You don’t need to go to California or a Himalayan ashram to find love. Get it first hand from the man himself. And it’s not the Mr Parker we all know and love.

Maceo Parker was the second gig at the Chateau L’Hospitalet’s Jazz Festival earlier this month. An adept of Funk and Groove as incarnated by the James Brown (note the definite article there) with whom he played for almost 20 years, he strutted and passed the peas well into the early morning.

I’ve been trying to find the lineup of his band from the Net. There’s nothing about that on his web site. The site’s photo gallery has no less than 26 pictures of the man himself, but none of the other members of his band. He would have told us his name at least twenty times, and that he loved us innumerable others.

I don’t know who the singer is in this pic, but the big, very big, dude on bass is Rodney “Skeet” Curtis, who slapped and plucked without a second’s break all night.

 
Back to the main man. Here he is loving us…

…and loving us some more.

I took these pictures without flash at high ASA, some of them from our room in the hotel just behind the stage, to which I eventually crawled, too loved out to be able to keep socialising. Quite a night.

Gerard Bertrand, a leading Languedoc Roussillon winemaker, invited a bevvy of journalists and clients to the L’Hospitalet Jazz festival this year. My full report is on Wine-Stereo. Here are some pics I took at the first concert in which Liz McComb warbled her gospel message.

You don’t need to have lived in France for a decade to know that holidays are sacrosanct. Anyway, that’s my excuse for several weeks of Solex absence.

The cicadas are now almost silent this late in summer. The farmers are no longer in the vines. They can just wait for the harvest, and many are on holidays. So far, despite a dry summer, things are looking good. Rain on the 1st August and a storm on the weekend may have carried this harvest though, although too much rain now could destroy everything, as it did in 2002.

It’s late at night with the full moon slightly shrouded by thin high clouds. A warm breeze is blowing into my office from the south. It will be hot again tomorrow.

But what’s this Solex-in-Stereo stuff? The project has  just been launched at winetourisminfrance.com. I am joining with my colleague Andre Deyrieux to write stories about events we attend together. The same event, in two different languages and from different cultural perspectives. Here’s the jitz as explained in winetourism. Brace yourselves for more news from the Heart of South France!

WINE-STEREO

What is Wine-Stereo ?

Setting the scene

Two writers, in the same place at the same time. They each express what they see, their impressions and experiences; one in English, the other in French. Reflecting different perspectives. the two complementary articles stay in their original language.

It’s like visiting the world of wine with a voice in each ear.

Who are they?

Lincoln Siliakus is an Australian who has lived in France for ten years. Now a wine journalist, he was previously an international copyright lawyer based in Hong Kong.

Key words: terroir, Solex

Media: L’Amateur de Bordeaux and http://terredevins.com/blogs/vinosolex/

André Deyrieux is French. He is a consultant sommelier (Université du Vin de Suze-la-Rousse), and founder of the wine tourism site www.winetourisminfrance.com. He was previously an informations systems strategic consulutant.

Key words: heritage, wine tourism

Media: www.winetourisminfrance.com

Subjects

1) Domaine L’Hospitalet at la Clape near Narbonne and other Gerard Bertrand estates

Solex rarely visits vignerons like this. Indeed, Gerard Bertrand is a businessman who sells and makes wine, in that order, unlike the vignerons on the usual Solex circuit who haven’t even heard of a Board of Directors. Bertrand has clearly chosen to present himself as a marketer rather than a vigneron, a politically incorrectly approach in a country in which it is honourable to be small and struggling.

It seems to be working.

Bertrand is the son of a winemaker. He played professional rugby before turning to wine. Tall and elegantly easy on the eye, he clearly has enough charisma and drive to pull deals together down here. His latest is a ten-year contract with four Cooperatives from Tautavel, the details of which I hope to glean from him later today.

In 2002, he bought a hotel in the vines overlooking the sea at la Clape near Narbonne, and has turned it into the centre of his business. This is where he holds a Jazz festival each year. On Thursday we heard Liz McComb yodelling her Gospel message and last night Maceo Parker funked until 1am.

Yes, I’ve joined what their pamphlet calls the Mediterranean lifestyle and am surrounded by lovely young things with even suntans. Their branded sunglasses tucked into 100 Euro haircuts, they teeter on high heels.

