Adventures on the Wine Route

AS ONE enters Provence from the north, there is a place that never fails to have a magical effect on my spirits. After Montélimar, the road passes through a gorge that pinches right up to the shoulder of the autoroute, then opens out upon a vast, vine-covered plain. The effect is emotionally exhilarating, like the untying of a mental knot, a release and a shock of open space within that mirrors the widening landscape without.

Provence is good for the psyche. By the time I approach Cassis and that first breathtaking view of the glistening Mediterranean, I am singing, I am happy, I am chez moi.

Cassis produces the one wine I buy whose vines actually look upon the Mediterranean. This fishing village just east of Marseilles, long a weekend retreat for the wealthy Marseillaises, has nothing whatsoever to do with Cassis the black-currant liqueur. This Cassis is one of the least spoiled, most picturesque seaside villages in Provence.

The bay, the village, and its little harbor are visible from the autoroute far above. As you wind down to the sea, you see some of the geological formations that make Cassis so special; aeons of wear and tear have uncovered a series of huge, crown-shaped prominences the color of bleached bone that rise from the grayish-green, scrub-covered mountains. It is as if the timeless stony core of the mountains stands revealed. This rugged landscape has protected Cassis from undergoing what I call Rivierazation, the transformation of something deliciously inviting into something to be avoided. Developers run into problems erecting their high-rise condominiums at Cassis.

The roadway down from the autoroute cuts through one of the finest Cassis vineyards, those of the Domaine de Paternal, whose proprietor is Monsieur Cathinaud, a sly old gentleman who has seen ninety years come and go. In his youth he nearly learned English by studying Shakespeare in the original, and he uses my presence each year as an excuse to dust off his heavily accented Shakespearean vocabulary and grammar. He takes pleasure in concocting plays on words, so I laugh along as merrily as I can, although I rarely understand a thing he says. I am not about to let him know his English gabbling is incomprehensible, for fear of wounding his obvious pride.

Centre ville Cassis, the old section, is a lively colorful place with a beach, a mast-filled harbor, and a row of outdoor cafés where everyone is very animated, sipping pastis, soaking up the sun and sea air.

The subject of one of Frédéric Mistral’s poems, Cassis also attracted painters such as Vlaminck, Dufy, and Matisse. Today, it is not uncommon to see a movie crew at work, using the alluring site as a backdrop.

The main beach is too crowded and pebbly to be interesting. Continue east half a kilometer and you will find an inlet with a small beach where the water is irresistibly inviting. Here is where most of the seminaked, young-starlet types seem to congregate. If you proceed farther, following the signs to La Presqu’île, you will pay eight to ten francs to enter a little parking area, a price that seems to discourage the multitudes, because once you have parked amid the pine trees, you are relatively isolated, by Riviera standards.

There is no sandy beach, however. You sunbathe on the rock shelf above the sea, but there are places to dip your toes into the water, or dramatic heights from which to plunge if you prefer a good wakening shock. The water at Cassis is said to be the coldest on the Mediterranean, because springs of fresh water from the Alps flow out from beneath the rocks. One advantage, however, is that Cassis is said to have the cleanest water on the French coast, and this, I assure you, counts for a great deal once you have gazed into the murk at certain Riviera spots where the city’s waste is piped to spill out a mere few hundred feet offshore. I take a mat and towel and find a flat spot on the hot rocks and settle in. Every once in a while I try to concentrate on a mystery novel, I get baked enough to dive into the sea, I doze, I snack on a picnic lunch, I watch the fishing boats laying their nets and the tourist boats that plow by with binoculars and cameras aimed at the mostly-naked bodies scattered about basking. And I watch a fabulous light show; across the water the celebrated Cap Canaille, the highest cliff in France, rises ocher-colored out of the blue sea. As the sun travels across the huge sky, as clouds sail by changing the light, the massive face of the cliff changes color. Ocher to orange to rust to purple. And likewise the sea changes from blues to greens to grays, an infinite breathtaking variety. A painter would spend the whole day mixing and remixing colors.

There is even a decent restaurant nearby, La Presqu’île, where one can enjoy a bouillabaisse outdoors while the sea crashes on the rocks below and the Cap Canaille performs across the bay. The wine list offers the finest growths of Provence, including the Cassis of the Clos Sainte-Magdeleine, whose vines grow on a narrow fifteen-acre cape that juts right out into the Mediterranean. The fish can almost nibble the grapes. This must be one of the most valuable vineyards in France. However, it is not as a vineyard that it would attract a great sum, but as land to develop into a resort. This is an earthly paradise, the Clos Sainte-Magdeleine, and I wonder what Hilton or the Club Med would pay for it. I shouldn’t even mention it.

