Introduction: Paris

Paris

It is cool but not cold as I walk up the Rue des Martyrs. It is nighttime but gray; in one year, I have learned that in Paris, the only difference between day and night is the shade of gray.

When I arrive to the building numbered 56, I buzz the apartment on the top floor. A second later, the door itself buzzes and rattles and I push it open. I take the elevator to the fifth floor, and, as I step out, Sean is waiting for me with the door to his apartment open. “Herman!” He calls out shrilly (he never calls me by my real name). “Get in here!”

I mask a bottle of wine under my jacket, and, as I step into his flat, I immediately turn towards the kitchen. “You can’t see what I have. Give me a decanter!”

Two months ago at 10 in the morning on the Rue Richelieu, I was bending over dozens of empty wine bottles behind the bar at Sean’s wine bar, Cochons, sifting through last night’s treasures as I dropped them into a green recycling bin one at a time. It was always depressing to “open” the wine bar, like cleaning up after a party that you weren’t invited to. There were all the wines that I didn’t drink, all the bottles that I will never drink, the graves of people who I will never know.

I picked up an empty magnum bottle and immediately stopped. I sat down at the bar stool and studied the label. “1980 Pippen Cabernet Sauvignon Alexander Valley.” I was familiar with Pippen through months spent eavesdropping over Sean’s shoulders while I poured wine and dried glasses. Sean is a raconteur, as any veritable wine passionate is—there is no coincidence that Bacchus is God of both wine and theater—and, even if I only caught half the story, the story would be repeated in due time, and, after weeks and months of listening, it was possible to put together the tapestry of his wine drinking life.

Sean “worked the harvest” at Pippen Winery in 1980, the year that I was born, the same year the wine from this empty bottle was made. Sean’s stories, however, focused more on Bob Smith, the winemaker at Pippen, than on the winery itself. Bob was, according to Sean, one of the most knowledgeable winemakers around, a stunning compliment by someone who, in over forty years as a wine gypsy, has drank more wine with more winemakers than anybody ever save a handful of pompous wine critics, sommeliers, and auctioneers.

I searched through the wine fridges for a taste. Surely, he thought of me last night and left me a small pour. But I found nothing. I reexamined the empty bottle. Maybe I had missed something; maybe there was a few drops still hiding in the bottom. Nothing.

I proceeded to sweep and mop the floor, arrange and wash the tables, restock the fridges, fold the napkins, set the tables, write up the lunch special while my subconscious slowly submerged my longing desire for the lost wine from last night. More immediate concerns filled my head: “Is fricassée spelled with one or two e’s? Will I eat the magret de canard or the porc rôti for lunch? Where will I put the three pallets of wine that are being unloaded onto the sidewalk in front of the restaurant fifteen minutes before noon?”

Sean arrived as lunch ended. “DuBon! I found you a job! You’re going to California! Harvest at Pippen. I discussed it last night with Bob Smith himself over a magnum of 1980 Pippen Cabernet—which was fucking fantastic, of course, I helped make it!—and he wants you so it’s all set and you don’t have to worry.”

“But I already have a job. I work for you!” I wanted to tell him, but I couldn’t. He was already sitting down, a glass of wine in his hands, with clients on table 14.

Still, I immediately dismissed the idea. I had battled French bureaucracy with patience, persistence, forgery, and elementary French for over a year—from the Ariege to Paris to the Vaucluse and back to Paris—in order to gain student status (even though I never went to school) so that I was legal to work a maximum twenty hours a week (even though I worked 35). For somebody from Seattle living in France, California was not on the horizon. I had only just escaped America. I certainly wasn’t about to go back.

And that’s when I started to believe in Bacchus. The more I though about Pippen Winery, the more I accepted the reality that I would be going, not because I chose to, but because Bacchus did. I began to discard my selfish motives for staying in France—wine, food, five week vacations, French, public transportation, the South, wine, food—and thought about the bigger vinous picture. Wine is a craft. It cannot be learned in a university. There are no PHD programs, no Fulbrights or theses. It must be experienced first-hand under the guidance of those who have experienced it most. If Bob lives up to even half of Sean’s perception of him, I must work for him, no matter what continent he is on. I don’t have a choice. Bacchus has already chosen.

