When in Romanée . . .

The pain, enlightenment, and unexpected pleasures of picking

grapes at a legendary French winery

Picture yourself condemned to a chain gang, hunched over in the early morning mist, ankles deep in mud, and muscles screaming for mercy. A bell clangs, a tractor roars into view, and you hear corks pop. Around you sixty-four aching bodies lay down their tools and converge around the tractor. In an instant the world turns from black and white to Technicolor as you are handed a glass of chilled rosé and a camembert sandwich. This is the constant cycle of agony and ecstasy that defines the life of a grape picker at Domaine de la Romanée-Conti (DRC) the legendary winery in Burgundy, France.

Every year, for ten days in September, an elite team of pickers arrive from near and far to harvest the precious fruit from the Domaine's mythical seven-parcel portfolio of vineyards. This year they allowed a novice to join the ranks. That novice was me.

During the previous year’s harvest, while on a “research” trip to Burgundy, I had made it my mission to visit the winery. This was no easy feat since DRC exists in a rarified group of winemakers who don’t need to blow their own horns. No outsiders are permitted to visit. It took a letter of introduction from one of my wine gurus to get me through the fabled gates. During my vineyard tour, the sight of happy pickers filled my head with naive and romantic notions about running away and joining the circus. I asked my host if I could “help out for a day or two”. With thinly veiled amusement he told me that the vendangeurs (grape pickers) were highly trained workers who came back year after year, and worked the entire harvest—in other words “I speet on your seely request”. In a moment of foolish bravado I tried to salvage my dignity by asking if I could come back the following year for the whole harvest. This only seemed to increase his amusement, but he gamely suggested that I should send a fax detailing why I wanted to be a grape picker.

It wasn’t until I returned home that it dawned on me that I had fumbled my way into a rare opportunity that any oenophile would kill for—a glimpse into the inner sanctum of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti. The fact that I had to pick a few grapes while I was there seemed to be a small price to pay.

The winery is located in the village of Vosne-Romanée (pop. 350) nestled within the Cotes du Nuits wine producing region, twenty miles south of Dijon. The Domaine's holdings include six adjacent tiny plots of land and one thirty miles away in the white wine producing region of Puligny Montrachet. Each plot has a different name and yields an eponymous and distinct wine: La Tache, Richebourg, Romanée St. Vivant, Grand Echézeaux, Echézeaux, Montrachet, and the jewel in the crown, Romanée-Conti. The latter yields on average, 6000 bottles annually which retail for $1500 when they are released, and escalate exponentially with age. In fact, to purchase a single bottle of Romanée-Conti, retail stores must buy a mixed case of the Domaine’s wines. It is so scarce and so expensive that few wine lovers actually get to drink it in their lifetime.

All seven of the Domaine’s wines are grand crus—a distinction irrevocably granted in 1939 to the top 2% of wine producing properties in Burgundy. What distinguishes a grand cru property from other less worshipped plots is its terroir (an intangible concept best described as the harmonic convergence of soil, sub-soil, sun, air and the passing of wine-making je ne sais quoi from generation to generation.

But not all grand crus are created alike. Two things make Domaine de la Romanée-Conti the big Kahuna of Burgundies: the magical combination of skeletal limestone, clay and marble soil which forces the vines to work harder, thereby generating a lower yield—but with infinitely more concentrated fruit; and the total lack of compromise used in transforming its bounty into wine.

They are not known to compromise on their grape pickers either, but for me they seem willing to make an exception—perhaps in the name of international diplomacy. In early July I receive a fax. “We are pleased to confirm that you will be part of our grape picking team. Be prepared to arrive in Vosne-Romanée on September 10. PS, the date may change without notice, depending on the status of the ripening grapes”. Like the winemaker’s themselves, I am now at the mercy of the grape.

On September 14^th, after an eighteen hour journey, I arrive in Vosne-Romanée. it’s the kind of picture perfect French village that you see on posters in travel shops. Stone houses, narrow streets, geraniums in the window baskets, and only one shop, which in truth is the front vestibule of someone’s house.