Cassis produces red and rosé wine, but it is the white that merits attention. Quoting from Les Grands Vins de France, 1931, by Paul Ramain: “Ils ont une saveur particulière due à l’exposition unique des terres qui les produisent” (“They have a special flavor due to the unique exposure of the soils that produce them”). It is a quote typical of French wine books, but what does it say to give an idea of what Cassis blanc tastes like? It seems to say that Cassis blanc tastes like Cassis blanc. I suppose it is true that there are plenty of wines that have no personality whatsoever, that taste exactly like the wine from the next village, while the white from Cassis, thanks to the exposition of the vines and the limestone soil in which they grow, does have a character that cannot be duplicated. As to that character, most intriguing is its combination of nervosity and unctuousness. Nervosity can be found in a good Muscadet, unctuousness hopefully in a Montrachet, but the two poised together in a dry white have a special attraction. Cassis has a brilliant sun-drenched color and it marries perfectly with the local cuisine. This is garlic-and-olive-oil land, and in the local restaurants it would be crazy to drink a Muscadet or Montrachet with the catch of the day. The menus feature oursins (sea urchins), sea snails with aïoli, soupe de poisson, fresh rougets or loup grilled over coals, and, of course, the endlessly bastardized bouillabaisse.

Cassis is one of the wines that people claim will not travel well. When I read the declaration of this or that gourmet or wine guru that such and such a wine (Cassis, Beaujolais, Chablis, Dolcetto, etc.) must be drunk on site, I know that they were having a high time and the local wine tasted better than ever. Wine travels well if it is properly shipped, which means temperature control. Motion will not harm wine, but high temperatures will. A little heat will hurt it a little; a lot of heat—say, three or four days through the Panama Canal or the month of July in an un-air-conditioned New York warehouse—and the wine is roasted. Shipped at around 55 degrees, followed by air-conditioned storage, your wine will not have changed between Cassis and the United States.

But then of course Cassis tastes better at Cassis! Debussy sounds better after a walk through the foggy, puddled streets of late-night Paris. You are in the midst of the atmosphere that created it. The wine is not different; the music is not different. You are.

The Cassis blanc of the Clos Sainte-Magdeleine has enjoyed a success at Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, which is fitting not only because of the Mediterranean slant to the food there but also because the name Panisse was taken from the works of the great French dramatist Marcel Pagnol, who was born near Cassis. In fact, his mother was visiting Cassis when her labor began, and she traveled over those rocky mountains in a horse-drawn cart in order to deliver her son at home in Aubagne. Marcel Pagnol was almost a Cassisian.

Farther along the Mediterranean coastline, some fifteen miles from Cassis, lies the village of Bandol. Famous above all for the wine that carries its name, Bandol itself has no vineyards, but they decorate the landscape just over the hills from the sea.

Bandol has a bay ringed with sandy beaches, and a crowded, active harbor, which is home to a small fishing fleet. The catch is sold while it is still wriggling, directly from the boats along the quai. Bandol is a quaint, busy little vacation spot which seems to attract those French tourists who like to parade about with their poodles, pretending to be chic and well-to-do. Newspapers are available in English and German, but Bandol is far from being a Riviera hotspot.

There should be an entire book about the Domaine Tempier near Bandol. There would be an abundance of wine in it; oh, it would flow as if from a fountain, but it should not be a wine book, not one of those scholarly studies that appear on the grand châteaux like Latour or Lafite, because telling the whole story of the Domaine Tempier would require more than that. Today, Château Latour is controlled by English corporate interests. It has changed hands several times over the centuries, yet it still continues to produce wines of first-growth quality. Were an English corporation to acquire Domaine Tempier, I am afraid that would be the end of it. The rapturous exclamations of appreciation would peter out. The pilgrimage of celebrated chefs, wine merchants, wine writers, and winemakers would cease. I would treasure an ever-dwindling horde of older bottles, and each one uncorked would provoke tears and mirth, and so many memories.

Domaine Tempier is a place in Provence, a home with its winery and vineyards, its olive trees and cypresses. It is home to a large, joyful Provençal family. It is a wine. And while it must be inadvertent, one of those fortuitous miracles that embellish existence (there is no recipe for it dispensed at wine school), there is a certain vital spirit that one imbibes with each gorgeous swallow of Domaine Tempier’s wine.

To write the book on Domaine Tempier, you would need Marcel Pagnol’s understanding of character (Provençal character!) and a professional’s understanding of enology. How to get La Femme du Boulanger and Emile Peynaud under the same cover? We need a big roiling novel with lots of room and several children growing up one after another that goes from the cellar right into the bedroom, a novel to which there is always a following chapter.

Domaine Tempier today makes the finest red wine of Provence, but it was not always that way. Up until 1941, the appellation Bandol did not even exist. In the story of the birth of the appellation, and of Lucien Peyraud’s struggle to develop Domaine Tempier into a fine wine, there is all the education one needs into the mysteries of what is involved in creating a fine wine.

