Days of wine and rosaries

BY HARRY COEN
TIIE PEOPLE OF Burgundy have a special prayer: "Dear God, make us as good as our wines". Assuming that the prayer is occasionally granted, there must be some pretty saintly people wandering the vineyards of the Cote d'Or, the fabled "Slopes of Gold'. For the wines from this blessed mile-wide strip of land, running roughly 20 miles north and south of Beaune, are fabled for their quality.
Wine and religion here are inextricably intertwined. Even among the most secular-minded, there is the nearmystical view that wine is the physical result of a transcendental union the vine is the medium by which the sun, the soil, the weather are joyously transmuted into wine, which becomes the expression of all of these. They are deadly serious. Where do they get this wonderful claptrap from? Myself, I blame it on the monks.
In particular, look to the Cistercians. Almost every time I visit (which is as often as I possibly can) I find that when something intigues me, the Cistercians lie behind it. For example: I admire a table wine, well beyond the quality and at a lower price than anyone has the right to expect. The restaurateur proudly tells me she got it from Moulin des Moines in Auxey-Duresses. Yes, that translates as the Monks' Mill. And yes, it was originally the Cistercians.
It is one of history's great ironies that when the ascetic St Bernard broke away from the Dominicans based at Cluny, a sort of 12th-century Back to Basics campaign, it was to be only a few years before the monks of the mother house — Citeaux, a few miles north of Beaune transformed the making of wine from fermenting hooch to the high art of producing one of the world's greatest luxuries.
They founded an offshoot at Vougeot and, by luck or under guidance from above, happened on one of the sites best suited to the Pinot grape (the staple red variety still used in Burgundy) and it
wasn't before all pretence at asceticism went out of the stained-glass windows of the now-renowned Chateau du Clos de Vougeot. Beaune wines, as Burgundies were known, became the most sought-after in Christendom, with the lay brothers at Vougeot leading the field. It wasn't long before the wines took on political and religious importance, as well as economic.
By 1364, the Avignon Popes had developed such a taste for Beaune wines that Urban V issued a Bull forbidding the Abbot of Citeaux to send any wine to his archrivals at Rome — under pain of excommunication.
Indeed, Petrarch despairingly reckoned that the Cardinals would never return to the Vatican because they wouldn't be able to savour their favourite tipple. I for one am on their side.
Even the colour of red Burgundy is tied in with the
monks and religion. Originally, it was more like a rosé. But, the story goes, to bolster flagging faith in the Eucharist after the Black Death, the Cistercians dictated that the juice from the grapes should be fermented longer with their skins, thus producing a deeper, more blood-like colour.
Not only did the wines now more closely resemble Christ's blood, but they tasted better and lasted longer, thanks to the natural tannins. This was a gift from a grateful God, some say. Others remark that the wily monks knew a bit more about the chemistry of wine than they were letting on.
Then there was the business of the Great Grape Heresy of the 15th century. All of a sudden the Pinot Noir grape mutated in the village of Gamay, ripening earlier and in huge quantities but making a wine of lesser quality. Duke Philip the Bold denounced it as a "very bad and disloyal plant" and banned it.
The Duke then went so far, we are told, as to persuade the Bishop of Dijon to anathematise it as a "most heretical and unChristian grape". They take their wine seriously in Burgundy...
THEY ALSO TAKE their processions seriously. Take the village of La Rochepot, 10 miles south of Beaune. It's tiny, with a population of 290 (two part-time). I'm one of the part-timers and every time I arrive, I get roped in for yet another procession. We all go walkabout with a banner or two and a saint's statue and then get more plastered than the statue. As the village is so small you could make it from one end to the other in 10 minutes even with a zimmer frame, the processions tend to be ludicrously short.
Last month my young friends Laurent and Catherine Fouquerand were married so we had three processions in one day. First the groom's party processed the full 500 yards from his house to the Mairie to join the bride for the civil wedding. Then we all processed the 200 yards from the Mairie to the Church. (There are times when you find yourself longing for the Tridentine Mass, not for traditionalist fervour or nostalgia but because you just can't cope with the vernacular. Attending a wedding in France is one of them. About the only word I could understand was Alleluia.)
Finally we processed the remaining 300 yards back to the groom's house amid cries of "On a soif" (both the procession and the cries were led by the groom). After such thirst-making processing it was just as well that the Fouquerand family makes the best fizz (cremant de bourgogne, to give its deservedly posh name) in the region. Vast quantities were quaffed almost as many as when we processed the 600 yards between the local mason's house and the Fouquerands' for the local St Vincent festival back in January.
For reasons I have yet to discover, St Vincent of Saragossa, marytred by Diocletian, has become the patron saint of Burgundian winemakers. The tasteless thought occurs that perhaps the fact that he was partly squashed, grape-like, during his torture may have something to do with it. It turns out, like so much else, that the Cistercians had a particularly soft spot for him. That would account for it then...
By the way, the wine served with the main course at Laurent and Catherine's wedding feast was a wonderful 1985 Pommard made by our mutual friends, the Monnier family of Meursault. It came from an ancient vineyard that was split up during the Revolution but which the family reunited in the 1950s. Its name? Clos de Citeaux, of course.
FAMILY VALUES are
hallowed in Burgundy. I am constantly amazed by the number of youngsters who happily succeed, gener
ation after generation, to their parents' calling. The Fouquerands and Monniers are only two examples. There is also, for example, the Dubreuil-Fontaine family of Pernand-Vergelesses.
The patriarch is 89-yearold Pierre, for years the head of the Chevaliers du Tastevin — and leader, until recently, of the region's annual pilgrimage to Lourdes. He is legendary for parading up and down the train offering not holy water, but his most excellent wine to help the pilgrims with their rosaries. Its label is emblazoned with the shrine of Our Lady of Good Hope, which dominates the hill overlooking the village and the vineyards. On a clear day you can see Mont Blanc.
His son Bernard runs the business — but now taking a leading role is granddaughter Christine. Three generations of dedicated winemakers continue the tradition and the devotion to Notre Dame de Bonne Esperance — and to Lourdes.
Pierre went to Lourdes again this year but no longer as a brancardier. "This time it was his turn to be brancarde," Christine said wistfully. "But he still took the wine with him..."
"Dear God, make us as good as our wines..." Yes, I'm beginning to get the point.
And to think that for all those years I thought wine was just a drink!