My accommodation is a small unfurnished stone house owned by the Domaine and located twenty feet from its front gates. My tiny room has a bare light bulb and a narrow bed with a sagging mattress—a scary thought considering the back-breaking work ahead, not to mention the delicate condition of two recently herniated discs. Upstairs in an equally bare room is an oeneology student with whom I share a kitchen table and a bathroom with no door. I am feeling positively monk-like in these spartan surroundings until I discover that they are downright luxurious in comparison to the accommodations of the other twenty boarders who are housed three to a room on folding cots. And even that is lavish in comparison to what awaits many pickers at the surrounding chateaux, who after a grueling day in the fields, come home to a tent. Grape picking, camping and pissing in the woods—the French equivalent of the iron man triathlon.

That night I fall into a coma at 11 pm, then awake completely disoriented to the loud clanging of a bell. It’s 2 am. From my open window I discover the source, a large church steeple, just fifty meters away. For the rest of the night on the half hour the bell reverberates loudly. Between my jet lag and the noise, sleep is not an option. With nothing to do but read, I fully digest “Romanée-Conti: the world’s most fabled wine”, by Richard Olney—a fascinating study of the domaine’s properties, beginning with its ownership by the Saint-Vivant de Vergy Monestary in the seventh century.

At 7 am I finally get up, barely refreshed by my three hours sleep, but extremely well informed about my surroundings. I wander to the dining hall at the Domaine building where coffee, cocoa, bread and jam are set out. Then I am invited into the office of Gerard, the field manager. With a toothy smile he equips me with a pair of tall rubber work boots, a hand clipper, a green rubber rain suit and a pannier (a plastic basket). The pickers congregate outside of the garage that houses the tractors. I feel like the new kid arriving at summer camp. The returning pickers greet each other warmly while the new ones stand alone or huddle amongst those they came with. At 7:45 we are lead up a short gravel road, just past the famous stone cross that marks the Romanee-conti plot. We take a brief right and row upon row of the neatly groomed vines of the Richebourg plot spread out before us. Gerard divides us into three teams. Each team is comprised of a specially designed tractor that straddles the rows of vines, a driver, two formen and twenty-one pickers. I am intentionally placed between four veteran pickers, all women.

Just then, the tall, willowy, gentle-mannered Aubert de Villaine, the third generation co-owner and patriarch of the winery, comes out to greet the pickers. He says hello to the familiar faces and welcomes new ones, shaking hands with the men and kissing the woman on both cheeks.

Gerard positions each of us in front of our own row of vines, like sprinters in their lanes. The clock strikes eight, Aubert shouts, “aller, courage”, and we start picking. After a crash course by Gerard on how and what to pick, I am left to my own devices.

Unlike Napa and other warmer wine-producing regions of the world where the vines are trained high, in Burgundy the grapes hang 6” - 18” from the ground. This allows them to absorb the warmth of the soil at night and avoid frost during the colder part of the growing season. Consequently, contrary to popular belief (and the dire warnings of my friends) picking is not about the back as much as the thighs, which bear all the weight as we squat down in front of the vines.

The routine is as follows: One hand acts as a weedwhacker, ripping the lower leaves off the vines and exposing the hanging grape bunches. Then the other hand swoops in with the clippers. Sometimes, the deep purple grapes dangle in multiple tiny clusters, requiring the dexterity and finesse of a precision hairdresser. Other times they hang in large bunches, and with three or four snips, the vine is bared.

Before each bunch is placed in the pannier, the picker must eyeball it and, if necessary, trim off any sections of the bunch that are rotted, or dried out. Depending on the microclimate and the year, this can be either a cursory or very time-consuming task. The difficulty of eyeballing is compounded by the clippers piercing the swollen grapes, causing them to squirt you in the eye. Not every grape cluster is picked. On some vines, a second, latent growth appears. These grapes are similar in color, but they are younger and the acids have not converted to sugar. Sometimes they are easy to differentiate, but other times the only way to know for sure is to bite into a grape and do a quick sugar analysis on the fly before moving like a crab to the next vine.