CLOS STE.-MAGDELEINE. CASSIS

During each visit to buy wine, then from friends and other winemakers, I gathered bits and pieces of the story. Over the years I constructed a history of the Domaine Tempier and its proprietors, the Peyrauds, but thanks to my slow-and-perhaps-never-to-evolve mastery of French, and partly because the story came in fragments both first- and secondhand, and certainly because the story lends itself to invention, I had actually constructed quite a mythical rendition of the facts.

Now that I have researched it more painstakingly, I am still reluctant to give up my mythical version. I like the way I (unintentionally) transformed it, and I invite you to share it with me before moving on to nothing but facts.

* * *

There is a village in the Ardèche between Hermitage and Côte Rôtie named Peyraud, and Lucien Peyraud’s ancestors dwelt there with terraced Syrah vineyards as a backdrop, but Lucien himself grew up surrounded by snowcapped Alps in Grenoble.

In his teens he set out one spring, when the sap began to rise, to take his first job. He headed south, following the road from valley to valley until the mountains dwarfed him less and less and the snow disappeared. As he descended, a procession of plane trees appeared alongside to shade the roadway. Lavender and thyme baked in the sun beyond.

Lucien arrived in Aix-en-Provence to do a stage in a winery there, and the magic of this sacred land cast its spell. The air was hot and scented; traces of the great Roman civilization were there and of the Greeks before them; stone fountains poured out magical waters; the marketplace was alive with clamor and color; the vines eked purplish blood from the spare, stony soil.

This bold, golden-haired youth never returned to the mountains. How could he regret it? Lucien belonged in Provence.

At age twenty-one, Lucien proposed to Lucie (or Lulu) Tempier, eighteen, a fine Marseillaise beauty with vibrant dark eyes and black hair. Their marriage resulted in a procession of young Peyrauds, seven in all, one after another so quickly that at times it seemed there was less than the minimum period of nine months separating them.

On the day of the wedding, Lulu’s father, Alphonse Tempier, had given a crusty old bottle to Lucien, saying, “This may be more of historical interest than a good glass to enjoy with lunch. It is from the old days, I don’t know the exact age, before the phylloxera came and attacked the vines and we had to destroy them.”

His other wedding present was the family’s small wine domaine near Bandol, the Domaine Tempier.

One winter night with an icy mistral threatening to lift the old house off its foundation, Lucien carefully decanted his bottle by candlelight. The aged leathery aroma filled the room, but what caught Lucien’s eye immediately was the wine’s color, because normally Provençal reds turned brown after aging four or five years. This wine still showed some purple in the center. He sniffed it and found in the aroma a memory of all the wild perfume he had breathed in during his descent from Grenoble. He sipped it and wondered, because he tasted a great wine, a wine unlike any other.

The wine was a revelation, and his curiosity was passionate. He scoured the libraries, the old texts, the village documents, looking for more information on the wine that had been produced at Bandol in the nineteenth century, because in fact all the vineyards had been replanted in Provence as in the rest of France, thanks to the grimmest reaper the vine has ever known, the phylloxera.

Lucien discovered that the wine of Bandol had enjoyed a great reputation, that it had been sold at prices that rivaled all but the very grand at Bordeaux. Bandol’s sturdy wine was considered to travel exceptionally well, and from the nearby port it had indeed been shipped all over the world, even as far away as California.

In one text, Géographie de la Provence, du Comtat Venaissin, de la Principauté d’Orange et du Comte de Nice, published in 1787, Lucien read about the wine of Bandol:

These wines have the solidity, the bouquet and the finesse which are valued by connoisseurs who seek true quality instead of a label. Very simply, they sum up the true virtues of the Provençal soil and its products: LOYAUTÉ, FINESSE et ARDEUR!

And in the old texts he learned that, prior to phylloxera, the vineyards had been composed largely of Mourvèdre vines, a grape variety that had not been replanted, primarily because of its low yield. It had been all but forgotten. Lucien read that the Mourvèdre had originally come to Provence from Spain, that the old sources considered it a noble grape variety, the finest of the Mediterranean basin, where it went by many aliases such as Mataro, Buona Vise, Flouron, Balzac, and Benada, and that one of the Mourvèdre’s traits was its stalwart resistance to oxidation. It was this latter quality, Lucien recognized, that accounted for the youthful appearance of the wine his father-in-law had presented him.

Excepting the gaggle of children appearing with notable regularity, all Lucien’s energy was devoted to his research. It was as if he’d found the map to a buried treasure. His imagination was ablaze with the thought of what might be. Of what might be … again.

He saw the current reds, oh, they were decent vins de table, no more, although Bandol was producing an excellent rosé—one had to go to Tavel to find one as good. But what might be! That’s what drove him.

