French Wine Lessons and the Baron de Montesquieu

OK, so French wine is a completely different world, about as foreign to many Americans as the idea of their five- week-a-year vacation. (Bless those socialists!) But I hereby declare that I am open to mastering these crazy French wine labels that bear the names of dead Barons and other rich folk who own multiple castles that I will probably not visit someday. I bring up the Baron in my subject line because some friends gave us a bottle of sweet white dessert wine with his name on it. The Baron, who is pictured on the label, looks like a cross between Abe Licoln and Alexander Hamilton. I have no idea what to drink his wine with (Frog legs? Stilton cheese?) or how much this bottle costs.

In learning more about French wine I was contemplating embracing the culturally evolved ways of the FRENCH. (Pronounce with a heavy accent like Kevin Kline's character in the movie French Kiss, please) So I've been reading. And I learned something interesting recently: that a French woman would never DREAM of drinking a glass of Chardonnay at the bar without pairing it with un petit snack. (American women, particularly in the marketing and PR industries, call these snacks APPS) I read of this French food and wine pairing obsession, among other musings, in Mireille Guiliano's book "French Women Don't Get Fat." Guiliano, who is CEO of champagne maker Veuve Clicquot, says a French women who spots an American woman having a glass of wine without food finds it quite odd. (Obviously French women haven't endured a two-year-old giving up her nap. If they had they would know that a glass of anything with a kick is required by 5 p.m., APP or no APP.)

Guiliano's memoire/diet-tribe of growing up in France and staying fashionably thin is quite charming in the same way that owning a full set of Le Creuset pots is charming. It is both old fashioned and useful...offering tales of leisurely Cornish Game Hen lunches and strawberry picking in the backyard to make some fantastic juicy tart. She also, not surprisingly, loves champagne. Indeed, Guiliano's formative years were quite different from my tuna-casserole-with-crumbled-potato-chips-on-top and Devil-Dogs-for-dessert childhood. But then again, I am not rich and French. So there is something about Guiliano's talk about precious leek soup and chocolate mousse and expensive mushrooms that made my middle class skin crawl. But I have to admit I tried her baked apple recipe, which was lovely. I am also drinking enough water to drown a duck, as Guiliano swears by this weight loss trick.

I've decided to learn more about French wine, too. More to come.

March 06, 2006

French Wine Lessons and the Baron de Montesquieu