RB Chateau Stuck Up?

Red Bikes (Won a month in France), Day 11

After trying quite hard to be suave while tasting wines at my first “degustation cave” in Chateauneuf du Pape, (swirling, sniffing, sipping through my teeth and making astute comments culled from the Wine Spectator lying on the tasting room counter) I committed the crime of buying a 2002 bottle—the one year in recent Chateauneuf du Pape history considered “catastrophique!”

“I don’t care if it was a bad bottle,” I said to Rooster as we walked out of the tasting room with the smug smile of the proprietor aimed at our backs. “I liked the way that wine tasted.” Rooster assured me that reputation doesn’t matter when it comes to wine and that everyone’s taste-buds are different. While I appreciate him for saying that, the truth is I’m not sure if I really did like that 2002 wine. I was positive when I tasted it that 2002 was a good year for the region and that 2001 was the bad one. I had even wrinkled my nose when sipping the 2001 to show the proprietor I was no rube.

“Why do you care what the tasting room server thinks of you?” asked Rooster as we walked uphill towards the ruins of the Chateau—Pope John XXII’s summer house built in 1317 and destroyed by the Germans in 1944—which overlooks the town and the surrounding vineyards. I tried to explain how I wanted to blend in with the real wine-collectors touring the region; how I hoped the French wine pros would watch my sophisticated sipping style and develop a good opinion not just of me, but all Americans. “Give it up,” said Rooster. “People are going to think what they think. All you can do is relax and try to learn something about which wines you like.”

Rooster loves wine and could travel around all day sampling different varietals, including the really complex and expensive ones, and never feel guilty about how he sips and in what order he sips them in. Worse, he is perfectly content to pounce from vineyard to vineyard sampling, then wave goodbye with nary a euro exchanging hands. I am incapable of lingering in a degustation cave without plunking down for a bottle, even if I’m not so crazy about the way it tasted. Luckily, in Chateauneuf du Pape, it’s impossible not to be crazy about the way something tastes—centuries of winemaking, quality grapes and a variety of aging methods are sure to produce at least one bottle in every domaine that even the most ignorant palate can appreciate.

Our favorite vineyard was Domaine Berthet-Rayne, and I’m sure the wine tasted so good in part because the proprietors were so friendly. Keep in mind that we were touring Chateauneuf du Pape in harvest season. In every vineyard we passed, young men and women in kerchiefs and sun hats were carefully snipping bunches of grapes from the vines. When we pulled into the driveway at Berthet-Raynes, a buzzer went off. There was no-one around, apart from a little white dog so happy to see us he literally peed when Rooster pet him. After five minutes of playing with the dog, a man in juice stained jeans and t-shirt rushed in. He introduced himself as the proprietor and his dog as “Aldo.” He then cheerfully opened the tasting room and when he learned we were from Chicago (the first proprietor to ask) he grew ecstatic. He and his wife had just visited our fair city two weeks ago. Within the next few months, he said, their wines would be in several Chicagoland stores, including “Un-Cork-It” and “Champagne.” When his wife, who runs the tasting room, arrived, she was also dirty from the field but still cheerfully poured us super-tasty samples from unlabeled bottles, explaining the contents of each in an even mixture of English and French. We understood her “Franglish” well enough, and left their vineyard with several bottles of wine in our bag—the purchase of which we both, for once, agreed on.