About every fifteen minutes, the first person on the team to have filled their basket, shouts “pannier” and all of the other pickers immediately stand up in their lane and fall into line with military precision. Then the panniers and their twenty-five pounds of fruit loot are hoisted up and passed over the vines like waterbuckets at a fire, until they reach the tractor. The two foremen on the tractor gently empty the grapes into shallow plastic cartons that are designed to stack up on each other without squishing any of the precious cargo. As the empty panniers are passed back and the pickers return to work, the grapes are ferried to a flatbed truck that transports them to the couverée (vinification room). There they are placed on a conveyor belt. As they roll by, a team of ten men weed out the undesirable grapes that the vendangeurs have overlooked. The remaining grapes continue along the conveyor belt through a machine that partially de-stems them, then into another one that lightly crushes them. Finally, they are dropped into a giant wooden cask where they macerate and ferment.

The vendange is executed like a military exercise. Vines are counted off, and pickers assigned to rows in the same order every time. Sometimes without warning, we are marched to other parts of the vineyard. Later, I learn that the winemakers gather before dinner in a war-room to taste vineyard samples, study analysis, and decide which parcels of grapes are ready to be picked, and which ones require more hang time.

At the clang of 9 am, work in the field comes to an abrupt halt. I have only been on the job for one hour, but I am sensing what I am in for—and I’m pathetically grateful for the break. We leave our panniers in our respective rows and congregate by an old stone wall at the end of the vines. Paper wrapped packets are distributed. Each one contains a hunk of bread with a thick slab of sausage (on alternating days the bread contains a wedge of camembert cheese). It is always accompanied by two sticks of dark chocolate which I eat on the first day, but eventually learn to squirrel away for a much needed late afternoon pick-me-up. Bottles are uncorked and rosé is poured freely (I rarely drink before noon, but when in Romanée. . .). It’s an energy boosting breakfast that could only have been designed by a French nutritionist. We lean against the wall, literally and figuratively chewing the fat. After a post meal Gitanes, it is time to return to work. “Aller courage.”

We continue picking until 11when thankfully it’s time for a quick cigarette break. Never has a non-smoker supported the habit with such enthusiasm. During this brief respite, everyone stays in their respective alleys leaning over the vines to converse like neighbors gossiping over a fence.

At 11:25, the first grape picker goes down for the count, having severed his thumb with an errant snip of his clippers and subsequently fainted. A crowd gathers around him for a minute as he is revived and bandaged up, then its back to picking. The distractions of the morning begin to fade. My quad muscles are cramping and my back is twitching in pain. I have run marathons and cycled one hundred miles in a day, but neither compares to the physical demands of grape picking. They told me to bring lots of sunscreen, but Ben Gay would have been more appropriate. The next thirty minutes feels like hours, then mercifully the clock clangs twelve times and with a collective sigh of relief we head in for lunch.

After hosing the mud off our boots, the sixty-five of us, along with the rest of the workers from the couverée, seat ourselves at four long vinyl covered tables. Each place is set with a plate, a Duralex glass tumbler, a knife and a fork. The plate is used for all 4 courses and the glass for water, wine and coffee.

I am about to discover the paradox of the vendange: Hours of physical punishment are juxtaposed with pure hedonistic pleasure. Along the center of each table are four unlabeled wine bottles and four pitchers of water. I gulp down some much-needed water, then pour myself a glass of wine. It is a soft wine with oodles of up-front fruit, primarily raspberry, and a long lingering finish that defies its humble destiny as vin de table. Most chateaux bottle their best juice for their signature wines, then package the rest under another label which is sold as their second wine. At DRC, most of what is not used for their seven legendary labels is blended into a wine that is served in-house. For the entire duration of the vendange, this wine flows freely at lunch and dinner.

Lunch begins with tomato salad topped with crumbled egg, shallots and a pungent Dijon vinaigrette. The room hums as everyone unwinds and the conversation builds. The rudimentary French of my Canadian upbringing saves me from being left in the cold and I am swept up in the warmth of the atmosphere. Each new course arrives looking like a cover photo from Saveur magazine. The entrée is a meaty peasant stew served over cous cous. It’s followed by the traditional cheese course, and the meal ends with an apple “tarte tatin” with a flaky buttery crust. The food is all prepared by a husband and wife catering team from nearby Nuits St. George who come every year to cook for the vendangeurs. Three women, including the indefatigable Charlotte, a tiny wiry woman who has been working at the domaine for 23 years, ferry the family style platters to the table—and more importantly—replenish them.