The great name in wine during the late thirties was the Baron Le Roy of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, who through the force of his intelligence, vision, and personality was changing the history of French wine, trying to preserve by law what made each region’s wine original and worthwhile.

Lucien went to the baron armed with more pre-phylloxera bottles and with copies of the old texts.

The baron and his committee received Lucien’s presentation. Here were men from the great appellations of Burgundy, Bordeaux, and the Loire, Champagne and the Rhône. They were staggered. There for all to see and taste was a forgotten treasure, a true vin de terroir. They agreed, “Here is certainly a very great appellation,” and the committee did not hesitate to take the necessary measures to resurrect it. After a precise study of the geography, the geology, and the expositions of the ancient vineyard areas around Bandol, La Cadière, Saint-Cyr, Le Castellet, Le Plan-du-Castellet, Le Beausset, Evenos, Ollioules, and Sanary, they defined an area of appellation Bandol contrôlée.

It was not simple, because the terrain varied so much. In the end you might find one plot of land that had the right to call itself Bandol; its neighbor beside it was entitled to the name Côtes de Provence; and right next to that might be a less blessed plot whose grapes would figure in nothing fancier than a vin de table.

And it did not stop at that. There was the Mourvèdre to consider.

Contrary to popular belief, the creation of controlled appellations was not merely an attempt to define the best vineyard sites. It was also an attempt to preserve the traditional character of each site’s wine. A vineyard within the Bandol appellation planted in Pinot Noir might produce a decent wine, but it would be a wine that lacked the traditional Bandol characteristics. Pre-phylloxera Bandol had been largely Mourvèdre. Thus, it was decided that, without a certain proportion of Mourvèdre, a wine could not call itself Bandol. However, there was no Mourvèdre left at Bandol, so a timetable was created in the bylaws of the appellation. The committee began in 1941 with a requirement of 10 percent Mourvèdre, and by 1946 it had to be 20 percent, forcing the vignerons to uproot the ordinary grape varieties and replant with Mourvèdre if they wanted to profit from the higher prices one could obtain by selling a wine with an appellation contrôlée.

Lucien was at the forefront, working tirelessly to replant the Domaine Tempier vineyards. Then in 1951 he acquired a new vineyard, a perfect terraced slope below Le Castellet called La Tourtine. Its previous owner had replanted a sizable proportion of the vineyard over to Mourvèdre in 1941 at the birth of the appellation Bandol, so now Lucien had some ten-year-old hillside vines with which to work.

The following year he added La Migoua to the domaine’s holdings. La Migoua is the wildest imaginable environment for a vineyard. High up in the hills, patches of vineyard struggle to survive in the midst of the rugged Provençal landscape. What a beautiful, primitive setting, and included were some old vines to add depth to Lucien’s blend.

He experimented with cuvées containing higher and higher percentages of Mourvèdre, and when he saw the results he consecrated his life to the renovation of his vineyards, and to the appellation Bandol itself.

Lulu was not spending all her time in the delivery room. She had grown into a handsome woman and a great cook, and she received hordes of visitors at the domaine. The door was always open, it was easy to set another place at table, and there was a cool glass of rosé poured upon one’s arrival.

Her lunches and dinners are legend in France. It was not rare to sit down at table with fifteen or twenty other guests, with of course a contingent of various Peyrauds. Even the president of the republic attended one of Lulu’s great Provençal feasts. And the wine was poured constantly around the table, which did nothing to harm the growing reputation of its quality. These were lively affairs, joyous affairs (Bacchus must have been delighted), and one tended to reminisce extravagantly about them.

By 1980, thanks to Lucien Peyraud, the proportion of Mourvèdre necessary for a wine to call itself Bandol had reached 50 percent, and at the Domaine Tempier, special cuvées were released containing 80 percent.

By this time, Bandol was being shipped regularly to California again, and Lucien, officially at any rate, had retired, leaving the cultivation of the vineyard to his son François, and the winemaking to his firstborn, Jean-Marie.

Thus was born an appellation, Bandol, and a family, Peyraud.

* * *

At least, such was my tidy little fantasy.

And the fantasy does have a lot of the right information, but the story did not unfold quite like that and it certainly was not that tidy.

Lucien was not from Grenoble. How did I manage that error? It seems he spent the war years in the service there.

It is my experience that when anybody makes the acquaintance of the Peyrauds and Domaine Tempier, he or she tends to mythologize them. Everything seems so down-to-earth and wonderful and perfect. Even the names: Lucie and Lucien. And the setting contributes, too; the rugged hillsides, the sea, and the enormous blue sky create a landscape of divine dimension. And one’s glass is never empty; reverie is natural.

Then, when you get to know the Peyrauds better and you see how human they are, “mad and wonderful” according to their friend Richard Olney, you love them and their wine even more. Yes, theirs is a wine that you end up loving. In my personal cellar I own more bottles of Domaine Tempier’s bold-tasting, soulful red than any other single wine. It may not be rational; it is a love affair.

