I'll Drink to That (30 page)

Of course that past perfect never did and never will exist, and Georges’ modern installations were in all ways cleaner, more precise and more efficient than the single-family peasant operations to which he had been born himself, but the stigma of success and profit clung to him like a burr. What most critics could not grasp was that in spite of all the impressive logistics of the modern shipping industry—the computers, the pallets and containers, the wine-heavy trailer trucks on the roads and the 747 cargo planes winging to Tokyo and beyond—his Beaujolais Nouveau was not an anonymous industrial product but a real wine with its own personality, one whose birth he had midwifed from first juice to bottling, seeking it out and blending it himself for
le goût Duboeuf
. Clearly, a lot of people around the world agreed with the Duboeuf taste, because in a good year he sold more than 5 million bottles of
primeur.

Getting that taste was and will always be a matter of the
terroir
first of all, that and the care of the grapes growing on it, but once the grapes are in, everything hinges on the crucial next step: vinification. Turning grape juice into finished wine is a bafflingly complex process, half-science and half-art, one in which an obscure peasant who quit school as a stripling, all instinct and folk wisdom, can easily surpass the best efforts of a battery of technicians and Ph.D. microbiologists. Vinification tricks and manipulations are in constant evolution, but the fundamental idea is simple enough: to bend nature by persuading her to turn the fermenting juice into wine rather than vinegar. The great Louis Pasteur discovered that it was yeasts rather than the hand of God (as most peasants had assumed) that caused fermentation, and that thousands of these micro-organisms occurred naturally on grape skins. But trusting nature to choose exactly the right yeasts from this rich cocktail is a bit like throwing a pack of cards in the air and hoping that the one you want will land faceup and the others facedown. In consequence, winemakers around the world, with the exception of a handful of inveterate risk-takers, prefer to vinify by starting their fermentations by inoculating their must (fermenting grape juice and pulp) with selected yeasts that have been carefully isolated from grape skins, then grown and cloned in oenological laboratories.

Inoculating different yeasts will make different styles of wine, and for a few years in the seventies and eighties many winemakers of the Beaujolais, Duboeuf included, succumbed to the seductive fruitiness produced by the one known in professional circles as 71B, isolated by a researcher in the Narbonne laboratory of INRA, the National Institute of Agronomic Research. There was a curious property to 71B’s fruitiness, though. The enzymes it produced caused one particular aroma to stand out prominently: banana. During the 71B years, then, much of the Beaujolais production, especially
primeur,
exhaled a characteristic fruit and floral bouquet dominated by a pleasant but nevertheless strangely anomalous chord of a fruit that had never been seen to grow between Mâcon and Villefranche. The fascination with this quirky little yeast could not last long, and it didn’t. You’re not likely to find 71B in the Beaujolais today, but the episode underlines a salient point: in winemaking as in everything else, fashions come and go.

The saga of Beaujolais
primeur
had a considerable impact in France and, indeed, around the world, because it signaled the presence of an unsuspected market that could be developed on a far wider scale than anyone had supposed. What had been a tiny niche—those barrels on barges riding the Saône down to Lyon, straws through their bungholes lest they explode—swelled into a new and gloriously profitable commercial opportunity. Eager to exploit that market themselves, other winemakers quickly revised their practices and rushed to get into the act that Duboeuf and his fellow
négociants
of the Beaujolais had pioneered. One of the first to appear was Gaillac Bourru, a fruity, cloudy, tingling and slightly sweet white wine from the southwest near the cathedral city of Albi. It enjoyed a nice little ride on
primeur
’s coattails for a few years in the seventies, but the magic wasn’t there. It was strictly a one-glass-at-the-bar drink that could not reasonably accompany a meal, and it soon faded from Parisian bars.