Maceo Parker funking it at L'Hospitalet

Bertrand makes such a wine range of wines it would be churlish to paint them with a pat description. You can say that he is not shy about making crowd-pleasing wines in a wide variety of styles. At the top end (La Forge and le Viala, for example) they are well made, rich, fruity and modern  - in a similar category, say, to most Chateauneuf-du-Papes. He has access to old vines and doesn’t have issues with the use of a bit of new oak. At the cheaper end, from crisp fizzes and clean dry whites to fruit-driven reds, they are easy to drink and perfect for lunch on the terrace.

Liz McComb at L'Hospitalet

It all started on 14 June with Sablet’s “Terroir Day“, when I traipsed around Sablet’s vines with twenty of its winemakers and the geologist Georges Truc, who explained the three main groups of soil here: the eroded limestone on the high slopes (with a lump of sandstone in the corner at a place called the Briguières), the gravels and sand around the village itself and the rocky plain to the west of the Ouveze River.

Sablet’s winemakers usually assemble their wines from these various places. We managed to identify wines and samples from particular soils, though, and tasted them after our strut with George. Lovely, and the differences were obvious.

Christian Bonfils, of Domaine Boissan, then came up with the idea of presenting our new knowledge to the public at the Journee du Livre in mid July. We met at his house to choose the wines, and then at les Abeilles restaurant to choose the food.

In the meantime, they had appointed me the official parrain (godfather) of the Cuvée du Livre 2010, a bottling of red, rosé and white specially for the event. A great honour!

A thirsty crowd assembled on Sunday 18 July to hear George present the soils, oenologist Michele Olliveti discuss the wines and sommelier Christophe Boudier evoke the pairing with the delicious food concocted by Florian Vallé of Les Abeilles.

A gaggle of wine journalists, including Laure Gasparotto, Thierry Morvan, Alain Bradfer and Sylvie Reboul, also discussed the pros and cons of organic wine.

Quite an event, and good to see that Sablet is making a bit more noise about itself.

Wine wonk warning. If you hate wine wankery, which I do, you may want to ignore the rest of this post. Please excuse me if I rhapsody here…

Wine-lovers who were smart enough to buy up top wines before 1990 have to face hard choices. Hmm, should I open this bottle or sell it and go on a world cruise? That sort of choice.

Pierre Wagniart, my wine guru, feels no such qualms. He drinks the stuff. Like this: 

Chateau Petrus 1989

Leoville las Cases 1989

Little Pierre scoffing some Petrus

The three Pierres

Even his son, little Pierre, likes a bit of Petrus. And here they all are together.

Lovely bottles

We started with the 1970 Trotanoy, moved onto the Petrus, then the Leoville (extraordinary!) and then to the utterly splendid 1997 Coteau de Layon from Philippe Delesvaux.

Sablet’s vignerons have been busy in the run-up to the Journée du Livre Book Fair next weekend, when some of France’s best-known writers and journalists will descend on Sablet. It’s a wonderful opportunity to get the word around about Sablet’s wines.

I’ve just this minute got back from Les Abeilles, Sablet’s best restaurant, where we’ve been deciding which food to serve with the wine we will be presenting at the Fair. We will focus on the three broad terroirs of Sablet as a way of showing the complexity of the appellation.

It all started with our Sablet Terroir day on 14 June when over twenty vignerons making Sablet AOC wine wandered around the appellation with the geologist George Truc, before tasting a wide range of wine from the village’s various terroirs.

Early this week, some of those vignerons met again with Georges Truc and the oenologist Michele Olliveti, sommelier Christophe Boudier and cook Florian Vallé of Les Abeilles to choose the six wines to present; a red and white from each of the three broad terroirs in Sablet.

Florien, Johannes and Christian working under the plane trees

If you ever wondered why French chefs take themselves so seriously, as if they were real professionals, there’s a good reason for (most of) it. Florian and the Abeilles’ owner Johannes Sailer, vigneron Christian Bonfils and I went through the lists a dozen times, tossing suggestions around. At one stage Florian rushed inside to prepare some foie gras with fresh peaches and Christian rushed out to get a few more wine samples. It was all hard work, while the cicadas chirped incessantly in the huge plane trees in the Abeilles’ courtyard.

With the robust fruity red wine from the hot terroir across the river, we decided to serve a lamb dish. The foie gras and peach concoction will accompany the white from Domaine Boissan, and so on.

You’ll just have to be there…

Solex visited the Chateau Saint Cosme yesterday with Joanna Savill, Director of the Sydney International Food Festival, and hubby Giuliano Dambelli.