One could probably portray Lucien as comic or heroic … that’s why a Pagnol treatment seems so appropriate. It would take Pagnol’s special kind of genius to show Lucien with both facets intact … this short, muscular, crew-cut moral watchman railing against the march of progress, trying to resist single-handedly the vulgarization of his adopted home.

He fought, unsuccessfully, the construction of the autoroute from Marseilles to Toulon. Completed in 1972, it cuts a noisy, noxious swath through what was, since mankind appeared, an enchanted valley.

And he fought the construction of apartment buildings in the village nearest the domaine. I remember them going up, with Lucien snarling beside me, “Rabbit hutches! These aren’t meant for men, they’re for rabbits.”

In shaping the appellation Bandol, however, Lucien knew success, and this kind man has brought so much pleasure to so many people … Raise your glass to Lucien Peyraud. He deserves a legend.

But there was nothing funny about his fear of the autoroute and the new housing developments. The autoroute did more than bring noise and pollution. Bandol is now a thirty-minute drive from Marseilles. One can now commute from the Bandol area to earn a living in the metropolis. The land becomes more valuable for living space than for what it can produce, and we in the United States know what that can mean. You work in a downtown office and drive through heavy traffic to sleep in your housing tract, where the rural quality has been destroyed. The French taste displayed in these modern housing developments is immoderately tacky.

One day, driving from Sanary, a charming little port between Bandol and Toulon where the weekly market is particularly colorful, Lucien pointed out a brand-new housing development, the boxy houses all alike and crushed up against one another.

“That was the Château Milhière,” he said, “one of the greatest Bandol domaines.”

I couldn’t believe my ears, or my eyes! The housing development should have been prohibited on aesthetic grounds alone. I would describe it as carnage, even though everything visible was erect and intact. It was so new the tenants had not yet moved in.

“It was the property of Dr. André Roethlisberger, a man who understood very well the quality of the soil here. He made wines of a very great quality, red, rosé, but above all great white wines, due perhaps to the fact that he was of Swiss origin.

“It was he who prepared all the historical material for the presentation to the Baron Le Roy, he who went to the old vignerons to take down their testimony as to what had existed at Bandol.

“The Château Milhière had a caractère magnifique. Above all, it was the hospitality that was so charming. Madame Roethlisberger received so many people. I believe that the appellation Bandol was born of this hospitality, from the discussions that were carried on, not only on the theoretical side, but above all by way of the tastings that were presented there. The number of receptions they presented! I understood as well, thanks to Roethlisberger, that we wouldn’t be able to make it, survive—we had created an appellation after all—if we didn’t show every day in one circumstance or another the value of our terroir through the medium of what it produced: the wine of Bandol. That was indispensable.”

As we drove on then in his deux chevaux, leaving the carnage behind, winding along the narrow road between the mountains and the sea, Lucien explained with emotion the gratitude he feels toward André Roethlisberger. Working with him was an education, “une formation,” says Lucien. “But the history of his domaine, the Château Milhière, is very sad, because there is no continuation.”

Lucien stopped the car at the side of the road and turned toward me. “André Roethlisberger died in 1969. He left his widow alone, because their three children were not interested in the domaine. She tried to continue it but it was too difficult, and finally the domaine was divided between the children. This was serious because of the terrible appetite of the urbanistes who wanted to chop up the property for construction. And in fact that is what came to pass.”

Lucien turned the key in the ignition and the little car shuddered and rattled back onto the roadway. “How can you ask people to remain vignerons when they are offered exorbitant prices for their earth? This is now the great drama of the appellation,” he concluded.

Imagine yourself in the place of a property owner at Bandol. It is questionable whether one can imagine it until truly faced with the dilemma, but let us say you were forced to sell your twenty acres of vineyard on a hillside overlooking the Mediterranean (“forced,” because no one in his right mind would move willingly). The projected income from wine production permits an interested winemaker to offer you a quarter of a million dollars. A developer of tacky vacation villas arrives, salivating over your sea view, and offers you a million. One might decide no, for the welfare of the rest of us, for the quality of life, that land would be better left a beautiful vineyard producing one of God’s greatest gifts, wine. But how many would sacrifice three-quarters of a million dollars? Someone has to decide these questions. If it is left to each individual, there will remain damned few vineyards around Bandol. If it is left to the lawmakers, money talks, and payoffs could determine the fate of the Bandol appellation.

* * *

Now to the good news. Even Pagnol could not have designed better Peyrauds to continue Lucien’s work than his two sons. One needn’t worry about François or Jean-Marie selling out to an investment realty group and leaving Domaine Tempier to suffer the fate of Château Milhière. Those two would man the barricades before they would allow the developers to bulldoze their vines.