After lunch we lounge on the grass outside. The omnipresent cigarettes are lit. The morning haze has burned off and the warm sun massages my pained legs. Just as I doze off, the clock tower clangs one thirty, and sends us back to the fields. “Aller courage”.

In the glow of the wine-filled meal, the first hour of squatting, clipping and lifting passes rather easily. But the buzz wears off and the pain returns—and intensifies. The golden sunshine of the morning has turned into a punishing mid-day heat. Layers of clothes are peeled off and reconfigured as makeshift sun hats. Two hours later, my quads have permanent charley horses, and the strength in my upper body is so drained that I can bearly hoist the panniers to hip level in order to pass them over the vines. It dawns on me that I have another seven days of this. I seriously contemplate throwing myself in front of the tractor.

I begin to hallucinate. I see the gorgeous deep red wine being poured into a crystal glass from a bottle of Romanée-Conti. I realize that I’m in Las Vegas. In the din of the casino I see a fat cat Texan who has just rolled big at the craps table and has ordered a bottle of DRC to impress his date. The good ol’ boy’s entire focus is on her amply displayed cleavage as he thoughtlessly knocks back a wine that most connoisseurs can only dream about. The vision does nothing to improve my mood.

The church bell clangs, bringing me back to reality. My nighttime nemesis has become my new best friend as it slowly counts off the hours. I am obviously not doing a good job of masking my pain since the women around me motheringly ask “c’est pas trop dure” (is it too difficult), and motion to the foreman to get me some rosé. I lamely drag my sorry ass up the seemingly endless row of vines until the single bell at 5:30 mercifully puts an end to my misery.

I limp back to my house. I am dying for a long hot bath with Epsom salts. Well, this may be a culinary paradise, but it ain't no spa. My shower is a 2’ x 2’ stall with a hand nossle that has no place to hook onto. I drizzle the mud and dried sticky grape juice from my punished body, then dry myself with a washcloth-sized towel. I collapse onto my cot for an hour before dinner.

Dinners are a more intimate affair than lunch, attended by the twenty pickers who are being housed at the Domaine (those who live within driving range have all returned home). We gather at one table where the wine and water sit in their familiar places. With my first sip of wine, the pleasure pain pendulum swings back into the pleasure zone. We start with onion soup served with crème fraiche followed by beef stroganoff. Over the course of the 10 days, we are treated to salads of carrots, beans, beets, greens, tomatoes, almost always with the now-familiar Dijon mustard vinaigrette. The entrées are all classic French dishes such as Boeuf Bourgignon, roasted chicken halves au jus, and Tartiflette (a crowd favorite made from boiled potatoes, French pancetta and caramelized onions, topped with an entire réblochon cheese and baked into a hearty gooey mess.

Sleep comes easy on my tiny mattress. The next time I hear the church bells, they ring seven times and the cycle starts all over again.

By day three my fingernails are gnarled and thick with dirt. My cuticles are stained purple and my hands, especially my weedwhacking hand, is scratched from the vines and full of gashes where my clippers have cut through the vines, and continued into my flesh. My ability to wield a chef’s knife is in jeopardy, not to mention my future hand modeling career.

But after another day, the pain starts to become manageable and I begin to find my groove in the fields. Over time, one develops an economy of movement and a sixth sense about which leaves the wayward bunches of grapes are lurking behind. And the individual grapes were becoming less precious as I begin to realize the bigger picture. All sixty-three acres must be picked quickly in order to avoid the threat of rain, which will further exasperate the pourriture (rot) that already existed on many of the clusters. Eventually a bit of triage is required in order to decide how much time it is worth spending in order to save one eighth of a bunch of grapes.

I am beginning to be able to take my eyes off the grapes and appreciate the splendor of my surroundings. The blue skies, rolling hills and endless vines are hypnotic. The serenity of the countryside is interrupted only by the distant purr of passing trains and the occasional French fighter planes from the Dijon base as they fly their maneuvers overhead.

