{"id":1739,"date":"2020-02-03T16:19:09","date_gmt":"2020-02-03T16:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/?p=1739"},"modified":"2020-02-03T16:19:17","modified_gmt":"2020-02-03T16:19:17","slug":"the-mystery-history-of-the-bottle-in-the-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/2020\/02\/the-mystery-history-of-the-bottle-in-the-box.html","title":{"rendered":"The Mystery\/History of the Bottle in the Box"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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THE BOTTLE<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday, 23rd<\/sup> January, we had a small party at Millwood Farm. Though as it happened all our guests had our recovered good health to celebrate, that was not the reason for the gathering. Our excuse to dine on foie gras, tomato salad and burrata, and long-cooked shoulder of salt marsh lamb with borlotti beans from the garden, was to drink a special bottle, one that had been in my cellar for a very long time. It was in its own, individual wooden box, and I had long overlooked it. It was addressed to me, and the sender was Bernard Loiseau.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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THE SHIPPING LABEL<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernard Daniel Jacques Loiseau<\/strong> (13 January 1951\n\u2013 24 February 2003) had become a chum of mine, when I was Food & Wine editor\nof The Observer<\/em> and later restaurant critic of Travel +Leisure<\/em>.\nHe had three Michelin stars for his glorious Burgundy restaurant, La C\u00f4te d\u2019Or,\nat Saulieu. It was an historic address, as it had been the grand restaurant of the\nchef Alexandre Dumaine (1895-1964), and was a place of gastronomic pilgrimage.  I can work out why I was sent this bottle\nfrom the shipping label: it was a fee for serving as a judge for the Troph\u00e9e\nDumaine \u2013 which I think I remember was a competition for the best food title published\nin France that year. (Though I can\u2019t recall what year that was, I sat at lunch next\nto a lovely woman introduced to me as \u201cChantal de France.\u201d  Her young American male attendant hissed at\nme early on in the proceedings, and said I obviously didn\u2019t know who the lady\non my right was. Indeed I did not, as to my ears, \u201cChantal\u201d was the French equivalent\nof one of the Little Britain <\/em>characters. Of course she was Princesse\nChantal de France, but as \u201cMadame\u201d was in any case the correct way to address\nher, I do not think she was distressed.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a great honour (and flattery) to have been asked to\nsit on this French-speaking jury, and I was certainly cognisant of that. I was\na lot younger, and in France often enough for work, that I was able to fake a semblance\nof fluency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bernard Loiseau was a lovable young chap, and it gave him a\nbuzz to show me around his recently completed hotel rooms, which made him truly\na destination restaurant. He was successful, and he loved the trappings of\ncelebrity chef-dom. But then, some years later, aged only 46, on 24 February\n2003, two days before my own 62nd<\/sup> birthday, he took a shotgun into\nhis bedroom and killed himself. The Guide Gault Millau<\/em> had reduced his\nranking from 19\/20 to 17\/20, and there were loads of rumours that Michelin was\nabout to remove one of his three stars. Our family often stayed with friends\nwho owned a ch\u00e2teau about half an hour\u2019s drive from Saulieu, and more than once\nwe met there and commiserated with the very genial Mme Loiseau. The verdict of\nhistory was that Loiseau was suffering from clinical depression; and the\nnegative gossip in the press could not have helped. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

More cheerfully, having stumbled on the bottle of Faiveley\nClos-de-Vougeot 1987 almost exactly 17 years later, I decided we\u2019d have to have\na memorial dinner and drink the bottle from \u201cBernie Bird,\u201d as we affectionately\ncalled him behind his back. My chief co-memorialist was my dear old friend and neighbour,\nMark Walford, a member of the wine trade all his life, even before he sold his\nbusiness Richards Walford to Berry Bros & Rudd. The other celebrants were\nMark\u2019s wife, Sue, my wife, Penelope, and another neighbour, Helen Ellis Binyon.  To enlarge the occasion, Mark brought a\nbottle of  Domaines Lafarge Volnay\nClos-des-Ducs 2009, which we drank to mark the death on 16th January, aged 91,\nof Michael Lafarge. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the foie gras we had yet another surprise. I found in\nthe cellar a bottle of Margaret River, Leeuwin Estate Art Series Riesling from\nthe same vintage, 1987.  It was only just\nmature, gold in colour, but so youthful that it quivered in the glass, smelling\nof crushed lime leaves with almost no petrolly tang, and with evanescent\nsweetness and the perfect acidity for room temperature foie gras.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Lafarge Volnay was powerful red burgundy, still young\nand vibrant, nerveux<\/em>, with loads of fruit, black cherry, bramble, lovely\nround tannins and a good lengthy finish. The salt marsh lamb, though braised\nfor hours, still had a tinge of pink (only an Aga can achieve this, I think)\nand was perfection the Volnay. And the Clos-de-Vougeot? It was a delicate old\nlady, darker at the meniscus, with a not too generous nose, and not much fruit.\nBut left in the glass for a time, it opened, and reminded me of the subtle fragrance\nof old bourbon roses, until it suddenly developed cooked stone fruit aromas and\nflavours. It was a happy mouthful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have no idea how I acquired the Aussie delight, though the bottle was so clean and free of dust that I can only think I had intended to drink it not too many years ago. Nearly my entire cellar was sold a few years ago at Christies, on the grounds that the most valuable bottles were too expensive for me to enjoy drinking them \u2013 and I believe most of my collection is now in mainland China. What\u2019s left are the vinous waifs and strays; and I have to say they are allowing me more fun than anyone could have expected.I have no idea how I acquired the Aussie delight, though the bottle was so clean and free of dust that I can only think I had intended to drink it not too many years ago. Nearly my entire cellar was sold a few years ago at Christies, on the grounds that the most valuable bottles were too expensive for me to enjoy drinking them \u2013 and I believe most of my collection is now in mainland China. What\u2019s left are the vinous waifs and strays; and I have to say they are allowing me more fun than anyone could have expected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Thursday, 23rd January, we had a small party at Millwood Farm. Though as it happened all our guests had our recovered good health to celebrate, that was not the reason for the gathering. Our excuse to dine on foie gras, tomato salad and burrata, and long-cooked shoulder of salt marsh lamb with borlotti beans […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,36,1],"tags":[4635,4634,4636,4633],"class_list":{"0":"post-1739","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-blogroll-2","7":"category-elsewhere","8":"category-uncategorized","9":"tag-bernard-loiseau","10":"tag-food","11":"tag-michel-lafarge","12":"tag-wine","13":"entry","14":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbv6zV-s3","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1739"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1749,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1739\/revisions\/1749"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/plainenglish\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}