Ain't She Sweet?

By Oliver Nicholson

Things seem to be getting serious. She’s convinced her parents to ask you to dinner and you’re scared stiff. It’s not that the grub will be bad. Her mother has a great reputation as a cook. But how will you ever convince them you’re good enough for their little girl?

First impressions count, and only a clod would show up empty-handed. So, what will it be? Chocolates? Too impersonal. Flowers? Ditto, unless you grew them yourself. Hot dish? Hardly, when she’s such a good cook. Wine? Her father is one of those meek little men who mows the lawn and does the dishes in rubber gloves. He undoubtedly knows the perfect wines to go with the perfect cook’s perfect grub. He probably has the wine all mapped out: a nifty little Mersault for the truite meuniere, Aloxe-Corton for the Beef Wellington.

Wait, though, what about wine for after dinner? A fine idea. You go to the wine shop and look down the shelves. Port? Too complicated. Besides, the really good ones need to be kept for years, filtered into decanters and left to settle, hardly the sort of thing you can hand over after you’ve hung up your coat with “I thought you might like to try this.” Madeira? Where is Madeira? And then there are all those yellowish wines, said to be sweet. Might do for drinking with the Perfect Pudding or with fruit and nuts afterwards.

OK, which? My advice is to go for the one called Beaumes de Venise. Why? For a start, it tastes good. Not just good but interesting. Odd things happen to the roof of your mouth when you drink it slowly. For another thing, it comes from an interesting place; it may get her father talking about their holiday in the south of France, which will cheer him up, whatever it may do to you. Best of all, it’s not expensive. A half-bottle, which is all you’ll need, costs around $12. Can’t be bad.

All the Beaumes de Venise in the world comes from one pretty village in southern France. Provence was the first area of Gaul to be annexed by the Roman Empire, more than a century before Christ. The small Muscat grapes from which the wine is made grow on sandy terraces laid out along the hot hillsides northeast of Avignon. These grapes probably came to Provence even before the Romans. Ancient writers tell how the people of Iron Age Gaul were so keen on wine imported from the Greek and Roman world that they would sell their own daughters into slavery simply to get their hands on a bottle of it– though of course it might be tactless to relate this at dinner with your future in-laws. Anyway, when the good people of Gaul began to grow grapes for themselves it was likely the Muscat grape they planted.

The Greeks have a saying that you should enjoy your wine with all five senses. I’m not sure how touch or hearing come into it, but Beaumes de Venise held up to the light, even on a grey March evening in Minnesota, has a pleasing smell and a pale gold glint. The tastes are delicate, reminiscent of several sorts of fruit. Maybe that’s why I’ve seen it commended for use in recipes for fruit salad with mangoes, strawberries, and pineapple. But frankly, that’s a waste. The flavors of its own fruit are too complicated to mask with such strong alien tastes.

If you like Beuames de Venise, you’ll be in godly company: The Popes enjoyed it when they lived at Avignon in the 14th century. I’m not sure if this fact will make you seem more virtuous in her parents’ eyes, but it certainly can’t hurt your reputation–nor that of this excellent wine.

Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.