The first bottle—the apéritif—is white. Sean has hidden its identity, too, and he serves it to me out of a decanter. This is the game. I must guess the wine. I throw out tasting notes. “It’s clean, dry, fresh, lots of minerality—chalkiness—no oak—or at least not overwhelming. Green apples,” while Sean sniffs his own glass. I cheat. I examine his face for reaction. A raise of his eyebrows at the mention of “no oak” is a clue.

I have seen, touched, or opened every wine label in Sean’s wine bar and in Sean’s “cave” five and a half stories beneath us. The game for me is a process of elimination. “I’m thinking Old World.” A bashful smile. “Chardonnay.” A vocal intonation. “Burgundy.” “Umhmm.” Sean works with one white Burgundy producer. “Domaine Laroche.” “Very good Herman.” “Chablis.” “But which Chablis?” “Premier Cru Les Vaillons?” A pucker of the lips. A negative clue. I am wrong. “Grand Cru?” “That’s better, Herman.” “Les Blanchots.” “Unhmm.” “Vintage?” “2004.” “Cheater!”

We finish the bottle. It is fucking fantastic. I am anxious to serve him the wine that I brought. In this game, the power is in knowing. You cannot guess wrong, while everyone else can. I serve the wine. Sean doesn’t cheat. He sniffs and sniffs and swirls and tastes, all the while looking away from me, abstaining from my gesticular clues. He says nothing, but I can see him thinking. His eyes dart back and forth, even though he is clearly looking at nothing.

“2004 Côtes du Roussillon Villages,” he tells me matter-of-factly. He is a true blind taster. He doesn’t start generally and narrow (“Old World. France.”). He doesn’t play by the process of elimination.

“No,” I tell him, although I have not won. His stab is so specific that it almost cannot be right. Instead, his is so close that it is unsettling. The wine is from Châteauneuf-du-Pape, a hot appellation in southern France famous for growing Grenache and Syrah. The wine produced there is almost identical to the wine from another hot appellation in southern France also known for growing Grenache and Syrah: Côtes du Rousillon Villages.

We are eating dinner now, although the food is really secondary to the wine. It is, however, necessary. To continue drinking, we must eat, and I fork bites of food into my mouth between sips. Sean brings out a new carafe and serves us our third bottle of wine. It is my turn again. After two bottles of wine, our sensory perception must be skewed, but I make up for it with tipsy confidence. I don’t need any clues; I get right to the point.

“The Cab from Penedes.”

“Okay, Herman. I can see where you are going. But you’re wrong. I’ll give you Cab, but….”

I run through the list of wines in my head, but this is my downfall. Sean inherently hates Bordeaux. We hardly have any Cabernets in the wine bar, and he certainly doesn’t have any in his cellar. I don’t know. “I don’t know!” I exclaim in maudlin disappointment.

“Come on Herman! Think! Jesus Christ, my boy!”

I think. “Cabernet. Too bold to be Bordeaux. Probably new world. Lots of fruit. Australia?” “Australia?” “No, Herman! Are you a total fuck-up. Come on, my boy!” New World Cab. California. And then I realize. “Pippen.” I am drinking, for the first time in my life, the wine made in the winery where I am about to dedicate six months of my life.

Dinner is over, but we drink two more bottles. His apartment, too, is gray, and it has shrunk since I arrived. Sean, however, hasn’t. He has grown. His movements are brusquer. He needs more space to talk. He pushes his chair back from the table. His black bangs, matted in long spirals, fall over his face from his high forehead. His brow is sweaty. His face is a ruddy red in the half-light.

Sean, at 59, has over thirty years more wine-drinking experience than I do. And he is a Scotsman. I can only imagine what I look like. I finish the dregs of the orange dessert wine from Jurançon. “I should go,” I mutter. “Okay, my boy!” His voice has grown, too.

I step back from the table. In the doorway, Sean pulls me into his gut and slaps my back. “Okay, my boy!” He lets go. “Remember,” he tells me in a fleeting moment of sincerity, “if nothing else, learn! LEARN, my boy, and then come back and see me!”

It is still gray out when I walk back down the Rue des Martyrs in the early morning, but it feels warmer. I move slowly. I am dizzy, but I don’t vomit until the morning, just before I walk to the Gare du Nord to take the train to Charles de Gaulle.