While touring around France last June, Brianne and I took a break from writing about our travels so that we could focus on really experiencing things without distraction. In some ways, this was a good decision, even though it meant not sharing some of the best moments of the trip with our friends and family.
We ended up bringing home at least one bottle of wine from each region that we visited, and we’ve slowly been working our way through them. These bottles are special to us for a number of reasons, but most of all because their contents are bound so tightly to our memories that tasting again is like being transported back to the places and people who produced them.
Last week, to celebrate Brianne’s return from working her first New Zealand vintage, we opened one of those precious bottles to go with our meal. It was a 2000 Domaine Foret Secret d’Origen, a Chardonnay and Savagnin (NOT Sauvignon) blend from the village of Arbois, which is in the heart of Jura- a little known wine region located about 30 miles from the French-Swiss border.
Sockeye salmon with garlic spears. Yes.
The Secret d’Origen has an extremely unique flavor- slightly nutty due to its age, it was warm and round like a Chardonnay but also sour and fragrant like Gewürztraminer, to which Savagnin is a cousin. A whole year had passed since the last time we’d tasted it, but in an instant we were back in Arbois with nothing to do but taste wine and cheese and feel the sun on our arms as we drove, windows down, from one beautiful place to the next.
I had been meaning to catch up on those France posts for some time, but tasting that wine again provided the motivation I’d been lacking. I began writing this post a few days ago, and today, for the first time ever, guess who wrote us an email? Céline Foret, the wife of Secret d’Origen creator Freddy Foret! She was writing to ask where the post about our day in Arbois could be found on 1000wines, because she couldn’t seem to find it. If she’s reading this, now she knows why- it’s because I never wrote about that day until now.
Despite my skepticism regarding things that cannot be seen, described, or measured in some way, I have experienced too many peculiar incidents involving important people in my life to dismiss them all as mere coincidences. For Brianne and I to share a particular bottle of wine from a tiny corner of the world and then have a person involved in making it contact us a few days later… I can’t explain it, but still find it wonderful and strange.
I believe that things like love and friendship are real, albeit intangible, phenomena, and perhaps they exhibit certain qualities that are not limited by time or space. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “The world is its own magic.” Basically, I’m just glad that there are still mysteries to ponder, but that’s a whole different story.
The point is that we loved the time we spent in France and Jura, and the hospitality shown to us by the Foret family will never be forgotten. The story below is my attempt to explain why.
To Freddy, Céline, Max, Flora and Michel- meilleurs vœux et merci beaucoup!
***
“Sitting there, alone in a foreign country, far from my job and everyone I knew, a feeling came over me. It was like remembering something I’d never known before or had always been waiting for, but I didn’t know what. Maybe it was something I’d forgotten or something I’ve been missing all my life. All I can say is that I felt, at the same time, joy and sadness. But not too much sadness, because I felt alive.”
-Alexander Payne, 14th arrondissement
The road that led us to Arbois began in Paris, at the organic wine shop La Cave de l’Insolite. The shop was located around the corner from where we were staying, and its owner, Michel Moulherat, was an affable and generous host.
After explaining the purpose of our trip and our goals for our time in France, Michel suggested (in perfect, British-accented English) a book listing organic and biodynamic French winemakers, in which he marked his favorites as well as the names and contact information of winemaker friends who were not listed in the book. “Ninety percent of French wine is shit,” he told us, “but if you stick to these you’ll be alright.” He also invited us to a winetasting at a different wine shop later that day.
La Cave de l’Insolite
Armed with that slim orange book and a grey Citroën rental car, we set out the next day to explore the wines of France. We began in Champagne, where the tasting room employees dress like flight attendants and the most fundamental part of wine production, grape farming, seemed carefully kept out of sight, like an extremely ugly rug or something.
The blonde hobo of Epernay
Then we moved on to Alsace, a region bordering France and Germany that is famous for its stunning white wines (and underappreciated Pinot Noir, in our humble opinions). In Alsace we met with Bruno, one of Michel’s opinionated winemaker friends (”Oregon wine… it’s fine. But it doesn’t change from one hour to the next. It isn’t alive.”), and also ate charcroute and foie gras and escargots and a bunch of other delicious French food and wine.
On our way from Alsace to Burgundy, we noticed that if we made a turn off towards Arbois we could visit another one of Michel’s friends as well as taste some wines from Jura, a region that we were completely unfamiliar with. It was a beautiful day and we had all the time in the world, so that’s what we did.
