Forgiving the French

The early monks of the Egyptian desert often faced their demons head on. Abba Antony in the hot sandy silence of the wilderness found himself attacked by several wild beasts at once. They roared and hissed, they buffeted his makeshift cell until it shook. He stared them down. They gnashed their teeth and left.

Often, though, subtle means were needed. The Sayings of the Desert Fathers is full of stories which show how simplicity and discernment (and often humor) learnt from long consideration of the human condition can outwit violence, distraction, and despair. There are plenty of later analogs: Sherlock Holmes caught his murderers by identifying myriad varieties of tobacco ash. Miss Marple and Father Brown recognized killers by applying to the motives of their fellow men the results of a lengthy and patient observation.

Maybe it was something like this that the French Foreign Minister meant when he said France is an old country. He could scarcely have meant it literally. The present French constitution, that of the Fifth Republic, is substantially younger than the present President. Its ultimate ancestor, the constitution of the First Republic, emerged more than a century after the first constitution of Connecticut (supposedly the world’s oldest written constitution).

In fact, France was drawn together as a single state only after the 16th century Wars of Religion. In the Middle Ages what is now French territory was home to two distinct Romance languages, the langue d’oc and the langue d’oui, named from their words for “yes,” the former derived from Latin hoc (“this thing”), the latter from hic ille (“this is it”). Large parts of it were ruled for centuries by the Kings of England.

Wisdom, however, does not arise simply from the passage of time. It can grow out of reflection on shared suffering. As boys we were taught that French cooking might be good but it had evolved as an act of self-defense; the sauces and sausages had to be tasty because they needed to disguise dodgy meat cooked while French cities were being besieged by the armies of Henry V, the Duke of Marlborough, and other heroes. Our teacher had a point. As recently as the Prussian siege of 1870, the inhabitants of Paris were obliged to consume the inhabitants of their zoo, including the baby elephants Castor and Pollux.

But French country cooking, like that which Elizabeth David taught us to love, grows from the judicious use of hard-won ingredients by sapient peasants making the best of a hard-scrabble life. Cassoulet is one of the splendid achievements of the southern region named (after its old language) the Languedoc. It consists of pork and duck, goose and beans (good for your heart) cooked together over several days. It is the foster-child of silence and leisure. An invitation from my friend the Philolog to her annual Cassoulet Dinner was therefore an act of kindness and one which deserved the offering of an appropriate libation.

The wine would clearly need to come from the Languedoc, the hot Mediterranean coastal area across which Hannibal and his pachyderms passed on their way from Spain to the Alps. Languedoc produces lots of wine, but not all of it slips down easily. I recall a Corbières some years ago which was the color of red ink and tasted a lot like sucking the nib of a fountain pen. (No, I don’t. Not often anyway.)

This time, though, Fortune smiled. The 2001 vintage of Domaine de la Brune, a property in the Coteaux de Languedoc, is a heartening dark red (and about $10 a bottle). Only a tenth of it comes from the Carignan grape, until recently the most commonly grown grape in the Languedoc. But that’s enough to give it an edge. It is mostly Syrah, the grape of great Rhones such as Hermitage, sweetened and softened by some Grenache. The whole is pleasantly rounded, redolent of sunshine and alcohol.

Redolent too of craft and patience on the part of the winemaker who produced this pleasing balance. One should be suspicious of a wine that seems to make one wise (or, for that matter, a superior driver). This one encourages the drinker to recognize something better: the wisdom of the man who made it. Soyez sage.