François tends the vines. Short, stocky, tanned, hairy like Esau, François works the hardest in terms of physical labor and he has the muscles to prove it. When I stayed in his home up on the crest of the hillside below Le Castellet, above the La Tourtine terraces, I was awakened every morning before sunrise as he maneuvered his spluttering tractor out of the garage. In California the tractors sail calmly across the fields, the driver charged with little more than setting a straight course. François rides his like a broncobuster, fighting to keep it upright. He wrestles with the steering wheel, careful not to lurch into a row of vines and wound one. His is equipped with a roll bar because farmers have been maimed or killed when their tractors toppled over on these hillsides. At noon he would return home and often as not collapse onto his bed without lunch. A siesta, some nourishment, and off he would go, bouncing along on his tractor until dark.

Tasting with François is a pleasure because what he smells in the wine he interprets in terms of the wild aromas he encounters out in the open air. I tend to taste structurally, looking above all for balance, for a wine that is complete, so to speak. If I am thinking “fruity,” François goes to the specific—“apricot blossom, cherry pit, pomegranate,” for example. I take another sniff and there it is right in front of my nose. It is a manner of tasting that deepens one’s appreciation of wine. It inspires one to marvel at the talent for expression possessed by the vine.

He is a knowledgeable man and all of his learning seems directed to the upkeep of his vines. He knows biology, botany, horticulture, chemistry, geology, and natural history, and in conversation he is likely to leave me behind because he assumes that anyone in the wine profession knows, for example, what an excoriose is. (It is a fungus that develops when the shoots appear, which can inhibit the crucial budding of the vine.)

There cannot be good wines without good grapes, and François’s job is to see that his brother Jean-Marie has the raw material (good juice) necessary to vinify a good wine.

If one imagines a vine’s activity, commencing after the harvest, speeded up in the manner of a time-lapse botany film, and the twelve-month cycle were reduced to one minute of film, the director would say, “Lights, camera, action!” and nothing would happen, because from late October until early April a vine is dormant. It would stand as sculpted by the early-winter pruning. Generally speaking, you would see the gnarled trunk with four arms or branches nearly amputated to leave two eyes or buds remaining on each one.

In the film we would wait ten, twenty, almost thirty seconds before witnessing the tender green shoots bursting from the eyes, then a frenzy of motion and growth as the leaves appear, then the green bunches of flower buds, the blossoming, the grape set, and the maturation, until they are picked (hopefully, purple and ripe) and the vine is pruned back once more to its winter stance.

François may deserve one, but he does not take a vacation after the harvest. It is time to begin cleaning up, and to inspect each vine. Dead vines are removed, even their roots, to prevent them from rotting in the soil. He tills a furrow between the rows that will receive a compost, la merde, which is what remains of the grapes, the skins and the seeds after the vinification and the distillation of marc, a grape brandy. François does not fertilize, other than this merde.

In early November the earth is plowed; the soil is pushed up around the trunk (or foot) of the vine, to provide some protection against the cold.

The leaves have fallen and indeed it is turning cold, but it is time to begin the taille, or pruning.

The severity of this pruning goes a long way in determining the quality of next year’s harvest. If too many eyes are left, there will be a lack of concentration in the grapes because there will be too many bunches on each vine, bunches that will not have attained maximum maturity. The pruning is reserved for dry days during the declining moon because the branches are harder then and the cut cleaner.

If it has not been too wet, December sees a finish to the pruning, and François is occupied with cleanup chores like gathering and burning the vine cuttings. Apart from the hustle and bustle of the harvest, this is one of the most picturesque sights one sees in the vineyards. All the foliage is gone; the sky is frigid gray. François stands bundled up against the December air, throwing vine cuttings onto a smoking fire. All over the hillsides, wisps of smoke rise into the sky as workers burn the branches from which the grapes of the vintage had hung. The fire comes in handy when his hands begin to hurt from the cold.

Another task is preparing the soil for the new plantings, which will commence in January.

In February and March, treatments against two fungi continue whenever there is a calm moment. Without these treatments—that is, if the fungi were permitted to thrive—François says he would lose 10 percent of his vines per year. Also at this time the soil around the foot of the plant is removed. Weeds are tended to by plowing and hoeing. He will not employ herbicides.

In early April the plant awakens, the buds swell, and out burst the shoots. One can visibly measure the growth from day to day. Leaves unfold. By hand, the plants are continually cleared of unwanted growth.

As necessary, the vines are sprayed with sulfur. The sulfur is in a pure form; it comes from the soil near La Laque, close to Bordeaux. François says there is a race now in the laboratories of the big chemical companies to develop something more efficient, but he doesn’t seem to trust them to come up with something as healthy.

If the weather is wet, it is necessary to treat the vines with copper sulfate to prevent mildew.

As the shoots lengthen, badly formed vines are restaked.

