Following the Purple Trail FOR the benefit of " unhurried
" American tourists Mr. Peixotto has written, and charmingly illustrated, an enthusiastic little book about his itinerary through the chief wine-growing regions of France during last year's vintage. Such pilgrimages, though not quite so uncommon as he thinks, seldom fail to reward the brave with the fair.
On the eve of his departure a lady friend brought him a
stirrup-cup (or was it a love potion ?) of a dusty, twenty- years-old bottle of Jurancon, " with faded label and mouldy wax, golden-coloured, ahnost orange, like a burnt topaz, with a bouquet between truffles and muscadine, rich as Sauterne but without its sweetness." Perhaps it was the " valour " of this wine for heroes (did it not make Paris seem worth a mass ?) that emboldened Mr. Peixotto to telescope the great Richelieu and his great-nephew, the Marechal, into a single superman—" general, diplomat, cardinal, iceur usually credited with having first made the Bordeaux growths truly appreciated at the Court of France." Before Mr. Peixotto got further than the Loire his introductions had uncorked an 1869 and an 1875 Anjou, and 1874 and 1893 Vouvrays—after which it is rather an anti-climax to find him speaking of " a rare old bottle of Château Climens 1924." The first of these was offered by the proprietor of Chateau d'Epire at Savennieres, a wise and courtly gentleman who wistfully remarked, " I suppose I ought to keep these few remaining bottles for the marriage of my daughter, but at a wedding who pays attention to the quality of a wine ? " Who, indeed ! The sparkle and effervescence of " Bubbly " is clearly the only proper pledge for the brighter and briefer brides of the nineteen-thirties.
Some readers may be puzzled by finding technical French terms like contenance, &gustation, etiquettes, freely sprinkled about these pages without italics, inverted commas, or accents to identify them. The worst of copious paraphrasing is that it demands a certain amount of care. Thus we are informed that the recolte of Château Ausone is " only fifteen barrels," and that at Château Suduiraut " 150 vintagers can only be expected to pick half a barrel a day," whereas in fact their average yield is twelve to fifteen and seventy-five tonneaux .respectively : one tonneau equalling four barriques bordelaises, each of nine hundred litres capacity. Hospices de Beaune .is not " a wine " but the common label of twenty-two red and six white wines owned by this founda- tion in eight different growths of Burgundy. The " official " . classification of the cuvies hors ligne of the Cote d'Or appended for those who would like to know " is a hierarchy that has never had even a semi-official existence. But, though careless, these are relatively minor errors. Mr. Peixotto could not have perpetrated the solemn " howler " printed on p. 14 of the Report on (Empire) Wine, just published by the Imperial Economic Committee: • • • occasionally (in the making of Medoc for instance) the grapes are not crushed, but roughly torn from their stalks so that the skins burst in the process."
Having seen egrappoirs and wine-presses working, he knows
that the former is merely a machine for removing the stalks from the grapes; used as a preliminary to pressing, so as to avoid an excess of tannin in the must ; and that after
egrappage the uncrushed grapes still require to be squeezed.
It is often a nice point whether the actions which journalists with a keen " news sense " call gestures " are funny without being vulgar, or vulgar without being funny. After telling his thirsty compatriots of that eight-bottle stalwart, General Bisson's famous order to his troops to present arms before the Clos Vougeot, Mr. Peixotto adds
" This gesture has been repeated more than once. I have a photo- graph of one of my friends, a distinguished American architect, the Colonel commanding our Camouflage Corps in the World War, dressed-in full regimentals, with his medals upon his chest, standing at salute before this same enclosure."
P. MORTON SHAND.
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