About God, Oak & Bourbon.
Honestly, all these gods, Pope Benedict's, Bin Laden's, or G.W. Bush's
god, they can't be real, can they? I find them much too colorful, too
contrasted. I think they wouldn't be so easy to recognize if they were
genuinely divine.
If God existed, he would necessarily be universal and perfect. He
would thus be made of a trifle of everything possible. Hence, he would
be hardly visible, "couleur passe-muraille", as we say in French,
meaning that if, by any chance, I saw him trying to jump over my back
garden wall, I wouldn't be able to describe him correctly to the local
policeman. And you know that it is exactly the way: he melts in the
universe almost as a chameleon: have you ever seen Him? If he existed,
he would be infinitely complex and totally comprehensive, as Life.
But he wouldn't wear a yellow hat, would he? Nor would he have poured
the bottle of eau de cologne on his divine cuff.
Let me tell you… All this started to get clear in my mind during the
last Holy Week. Early evening, on Maundy Thursday, we were in
Mageritte, the famous wine cellar on the Alameda, up the ramparts of
old Cadiz, trying to choose a couple of good bottles for our Easter
diner. In my very elemental Spanish, I asked the lady for some Rioja
wine with melted tannins and (please!) very discreet oak flavor, if
any.
- Entiende, Señora ? Hoy, (lo siento, pero yo no hablo Castellán
bien), en el vino de Rioja non me gustan las virutas de robles.
She startled, polite by profession but shocked nevertheless: virutas
de robles!? oak shavings in the real wines of the Rioja valley? No
way! Oak barrels, yes, and with a very special care, indeed, in order
to assure a long and deep maturation. First French oak and later, in
the best wineries, American oak that will give a softer taste, with a
hint of coconut.
Noticing my attention, she realized I was learning something, slightly
surprised, maybe shaken in my certitudes. She felt encouraged to keep
teaching me some basic elements of her art.
- Yes, a taste reminiscent of coconut. How can I tell you…? Do you
know Bourbon?
As I nodded with a sparkle of greed in the eyes, she pursued her
lesson and, suddenly, I became aware: I was going to loose, very soon
and once more, one of my funding myths.
- You see, Señor, French oak leaves to the wine a kind of vanilla
taste, when the barrels made of American oak are what gives to the
Kentucky bourbon its recognizable flavor of… coconut, Si?
There we were! Bourbon! I felt the ground collapsing under my feet.
Bourbon is something very special to me. For the last 45 years, every
small sip, almost religious, is bringing back my souvenirs of nights
spent drinking this divine spirit, either with a Flemish student in
the Belgian University of Louvain, telling me about new psychosomatics
discoveries, or with an Afro-American activist who, in the black
ghetto of the early sixties Chicago, was explaining me the segregation
tactics in the real estate business.
This sacred Bourbon, full of souvenirs and mystery, now she is taking
it from my tumbler and pouring it in a test tube like a vulgar sample
of urine. They will analyze it, describe it with barbaric names of
chemicals, take it apart in a long list of components until its body
and soul will disappear, and down to the point where I will finally
see, not that God is naked but, even worse, that he wears a canary
yellow hat! Just like G.W. Bush's one (his God, not his hat)!
Will I ever be able again to drink a glass of straight bourbon from
Tennessee without my palate attempting to isolate the touch of coco?
Will I one day feel again, in a magical flash, the world of senses and
thoughts that I had visited in the miserable blocks of flats of
Chicago, where we drank in the coldish hour just before dawn, sitting
on the fire escape stairway, our legs waving under us in the air?
Perfection doesn't wear a yellow hat. God doesn't have bad breath.
When a gourmet cuisine is really divine, you can't recognize any spice.
Rah! The vulgarity of these tourist stews that, in Cairo, smell cumin
twenty steps away, of these cheap bouillabaisses that stink garlic on
the café terraces of Marseille Old Harbor, of these fake imitations of
Vietnamese soups, in Brussels suburbs, where coriander masks all
savors!
And now the wines of Languedoc, and even the famous Rioja, which smell
American oak before you could taste their fruit or even start to guess
the subtaste of their must!
Soon you'll mistake the bodegas with the hostess bars of Point-Noire,
where you suffocate in cheap ersatz perfumes.
Could it be Parker who invented this oak taste cult? Is he born-again
republican? Afraid not to recognize Jesus when He will return?
If all the wineries of France are now making world wine in order to
sell it to North Koreans, gourmet restaurants in Outer Mongolia and
taxi dancers in Pointe-Noire, if all the small Corbières, the great
Rioja and even the methylene blue Buzet, get themselves glossed with
oak, then we'll just have to go and buy good little Malbec from
Argentina or Chile.
But in Cadiz, at Mageritte, the lady had understood: she was soon
dusting a bottle of Quinta de Tarsus 1998 that was… not too far from
divine. No, it is not a Rioja, it is a Ribera del Duero, another
valley, slightly more south-west, also famous for its wines but less
obsessed with oak and "export" taste.
And forget about bourbon and nostalgia. Let us sip and appreciate this Tarsus.
God, Life, the Universe and the Tao, it is here and now!