At the end of May, there is a light pruning. The tops or ends of the branches are chopped off, so they don’t fall over to one side or another and impede the passage of the tractor between the rows, and to ensure that the precious sap is concentrated in the bottom third of the branches, where the grapes are forming.

A vine lacks self-criticism. Moreover, it does not realize that its job is to produce wine grapes. François says, “The vine is a plant which needs to be bullied from the point of view of circulation of the sap. If the branches aren’t pruned back now, the sap will always go to the extremities, the trunk is going to die while the shoots continue to push outward.”

By early June, François has seen and smelled the flowering. The aroma fills the air. Then follows the appearance of the tiny green grape bunches. I walked down the rows with him one day as he pinched off a good 50 percent of these new bunches. He would not allow me to help him because “this is a delicate job. It is disagreeable to cast away half of your harvest, but it has to be done. I’ve studied the problem, and if it isn’t done, the grapes stay pink. What we need is a grape with ripe juice, so we throw away one out of two grapes.” The discarded bunches lay shriveling on the ground in the hot June sun.

In July, François continues to work the earth to keep it friable. Weeding continues in order to protect for the vine itself whatever water supply is in the soil. Irrigation is not practiced, nor is it permitted.

He must keep an eye out for fungus growth on the leaves because it could upset the process of photosynthesis. “I sulfur against oidium, if necessary, at least once during this period of the grape’s maturation. Oidium is a fungus that develops at the leaf’s stem and which would penetrate into the leaf. The leaf would whiten at a given moment—that is a manifestation of the fungus, which multiplies and paralyzes the leaf; it shrivels up to the point of dryness, and next the branch becomes stunted.

“Our work now is to see that the vine is in good condition, in good health, and to watch out for fungus.”

I asked him if he knew each vine individually.

“I would say yes,” he replied, after considering the question a few moments. His response may seem absurd to those whose image is of a vineyard on the flatlands, upon a valley floor, for example, where all the vines look alike in their perfect rows. But on the hilly terrain of Bandol, with its terraces, with olive and fruit trees growing in the vineyard, and with several grape varieties planted in the scattered parcels, François’s boast, given his labor and his commitment, seems legitimate.

DOMAINE TEMPIER’S LA TOURTINE

“Me, I want an intelligent production from my vines,” he says. “Thirty-five hectoliters to the hectare, that’s sufficient. But there are others who always want the maximum production possible. Their policy is to brew up lots of wine and still charge the same price per bottle. I think it’s better to make less quantity, to take a good price, and to enjoy the pleasure of having made a great wine.

“I have seen in the Côtes de Provence this year one hundred hectoliters to the hectare. They’re practically doubling their production! I don’t know how it can be good. It can be wine, but it will lack richness and depth. It is going to make a drinkable wine perhaps, but nothing more!”

In August, the vines are left alone. Work is concentrated on the maintenance of the stone walls or terraces that hold the soil in place on the hillsides. François wages a constant battle against the weeds that grow out from between the stones and whose roots tear apart the walls. Here again he refuses to arm himself with herbicides, even though he would be spraying them onto the stone (almost everybody else does), and could realize an incredible saving of time and labor.

“The first rain would arrive,” he says, “and all those poisons would wash right down into my soil.”

* * *

Born two years apart, Jean-Marie and François are brothers who idolize their father. Thus the stage is set for rivalry.

I asked Lucien how the decision was reached to divide the labor between the two, because it might have resulted in a resentful situation.

“No decision was required,” he explained. “François was always outdoors in the vines and Jean-Marie was always in the cave.”

It works, but it is not all sweetness and smiles.

Jean-Marie receives the claps on the back from the world outside because he is the winemaker. But at a winery itself there is the attitude that the quality of a wine is determined by the health and maturity of the grapes, so if François provides perfect grapes it remains to Jean-Marie a caretaker’s role, to vinify the good juice according to the tradition developed by Père Lucien.

In fact, they both feel a trifle underesteemed. Jean-Marie wants recognition at home, while François is proselytizing outsiders on the fundamental importance of the viticulture. This subtle rivalry is good for the wine. They are tirelessly pursuing perfection, and if they cannot forget their father’s pioneering achievement, they don’t mind improving on it, even if the shadow Lucien casts is a large one.

Jean-Marie is a fervent record-keeper. When we taste through the different casks of a new vintage, he is flipping through his notes. “This is 70 percent Mourvèdre, 15 percent Grenache, 8 percent Syrah, and 7 percent old Carignan,” he’ll say. “It is 65 percent La Migoua, 20 percent Le Plan, and 15 percent La Tourtine. Fermentation lasted twelve days,” and so on, detailing each cuvée as it is tasted. Eyeing his notes, he will remind me which cuvée I preferred the previous visit. He has even kept a record of every set of tennis we’ve played over the years!