There are other white
primeur
wines that may be sold as of November 15, Muscadet for instance, but the true tradition and romance of the genre corresponds to reds alone. Several newcomers hit the market to join the new red wines of Beaujolais and Beaujolais-Villages. Inevitably the Loire Valley reds of Touraine and Anjou, also produced from the gamay grape, were among them, as were Côtes du Roussillon, Coteaux du Languedoc and Côtes du Ventoux, but the main competition came from the Côtes du Rhône, familiar old neighbor and rival from south of Lyon. Although sales of these me-too wines never approached the stunning success of Beaujolais
primeur
of the glory years, their simple presence on the market underlined how acute Duboeuf’s instinct had been. More than anyone else, he taught the world to take a taste of new wine at least once a year. It is surely an exaggeration to say, as Gérard Canard, Michel Rougier’s predecessor at InterBeaujolais, did in a paroxysm of admiration few years ago, that Duboeuf “invented” Beaujolais Nouveau (any more than to affirm that Dom Pérignon “invented” Champagne) but in the context of modern commerce Canard was not so far off the mark. The man in Romanèche is the one who imposed his conception of the wine’s character and the one who marketed it more intelligently than anyone else. If the arrival of Beaujolais Nouveau is a yearly event to be celebrated in Chicago, Moscow, Beijing and Tokyo, it is mostly because of Georges Duboeuf.

Within a decade of taking his card as a
négociant,
Georges was already a major force of the Beaujolais trade, and his position was improving every day. Bocuse’s “King of Beaujolais” label had stuck fast, and the tremendous popularity of
primeur
was elevating him and his wines to a certain level of media stardom. Duboeuf was new, he was different from all the other
négociants
, and his ideas and energy were generating an excitement that revivified the sleepy old tradition-bound trade. A true precursor, he alone among all French wine professionals anticipated the marketing, graphics and packaging of modern commerce, the touches of salesmanship that in later years would be employed with stunning effectiveness—and to French discomfort—by wines from the United States, Latin America, South Africa and the antipodes.

By the beginning of the eighties he had risen to number three among Beaujolais
négociants,
surpassed only by Mommessin and Loron. Within a few years he would be leaving them, too, in his wake, but for the moment he was still referring to his company as a family affair, with Rolande managing the seventy employees (about half the company’s size today), their raven-haired, radiantly good-looking daughter Fabienne in charge of public relations, and son Franck still deep in his studies before coming to join Papa in Romanèche two years later. Big brother Roger, the sage, assured an unbroken continuity of ancient family tradition back in the house in Chaintré, while overseeing the Duboeufs’ own vines and carrying on as confidant and advisor, the role he had played in Georges’ life ever since early childhood. Every Sunday the brothers met, ritually, for an hour of talk. As for Georges’ part in the business, he remained what he still is today: the point man, the one who goes out and finds the wine.

I’m not sure whether the planetary popularity of
primeur
had ever been for Duboeuf the divine surprise that it was for the peasant growers and
caves coopératives
in whose vats he systematically tracked the stuff down—after all, he had worked hard for just that purpose. But certainly the boy on the bike with his Pouilly-Fuissé in the saddlebag could never have imagined a future day when his wines would be served in the
Palais de l’Elysée,
the French presidential mansion in Paris, or when he would be riding a supersonic jetliner to New York with Paul Bocuse to further the cause of the greater glory of French wining and dining (a glory that won him the
Légion d’Honneur
along the way), but his years of collaborationwith Lichine had given him a good glimpse of the world beyond the Beaujolais and shown him just how far a capacity for selecting superior wines could carry a business. All of this could only add to the exceptionally powerful motivation he was born with. And so, being by nature both perfectionistic and conscientious, the more he worked, the more work he found to do. I have had several occasions over the years to observe Duboeuf at work at different periods of his seasonal routine, but never is this exercise more characteristic than in the crucial September-October-November months when the tasting is the most hectic and he is nailing down his choices of vats of wine to buy.

It’s a curious occupation, the hunting and gathering of wine. On the surface, it would appear to be an extraordinarily pleasant way to make a living, in that it entails long rambles through France’s most beautiful and scenic vineyards, halts in picturesque stone villages and sincerely warm welcomes in any of the thousands of winegrowers’
caveaux
that proliferate in this nature-blessed landscape. Pleasant and instructive it was for me to tag along behind Georges as he made his rounds, but I certainly could not have lasted more than three or four days at his pace without collapsing in fatigue and despair: too much of everything. The best and most illustrative of these expeditions remains the very first time I went to Romanèche to join him on one of those expeditions. With minor variations, it can stand as the template for any of the years since, because the routine is fixed and unchanging. The adventure began on a chilly mid-October morning in 1981.