I am also moving beyond pleasantries and getting to know my fellow pickers. In the less coveted appellation controlée vineyards, the pickers are comprised of gypsies, north Africans, Poles and French migrant workers. Here at DRC, they are college students, people who work in banks, real estate offices, lingerie stores, and shipyards. Some are even grandmothers (including one who has picked here for twenty-two years) and grandfathers. Most are French with a few stragglers from neighboring countries. The majority are on vacation time, and many told me that picking grapes helps them participate in, and connect with, this vibrant element of French culture. Everybody says they come for the camaraderie. Consequently, there are no walkmans, or mirrored wrap-around sunglasses. During the entire vendange, I only heard a cell phone ring once in the field.

By mid-week everyone is catching their wind. Those who are boarding even have enough energy to gather after dinner in the nearby St. Vivant monastery where several of the pickers are staying. Jojo, one of the foremen staying there has a guitar, and requires little encouragement to use it. The others sip Pernod, scotch or beer and sing along to the traditional Burgundian songs.

In the village of Vosne-Romanée, there are thirty (CONFIRM#) chateaux, all of which produce wine from grapes grown in the their respective vineyards surrounding the village. The teams of pickers at these chateaux are as distinctive as the wines they produce. I experience this first hand one night while weaving home from a docile sing along with the Domaine’s pickers. In the darkness, I hear a U2 song echoing through the stone-lined streets. Starved for some familiar music, I follow the sound to a nearby chateau. I stick my head in to investigate and engage in a brief conversation with a wobbling red-faced man leaning closest to the door. He tells me that they are celebrating their paulée (the traditional end-of-vendage party) which had begun eleven hours earlier at noon. My bad French accent immediately gives me away as a foreigner and I am invited in and presented with a glass of the chateaux’s ‘82 vintage. In the glow of my good fortune I wander on to the dance area. No sooner do I start dancing than a French novelty song that was a momentary hit the previous summer is tossed on the CD player. The lyric demands that all men take off their shirts. Without warning, my sweater is lifted over my head and I am standing half naked, amidst a group of totally schnockered French women and men.

The revelry continues for another two hours. As we drink our way through several of the domain’s finer vintages I begin to realize that not all groups of vendangeurs are cut from the same cloth. We close the party and continue drinking at a nearby house. At three in the morning, I stumble back to my mattress.

After four hours of sleep, my head throbs as I plod from vine to vine in the cold and drizzly vineyard. My newly acquired skills elude me. Without saying a word, the women on either side of me surreptitiously snip away at the grapes in my row, allowing me to keep pace. To compound my misery, the drizzle turns to rain.

Then by the grace of god and the declaration of Aubert de Villaine (almost the same thing) the picking is halted after an hour and a half. When it rains, most vineyards keep picking, but at DRC, Aubert doesn’t want the residual water covering the grapes, and the drops trapped amidst the tightly bunched clusters, to dilute the intensity of the wine. My first instinct is to sleep. However a primal need, one that Maslow neglected to include on his hierarchy, takes over. Laundry. Every single piece of clothing I own is stained and sticky. I hitch a ride to Nuits St George. As my clothes tumble in the automated coin laundromat, I wander off in search of a pair of rubber gloves. Since each of my tender and scarred hands are performing completely different tasks, I buy a pair of thick rubber gloves for my weedwhacking hand and a thin, more responsive pair to use on my cutting hand. [Note to self: in my next life, return as a rubber glove magnate and create a special package of intentionally mismatched gloves for the grape picking industry].

After a day off and a full night’s sleep, I spring out of bed with renewed energy. A big orange sun rises over the horizon. To add to the pleasure, we are picking Grand Echézeaux. This borders Clos de Vougeot, a cluster of famous grand cru plots surrounding a postcard perfect chateau and enclosed by an ancient stone wall. Life is sweet.

