dig into another piece of grilled steak. ‘Oh, sorry! Can’t talk with my mouth full…’ All around me, the debate roils on. My fiancée, the lovely Odile, correctly guesses the year (I think it was a ’97 or ’98). Geneviève determines the region (Loire), and Jean-Philippe and Bertrand, my future brothers-in-law, identify the grape (merlot, as I recall). Needless to say, the French are a bit different. I’ve never had a discussion about wine with my family back home. In my family, we discuss things like, ‘Who’s better: A-Rod or Jeter?’ You know, important things. (Author's Note to UK readers: A-Rod and Jeter are very popular baseball players in the US.)
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Today, I was also inspired to introduce a shady character with a hint of a French connection in amnew scene of Village life ..... 
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