The Emperor of Wine

 

        Edinburgh Central Library is in the heart of the city’s Old Town, a tourist mecca. A stone’s throw from the entrance, visitors will see a mass of scaffolding, behind which a hotel has been hidden for years. It is an embarrassment to this once handsome capital city, but nobody seems to want to do anything about it.

        I went to the Central Library not to see this eyesore, but to read The Wines of the Rhône Valley and Provence, by Robert M. Parker, Jr., the ‘Emperor of Wine’. The book was published a long time ago, in 1987, and is for reference only. It took me back to my student days, when I whiled away hours in that library, reading texts which were far less interesting.

        It may legitimately be asked why I bothered. Well, I wanted something to write about and I’m very keen on wines from the Rhône Valley. I was curious to discover what this legendary wine critic had to say about one of my favourite regions.

        I quickly discovered that Robert Parker was a really excellent writer. I don’t think I’d ever read that about him. He is still famous for having a profound influence on wine styles before the Millennium, owing to his preference for very ripe, full-bodied wines, but his talents as a writer seem to have been forgotten.  

        I found myself laughing at his turn of phrase in that silent room around the corner from Edinburgh’s Royal Mile. Gigondas ‘seems to have as many dogs and cats as human inhabitants’, he wrote. Now of course a famous appellation, ‘Gigondas does not have a distinguished history’. Hence the fact that ‘all the growers and négociants seem to relish’ its previous incarnation as a ‘booster wine’ for red Burgundy.

        He was not a fan of the wine villages in the département of the Drôme in the southern Rhône, which he described as ‘one-horse towns’. As for Vinsobres, which is these days considered a source of some excellent red wines, its name ‘seems a contradiction in itself (“sober wine”)’. The eastern side of the river in the southern Rhône, an area of ‘sun-scorched, lazy hill towns’ and ‘spectacular vistas’, was ‘studded with…red-faced vignerons offering a free taste of their wines’.

        For someone with such a famous palate, I found some of Parker’s comments about grapes and wines puzzling. The white grape Bourboulenc, he wrote, ‘offers plenty of body’. I don’t think I’ve ever heard that. On the contrary, I thought it was more famous for having acidity, making it a rarity in the southern Rhône. I’d always believed that Grenache Blanc, another white grape, was rather neutral. ‘Deeply fruity’ was Parker’s assessment, however. As for the rosés of Gigondas, these were ‘light, vibrant, fresh, underrated’, in his view. Admittedly, my tasting experience is limited, but the ones I tried were flabby and alcoholic.

        Parker’s tasting notes were surprising, to say the least. One of the aromas of the white grape Roussanne was ‘coffee’, in his estimation. I did a double-take when I read that. Likewise, I raised my eyebrows when I saw that one of the ‘telltale aromas’ of the red grape Mourvèdre was ‘tree bark’. His assertion that the ‘best’ examples of Grenache had an aroma of ‘roasted peanuts’ also had me scratching my head. Either I haven’t tasted enough or Robert Parker had an eccentric palate.

        I didn’t read all of it, but I enjoyed Robert Parker’s book very much. I’d say that he was a far more gifted and entertaining writer than the vast majority of people writing about wine now. Nor was he afraid of acknowledging his limitations. ‘Frankly, I have no idea what this grape tastes like’, he wrote of Picpoul. Now that’s hard to imagine.

Rasteau

        I wasn’t struck by the impact on France of the recent terror attacks until I got to Chambéry. It’s a lovely city: the Alps provide a majestic backdrop, and the handsome shuttered buildings in the old town are draped with the red and white flag of Savoie. Such were my thoughts as I sat in the Place du Théâtre drinking a strong coffee. Then three soldiers in fatigues and berets who looked as hard as nails walked past bearing automatic weapons. It was a jarring reminder of France’s troubles.

        Perhaps I should have been prepared, though. While I was staying in a guesthouse in the Provençal wine village of Rasteau, a few hours south of Chambéry, the owner told me that the number of foreign guests had gone through the floor. They were afraid, she said. It was a shame, I agreed. And it really is, for Rasteau is a wonderful place.

It’s hard to believe that Rasteau belongs to the same country as Paris and Nice. It feels isolated from the stresses of the outside world. Very little happens, and the chimes of the bell tower every half hour seem designed to rouse the locals from their reveries. In the late afternoon, when the baking August heat has slackened off a little, old men take over the dusty square for games of pétanque. Other wizened figures sit on benches to observe them.

Off the square is a no-frills bar, the inside of which is likewise the preserve of elderly gentlemen. The drinks list is eccentric. I wanted a glass of Rasteau’s Vin Doux Naturel (a delicious and sweet local specialty similar to Port). They didn’t have any. The nearby post office only does business in the morning and the grocery shop has irregular opening hours. The bakery was shut because the owners had gone on holiday. You wonder how the owners and employees of these establishments can possibly make a living.

I went to Rasteau because of its wine. Its reds are concentrated and spicy. I spent hours wandering around the arid and empty vineyards (the farmers were all on holiday, like the bakers). The soil was dark brown, becoming lighter the nearer you got to the village. Pudding stones, or galets, were spread over the surface, in some cases covering whole rows. Massive bunches of Grenache and Syrah grapes drooped from the vines, looking ripe enough to harvest even at this early stage of the growing season.

 At night the vineyards were so peaceful; nothing was audible except for the relentless croaking of cicadas. On a ridge across the flat and deserted plain I could see the orange lights of the wine villages of Séguret, Sablet and Gigondas. They stood out like beacons in the darkness, and I could almost imagine I had stepped back into the past. For surely this night view has enthralled moonlight walkers for centuries.