Louis Barruol, the 14th generation of Saint Cosme winemakers, was in fine form.

“I don’t like the term winemaker,” he said.

This was like an open goal for me. “Hmm, why’s that?” I asked.
“Well, because I am not making wine. The wine is making itself.”

Bingo! I love it when they say that.

But Louis was obviously in a particularly good mood, and went even further. “Winemakers are murderers,” he said without apparent irony.
“Oh yes?” I teased.
“Oh yes!” he added. ”In the winery, we kill the terroir.”

When descriptions reach their limit, we often reach for other ways to give sense to life. If you are describing a product, a drink, then it’s OK to say that it is “full bodied, with gobs of red fruit and hints of cedar box”. But if for you wine is more than just something physical in the glass, then those factual descriptions come across as flat and tiring as industrial wine.

Let’s take a wine which is energetically all over the place but finally has remarkable coherence; doesn’t it remind you of a Jackson Pollock painting? And a pumped up, sweet and forgettable drink might bring shuddering memories of Maria Carey or Britney Spears.

This is where Jazz comes in. Few other forms of human creativity combine such rustic energy, intersecting rhythms and melodies and searingly lovely sounds.

Narbonne Winemaker Gérard Bertrand has picked up on the synergies between wine and jazz, and runs an annual concert at the Château l’Hospitalet. This year looks like a particularly good one.

For info:
Aurélie Degoul
00 33 (4) 68 45 57 38 
 a.degoul at gerard-bertrand.com

I joined the illustrious members of COIT - Club des Oenoelogues Incompetents Tres sympas - a small group of self-effacing gentlemen-around-town, for two marvellous Champagne tastings yesterday. We were guided by the genially urbain Bruno Richard, a Paris-based lawyer whose family comes from Avise in the heart of Champagne, and who clearly has a penchant for opening doors (and bottles).

The lads get down to tasting

The maison Salon was created in the early 20th century by a fellow called Eugène Aimé Salon. Produced exclusively from chardonnay, and therefore a “blanc de blanc” as opposed to champagnes which contain Pinot noir or Pinot meunier, it is only made in exceptional years. The story goes that it was initially made for his personal consumption. There were just 37 vintages in the twentieth century. It is one of the world’s rarest and costliest wines.

Delamotte, created in 1760, is ten years older than the “discovery” of Australia by Captain Cook. It sources its grapes from the same area as Salon does, but makes non-vintage wines as well as vintages. Both houses now belong to Laurent-Perrier. 

We were joined for the morning tasting by Rodolphe Peters of the compellingly tautological-sounding Champagne Pierre Peters.

In the afternoon we dropped in on Jacques Diebolt who took our tastebuds back almost 60 years.

A sip through Champagne history

The morning tasting started as a zig-zag between Peters and Delamotte, almost straight into a series of vintage wines.  Delamotte Blanc de Blancs, very popular in Japan, was “straight” and clean, typical of Mesnil Champagnes. A Peters Grand cru Les Chetillons (although, unlike Burgundy, Champagne does not have climats, they do use place names) from the rich year of 2002, was still young and fresh. The 1999 was more toasty; a bit oxidised for me. I preferred the 1999 Delamotte, with white flowers on the nose and rich fruit behind. A real wine. A Salon 1997 followed, deeper yellow with a distinguishable chardonnay taste, and still young. These wines are made to last decades. Back in time we continued with a Peters 1979, Dalamotte 1996, Peters 1990 and 1985, a Delamotte 1985 and finally Salons from 1988 and 1983 before the final Peters 1979.

Didier Depond, Director of Salon and Delamotte, in teaching mode

If this surfeit of fizz sounds like a waste, you are essentially right. It would have made more sense to have taken them away and opened them gently over ten days. But this tasting allowed us to experience and compare the richness and diversity of just one corner of Champagne. The favourite seemed to be the Delamotte 1996, served from a magnum. Along with several of the other fellows, I found the Salons too deeply nut and honey-driven, but this style must be the choice of the real aficionados, because these bottles fetch eye-popping sums at auction.

I likened those Salons to Baroque architecture. True, some of the Delamottes might be a tad Cistercian, but we mustn’t forget that between the Romanesque and Baroque styles came the Gothic with its soaring lightness: much like that Delamotte 1996, lightly toasted, with deep stone fruit and excellent acidity at the end. The Chartres Cathedral of wine.