Louis Boël.
Louga, Senegal.
god, they can't be real, can they? I find them much too colorful, too
contrasted. I think they wouldn't be so easy to recognize if they were
genuinely divine.
If God existed, he would necessarily be universal and perfect. He
would thus be made of a trifle of everything possible. Hence, he would
be hardly visible, "couleur passe-muraille", as we say in French,
meaning that if, by any chance, I saw him trying to jump over my back
garden wall, I wouldn't be able to describe him correctly to the local
policeman. And you know that it is exactly the way: he melts in the
universe almost as a chameleon: have you ever seen Him? If he existed,
he would be infinitely complex and totally comprehensive, as Life.
But he wouldn't wear a yellow hat, would he? Nor would he have poured
the bottle of eau de cologne on his divine cuff.
Let me tell you… All this started to get clear in my mind during the
last Holy Week. Early evening, on Maundy Thursday, we were in
Mageritte, the famous wine cellar on the Alameda, up the ramparts of
old Cadiz, trying to choose a couple of good bottles for our Easter
diner. In my very elemental Spanish, I asked the lady for some Rioja
wine with melted tannins and (please!) very discreet oak flavor, if
any.
- Entiende, Señora ? Hoy, (lo siento, pero yo no hablo Castellán
bien), en el vino de Rioja non me gustan las virutas de robles.
She startled, polite by profession but shocked nevertheless: virutas
de robles!? oak shavings in the real wines of the Rioja valley? No
way! Oak barrels, yes, and with a very special care, indeed, in order
to assure a long and deep maturation. First French oak and later, in
the best wineries, American oak that will give a softer taste, with a
hint of coconut.
Noticing my attention, she realized I was learning something, slightly
surprised, maybe shaken in my certitudes. She felt encouraged to keep
teaching me some basic elements of her art.
- Yes, a taste reminiscent of coconut. How can I tell you…? Do you
know Bourbon?
As I nodded with a sparkle of greed in the eyes, she pursued her
lesson and, suddenly, I became aware: I was going to loose, very soon
and once more, one of my funding myths.
- You see, Señor, French oak leaves to the wine a kind of vanilla
taste, when the barrels made of American oak are what gives to the
Kentucky bourbon its recognizable flavor of… coconut, Si?
There we were! Bourbon! I felt the ground collapsing under my feet.
Bourbon is something very special to me. For the last 45 years, every
small sip, almost religious, is bringing back my souvenirs of nights
spent drinking this divine spirit, either with a Flemish student in
the Belgian University of Louvain, telling me about new psychosomatics
discoveries, or with an Afro-American activist who, in the black
ghetto of the early sixties Chicago, was explaining me the segregation
tactics in the real estate business.
This sacred Bourbon, full of souvenirs and mystery, now she is taking
it from my tumbler and pouring it in a test tube like a vulgar sample
of urine. They will analyze it, describe it with barbaric names of
chemicals, take it apart in a long list of components until its body
and soul will disappear, and down to the point where I will finally
see, not that God is naked but, even worse, that he wears a canary
yellow hat! Just like G.W. Bush's one (his God, not his hat)!
Will I ever be able again to drink a glass of straight bourbon from
Tennessee without my palate attempting to isolate the touch of coco?
Will I one day feel again, in a magical flash, the world of senses and
thoughts that I had visited in the miserable blocks of flats of
Chicago, where we drank in the coldish hour just before dawn, sitting
on the fire escape stairway, our legs waving under us in the air?
Perfection doesn't wear a yellow hat. God doesn't have bad breath.
When a gourmet cuisine is really divine, you can't recognize any spice.
Rah! The vulgarity of these tourist stews that, in Cairo, smell cumin
twenty steps away, of these cheap bouillabaisses that stink garlic on
the café terraces of Marseille Old Harbor, of these fake imitations of
Vietnamese soups, in Brussels suburbs, where coriander masks all
savors!
And now the wines of Languedoc, and even the famous Rioja, which smell
American oak before you could taste their fruit or even start to guess
the subtaste of their must!
Soon you'll mistake the bodegas with the hostess bars of Point-Noire,
where you suffocate in cheap ersatz perfumes.
Could it be Parker who invented this oak taste cult? Is he born-again
republican? Afraid not to recognize Jesus when He will return?
If all the wineries of France are now making world wine in order to
sell it to North Koreans, gourmet restaurants in Outer Mongolia and
taxi dancers in Pointe-Noire, if all the small Corbières, the great
Rioja and even the methylene blue Buzet, get themselves glossed with
oak, then we'll just have to go and buy good little Malbec from
Argentina or Chile.
But in Cadiz, at Mageritte, the lady had understood: she was soon
dusting a bottle of Quinta de Tarsus 1998 that was… not too far from
divine. No, it is not a Rioja, it is a Ribera del Duero, another
valley, slightly more south-west, also famous for its wines but less
obsessed with oak and "export" taste.
And forget about bourbon and nostalgia. Let us sip and appreciate this Tarsus.
God, Life, the Universe and the Tao, it is here and now!
Louis Boël.
Louga, Senegal.
posted by Louis Boël at 11:36 AM
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