Through observation and some lessons in broken French, I begin to learn tricks of the trade that ease my transition from dilettante to seasoned picker. For instance, by taking the tiny, unripened grapes from the top of the vine (the ones we don’t pick) and rubbing them between my hands, it is possible to produce a juice that’s all acid and no sugar—perfect for cleaning sticky hands and sterilizing small cuts. As my energy wanes, i learn to replenish it with grapes that are so brimming with sugar that they taste like tiny bon-bons.

The tactile experience of being so close to the grapes also helps clarify some of the theories and mysteries of wine. In the fields it is not uncommon to have a sixty-year-old vine with its thick twisted trunk growing beside a spry young specimen. In theory, older vines produce fewer, but more concentrated grapes. Some wineries bottle wines from older vines under the label “vielle vignes” and charge a premium. Sampling grapes from both vines produces a subtle, yet distinguishable difference in sweetness and concentration.

And during a walk-around at dusk through the different vineyards, the temperatures and humidity differ noticeably. These micro-micro climates effect everything from rot to the sweetness of the grapes. It is easy to understand how one wine can be so different from another produced in the adjacent vineyard.

Another three vineyards away, less than 400 meters from the DRC plots lie the much less distinguished Vosne-Romanée appelation controlée vineyards. These vineyards produce wines that are good but not exceptional (partly because the terroir of the flatland is not as good as the sloped areas, and partly because the grapes are not as pampered at every step in the winemaking process). The next time a wine clerk tries to sell you a wine from a producer who is located “just down the road” from another (usually more prestigious) producer, don’t let the leap in logic fool you.

The days fly by and the mood loosens in the fields. On the morning of the seventh day of picking, word spreads that only one more day remains—and more importantly, that the paulée will be held on Sunday at noon. By design, the paulées always begin at noon, in order to give the pickers time to sober up before the drive home.

Sensing that the end is near, the natives begin to grow restless. The odd tossed grapes are now full bunches. And the occasional squirts of water turn into complete Vittel showers. I was given diplomatic immunity from most of the guerilla warfare—that is, until the end of the last day, when no one was spared.

Even at this late point in the harvest, when the legs and back have grown strong, there is a certain level of discomfort and monotony that sets in after a two-hour stretch of picking. Speculation about the wines to be served at the impending paulée provide the perfect distraction. Though everyone knows that the feast includes a selection of vintage holdings from the cellar, the question is which vineyards, and more importantly, which vintages will Aubert choose? The veteran pickers raise the hope that he may dust off some of the precious Romanée-Conti itself, as he is rumored to have done in the past.

On Friday, our last day, several of the older women bring home-made coffeecakes and beignets that they unwrap and share with us at the 9 am break. Spirits are high and I have finally hit my grape-picking stride (although perhaps it’s the sugar rush). For the first time since we started, I fill my basket first and am able to utter the word that has eluded me for the whole week. “Pannier” I cry triumphantly. Heartfelt applause break out amongst my fellow pickers.

Later that afternoon, Gerard places us in front of our final row of grapes. There is a buzz in the field and it’s easy to tell that something is brewing. An hour later as the last round of panniers is being passed along the fire line, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly grapes are flying in every direction and being squashed down every imaginable piece of clothing. It begins with the rejected clusters that the warriors pick off the ground, but quickly progresses to the panniers, and finally to a raid of the grapes that have already been loaded onto the tractors. It’s like a food fight in a Sevruga caviar packing plant. I am sorry to report that several cases of precious Echézeaux are sacrificed in the traditional end-of-vendange bataille.

After the free-for-all ends and the testosterone levels subside, we load our grape-stained bodies onto the tractors and flatbed trucks and ride in a convoy with horns honking for a victory lap around the village. Stray grapes fly at anybody within range. And it ain’t over yet. As we reach home, the ringleaders leap off the tractor, commandeer the pressure hose that we use to clean the mud from our boots, and turn it on us. Everybody, including the foremen, is thoroughly drenched. Those foolish enough to try to make a break for it are quickly cornered and doused. Even Aubert de Villain and his wife are caught in the melee, and he gamely returns fire. Only then is everyone prepared to call it quits and head to the showers.

