Eight

Nostalgia Is Not Always What It Used to Be

Memory is at its best when it’s selective, when we have edited out the dull, the disappointing, and the disagreeable until we are left with rose-colored perfection. This is often quite inaccurate but usually very comforting. It can also be fascinating to revisit. Was it really like that? Were we really like that?

During the past twenty-five years, we have occasionally given in to the temptation of slipping back into the past and comparing it with the reality of today. Most of the time, we’ve been delighted to find little change; even some of the people we remembered as interesting old characters are still there—by now, human antiques, but perhaps more interesting than ever.

There have, of course, been less rewarding results, where today is nothing like it was yesterday, and we’ve noticed that village cafés are often the victims. Because they are usually in the center of the village, they are often seen as prime sites for selling something more profitable than beer, wine, and cups of coffee. Boutique fever takes over, and bright little stores with even brighter clothing replace café terraces and dimly lit bars.

What is sometimes worse is when the café itself has decided to join the rush to the new with a thorough renovation. The terrace itself may have survived, but the faded wicker chairs and round, metal-rimmed tables that have served it well for twenty-five years have been replaced by plastic tables and chairs, often in lurid colors that sit uneasily in their surroundings of a weathered stone village. Inside the café, it is encore plastique, with the sole, massive reminder of old times being the battered zinc bar.

The renovators have also been busy in local restaurants, with mixed results. One of our early favorites was a small, charming place set in the courtyard of a modest eighteenth-century house. It featured paper tablecloths, with one corner used by the waiter to scribble down a record of what you had just ordered. The menu was short, and changed each day. The food was simple, fresh, and excellent. The wine list was no bigger than a postcard, and the wines were all made by growers known to the chef. It was too good to last, and it didn’t. After years of working in one of life’s more demanding occupations, the chef and his wife took a well-earned retirement, and the restaurant was sold. A sad loss.

The first sign that the new owners were about to change what they had just bought was the platoon of builders who had moved in, shipped out the old restaurant furniture—those comfortable, creaky chairs and slightly wobbly tables—and put up a notice on the courtyard door with the ominous warning that a rénovation totale was taking place. Our hearts sank. But, ever hopeful, we decided to come back and take a look when it had been done.

Two steps inside the courtyard, it was already obvious that a great deal of money had been spent. The chipped flagstone floor was now polished tiles, thick white cloths covered each table, the cutlery was heavy and gleaming with newness. The menu was longer, the wine list more imposing. But by far the most dramatic change was the senior waiter. Gone was the chef’s wife, in her apron and slippers, and in her place a smooth middle-aged gentleman who was a symphony in classic black and white—black pants, black waistcoat, black bow tie, and starched white shirt. His youthful assistant, smiling and immaculate in her black dress and blond chignon, hovered behind him.

The chairs were elegant and comfortable and the food was fine, although a little too elaborate for our liking. Like so many of his colleagues, the chef had discovered foam, which he used to disguise perfectly good cooking. There was even a separate course that consisted of nothing but foam, served halfway through the meal, and tasting like a dessert that had lost its way. All in all, here was a perfect example of a restaurant that would have been more at home in Paris than Provence. And maybe that is where it’s gone; after one season, with the visibly tense waiter, it was replaced by yet another boutique.

But small disappointments like this are more than made up for by the most welcome change of all: the local wines.

When we first arrived here, there was an unkind assessment of Provençal wines, particularly rosé, that was popular among the visiting self-styled connoisseurs. Their considered opinion, delivered with a superior smile, was this: “Provençal wines? No sooner made than bottled; no sooner bottled than drunk; no sooner drunk than pissed away.” Anyone saying that today would be sent to the bottom of the tasting class and have his corkscrew confiscated.

Wine has been made here in Provence for 2,600 years, and there have been intervals, sometimes of a hundred years or more, when standards have slipped. Now, the wines of Provence regularly receive medals, and are taken seriously all over the world by those who know what they’re drinking. The reds are full and subtle and the whites are crisp, but it is Provençal rosé that has seen the most dramatic surge in popularity, and for very good reason.

First, its appearance is attractive. Not quite white and not quite red, its color has occasionally been described embarrassingly as “blush.” This was often heard in the days when rosé had a rather frivolous reputation—a picnic wine, something to be knocked back at lunch before tottering off for a siesta.

Then there’s the taste—fresh, clean, slightly fruity, and very versatile. It goes as well with fish and chicken as it does with salads and spaghetti. It is an ideal apéritif, too well mannered to overpower the meal that follows. And it’s a wonderfully practical wine that doesn’t need to be nursed in the cellar for years before it’s fit to drink. You can chill it in the refrigerator or in a bucket of ice cubes, but in Provence you will often see ice cubes bypassing the bucket and going straight into the waiting glass. In other words, it is a wine without pretension. But how did it become what it is today?

I believe that much of the credit should go to the Provençal farmer. Traditionally, the small farmer with a few acres of vines concentrated on making the solid, workmanlike red wine that his father and grandfather had produced. We used to live in a house surrounded by vines, which our neighbor Faustin took care of for us. Every year, he would come up the drive on his tractor to deliver a couple of cases of his red wine. It was not exactly vintage claret, but we enjoyed it very much.

During one of his visits, I decided to ask him a question I had been wondering about for some time: Had he ever thought of making a rosé?

He got down from his tractor, took off his battered tweed cap, scratched his head, and leaned against one of the tractor’s huge back tires. “That’s what they drink down on the coast,” he said. “It’s not sérieux. There’s not much call for it up here.” And that was that. He offered no recommendations, and no suggestions as to where we could find rosé locally, although he did offer us a bottle of his homemade marc de Provence—guaranteed, he told me, to grow hairs on my chest.

It was not until the following summer that our researches into wine made any significant progress. Two friends had been spending a few days on the Riviera, and we invited them to stay the night with us before starting their long drive back to London.

“Here’s a little something to go with dinner,” they said, presenting us with half a dozen of the most elegant bottles we’d seen for months—graceful, amphora shaped, and filled with a delicately colored rosé. This had come, so we were told, from the Ott vineyards in Bandol. It was subtle and it demanded attention, in a different world altogether from the rough-and-ready rosé we had tried in the past. As our friends said, “This is a real wine.”

That was more than twenty years ago. Since then, the Ott influence has spread inland from the coast, and today there are dozens of vineyards throughout Provence that produce first-class rosé. Here in France, restaurant wine lists now have a separate rosé section. And this is not confined to Provence. America, Corsica, Australia, Italy, Spain, even England—they all have their own rosé. I still treasure the bottle of Great Wall Chinese rosé that we were given some years ago. The world seems to have gone pink, perhaps one small sign of an increasing desire for simplicity when we sit down to eat and drink.