Compared to Georges I had it easy, of course. I didn’t have to put any money on the line, and I could stop persecuting my mouth with the acidity of young wine whenever I chose. I was lodged that day in the little Hôtel Les Maritonnes in Romanèche, where they made a very nice chicken fricassee with morel mushrooms, and where the frogs’ legs were fresh and delicious. I also enjoyed the luxury of sleeping as late as seven-thirty in the morning, because my appointment didn’t begin until an hour after that. I was taking my ease at a wrought-iron table under the thick auburn foliage of a plane tree when, at 8:30 precisely, Georges drew up in his gray, mud-spattered Citroën CX Prestige GTI with the high, swaying radio antenna of those years before cell phones.

“
Ça va
?” he asked, one hand on the wheel and the other holding his bulky car phone, and almost before I could utter the ritual
ça va
myself, he crunched out of the gravel courtyard and headed south and then west: direction Beaujeu. Shortly another call came in, and with a nod of his head, Georges indicated that I might help out by shifting gears for him. It seemed like a prudent idea, since once again both his hands were otherwise occupied. Now, as we barreled down the N. 6 at 90 mph (no speed traps or traffic cops in those days, either), I saw he had lodged the tool of his trade next to the hand brake: a large
dégustation
(tasting) glass, shimmering with the purplish patina of a thousand tastings.

“The price doesn’t matter,” Georges was insisting to a
courtier
at the other end of the line. “Just get me the best.” It sounded too good to be true, like some hokey TV ad, but there it was, he actually said it. (And of course the price
did
matter, as it always does in business, but the urgency of his imperative set the uncompromising tone that never leaves him.) He slammed the phone back down on its cradle with a sigh. “
Ah, là là,
” he muttered, “this is no way to live. I got four hours of sleep last night and five the night before. You’ve got to be everywhere at once, because all the others are out there buying, too. You know, a chef gets to do his marketing every day, but we’ve got to do ours for the whole year right now. So everyone’s a little bit tense.”

Well, since he brought it up, what about this sleep deprivation? I asked. Two alarms, he said mechanically, choosing to answer the how to rather than the what about. First the wristwatch at 4:30 and then, ten minutes later, just in case, a Japanese electronic clock with a loud voice, across on the other side of the bedroom. After a quick cup of tea—always tea, because coffee blunts the taste buds—he would arrive in the office shortly after 5:00 to fight the piles of papers and make phone calls. But that’s of no interest to you, he said, coming back, as he always does, to matters of wine. The 1981 vintage was going to be good—much better than 1979 or 1980, and almost as good as 1978—but it was going to be expensive, because it was a short harvest and everyone had jacked up prices by more than 20 percent. He threw up an arm in a gesture of impotence. The law of supply and demand was implacable, and now everyone wanted good Beaujolais.

Above Beaujeu in the hamlet of Saint Didier, Georges pulled up next to an unprepossessing stone and stucco house behind which stood a much larger, older and lovelier stone barn, roofed with half-round Roman tiles. The master of the domain was Louis Tête, a rival
négociant
but nevertheless good friend. He was eagerly awaiting the arrival of the gray Citröen, because he had set up a
dégustation
of new wines.

Tête, who died in 2004 at a ripe old age—Beaujolais preserves, they always say—was another true regional character. Possessed of, and by, an almost juvenile enthusiasm for wine that belied the fifty-plus years he then was carrying, he was one of the rare professionals who tasted nearly as often and as copiously as Georges—loving it, endlessly repeating it, keeping his nose and taste buds exercised to maintain their acuity. The testimony to this lifelong passion was an iridescent, rubicund complexion, sparse white hair, a portentous tummy carried low and weighty with dignity, and the intelligent, darting eyes of a brain fine-honed by decades of bargaining over prices. He was comfortably dressed in what most people would describe as rags: ancient, baggy corduroys and a tattered, moth-eaten green sweater that the Salvation Army would surely have rejected.