Later that night, I leave a party at the monastery of St. Vivant. Nostalgically savoring my last glass of the table wine I’ve grown so fond of, I wander up to the cross at the Romanée-Conti plot. In the darkness I see the vague outline of several lone individuals. A familiar voice calls out my name, and I realize that like me, my fellow pickers are paying homage to the grape gods. In the darkness I lie down on the stone wall beneath the cross. Its sharp outline is silhouetted against the magical star-filled sky, adorned with the brightest Big Dipper I have ever seen. This is how the grapes of Romanée-Conti spend their nights.

Had I been told after that first grueling day that I would be sad when the end arrived, I wouldn’t have believed it—in fact the mere concept of finishing the week alive seemed unfathomable at the time. But when the paulée finally arrives, it is bittersweet.

Everyone appears at the Domaine Sunday at noon, scrubbed, groomed, and full of anticipation. After an aperitif of cremant (local sparkling wine) and some paté canapés, the dining hall doors open to reveal an amazing transformation. The familiar lunch tables have been dressed up with white tablecloths and bowls of wild flowers. In place of the Duralex tumblers are beautiful tulip-shaped crystal wineglasses. We enter and take our seats. The first course is Feuilletté d’escargots a l’Oseille (snails served in a puff pastry with a creamed herb sauce). After welcoming everyone and applauding them for completing a difficult picking season, Aubert introduces the first wine, an ’87 Puligny Montrachet. It has a very deep, almost sautern-like color. The nose is all honey. It glides down the throat and provides a perfect foil for the escargot. To my surprise, after our table finishes the two bottles, another one magically appears. Not a bad start.

The entrée is Fillet Mignon. Two huge magnums of La Tache ’88 are placed on the table. I am astonished by the generosity—each one of these would fetch $1000 in a second from collectors. After spending eight days communing with the red grapes, touching them, nibbling them, and breathing in their aroma, the foreplay is finally over. It’s time to consummate the relationship. I bury my nose in the glass and inhale its intense bouquet, then close my eyes and take a sip. Its viscosity is much thinner than I had imagined. The predominant impression is sour cherry, and the finish goes on and on. It is a great, very great wine, but not transporting.

As we finish the entrée, I notice Aubert leave his seat and walk into the kitchen. From my vantage point I see him pull eight dusty bottles from a wooden crate. After carefully opening each bottle, he pauses to taste it, like a sommelier. Could this mean. . . ?

A cheese tray is passed around. Finally Aubert emerges. With obvious pleasure he announces that we are being served 1961 Romanée-Conti. A hush comes over the room. I had dared to dream that I might taste a Romanée-Conti, but never a vintage as rare and priceless as this. The wine is a deep crimson, with shades of burnt umber. A considerable amount of sediment is evident around the punt at the bottom of the bottle. The wine is poured. It has an intense, explosive aroma of such opulence that I am dazzled. I pause for a minute to meditate on the heady perfume, then I take my first sip. The wine dances on my tongue. It’s an exhilarating sensation—all finesse. I have had wines that were more instantly gratifying, but never one that was as complex and intellectually stimulating. The pleasure is compounded by my intimate knowledge of its heritage. Minutes later it gets even more sublime as it opens up in the glass. We are all acutely aware of the privilege that Aubert has bestowed upon us. A wine that serious collectors would kill for is being shared with sixty-five glorified field hands. The meal is capped off with a rich gateau au chocolat and a round of the Domaine’s marc (a rough cognac-like liqueur distilled from the pressed grape skins). And suddenly it‘s all over.

We all say our good-byes, exchange addresses, and I head to my room to pack my bags for the flight home to Los Angeles. In another 18 hours, I will be back in a fast-paced world full of familiar faces, creature comforts, and fleeting moments of glamour. But now, that world seems daunting. How will I survive without the daily triumphs over sheer physical pain, the communing with nature, the camaraderie with absolutely no agenda, and the 9 am rosé and camembert sandwiches? Allez courage.

from the palate of

The Surreal Gourmet

2700 Rutherford Dr., Hollywood, CA, USA 90068 Tel 323 460 4614 Fax 323 962 3001

e-mail mall@surrealgourmet.com web site http://surrealgourmet.com