Dining at Jean-Marie’s rustic stone farmhouse up in the wilderness at La Migoua, I never get to see the label of a wine until he has put me through the paces. One night in 1985 he poured a rosé and asked how old it was. It was old, but the aroma was pretty enough, suggesting various spices like a good Châteauneuf-du-Pape. With the vagueness that experience brings, I guessed that it was at least ten years old.

Jean-Marie practically danced around the dinner table, crowing, “It’s a 1958! Ha-ha, Kermit, twenty-seven years old!” Next came a 1955 Domaine Tempier rouge. I guessed 1969. Oh well.

Over the years I’ve tasted every vintage of Domaine Tempier’s red except their first, the 1951. None of them was tired. None of them! How many Bordeaux or Burgundies can boast a consistency and longevity like that?

Today they produce about two bottles of red for every bottle of rosé. What qualities does Jean-Marie aim for in his rosé? “I think rosé should be a wine that is not too serious, a wine that brings joy, which is fruity and easy to drink, not a rosé which is rough or heavy with too much tannin. In 1951 Lucien made only 5 percent red. In 1960 it was up to 30 percent. In 1973 we finally made more red than rosé. I’d like to make nothing but red, because I think it would be more normal in a soil such as Bandol’s, a soil that is made for great red wines. Let’s leave it to the Côtes de Provence to make rosé. They cannot make reds like ours. Still, there will always be a demand for the rosé of Bandol. It has its followers.”

I had to argue the case for the rosé of Domaine Tempier (argue with its own winemaker!) if only for selfish reasons, because I adore it.

“But, Jean-Marie, listen, you’ve got to have something to drink before the red is served. What good is a red without a white to precede it? And since you don’t make a white…”

“I’m obliged to make rosé to satisfy the demand. A rosé can never be a great wine, but once in a while you want something to quench your thirst.”

“There is a place for a pretty wine like that,” I said, “and, moreover, the rosé has something to do with the personality of the Domaine Tempier, the joie de vivre. When one arrives, one is greeted with a cool glass of rosé. That’s valuable.”

“Absolutely,” he finally conceded, “and in fact it is in that spirit that I make it.”

The decision to begin harvesting the grapes is made jointly by Lucien and his two sons, but the primary responsibility is François’s. Because of the different varietals and microclimates, the ripening does not proceed with regularity, so in early September, François picks a small sample of grapes from each parcel. He presses them, then analyzes the must for sugar and acidity. He repeats the process weekly, observing the evolution from parcel to parcel.

When they are satisfied with the maturity, the grapes are harvested by hand, beginning with the most forward parcels. There is no harvesting machine.

Fanatical care is taken to preserve the grapes intact from the vineyard to the winery, thus avoiding oxidation.

The grapes are destemmed 100 percent, which comes as a shock to most tasters, because Tempier’s red is robust and tannic enough to satisfy anyone. And it has always been 100 percent destemmed! The Mourvèdre grape has sufficient tannin in the skin and the seeds. Furthermore, because the Mourvèdre’s stems remain green in the interior even when the grapes themselves have attained maximum maturity, they would contribute an undesirable flavor—that is to say, a green, or stemmy, flavor—to the wine. At the same time, the grapes are lightly crushed before they fall into the fermentation vat. The fermentation starts of its own volition. Rather than introduce foreign yeasts, Jean-Marie prefers the native yeasts, which abound in the air and on the grape skins at harvesttime. The primary fermentation in which the grapes’ sugar is transformed into alcohol, in which grape juice turns into wine, proceeds in cement or stainless-steel vats. Jean-Marie has no preference, but he does not like to leave his wine in those containers for more than the first few days. The wine’s second or malolactic fermentation always begins during the alcoholic fermentation and continues to work after the wine is racked off into large oak casks called foudres. Even if the alcoholic fermentation is not completed after six to ten days, the wine is racked off its lees nonetheless, to finish naturally in wood. I say “naturally,” because each wine has a mind of its own. Unlike the vine, which the Peyrauds will chop and bully into submission, they respect each wine’s persona, its native intelligence, its ability to determine its own evolution, and they are reluctant to tamper with it even when its behavior seems capricious.

HARVEST, DOMAINE TEMPIER

Their 1971 was four years completing its fermentation. Most winemakers would have panicked and attempted by artificial means to speed everything along. They might have forced it to finish more quickly, but the wine would have been altered, perhaps even tired out by those manipulations.

“The 1971 had lots of alcohol,” explained Jean-Marie. “Over 14 degrees. And it took four years for it totally to lose its sugar. It fermented each year at springtime or in the summer. Whenever the weather warmed up, it came alive and continued to evolve. We waited to bottle it until it had finished completely. Others would have heated their cellar and added yeast to hasten it along, but Lucien said no, it would finish by itself, and it did.”

Today that stubborn 1971 is one of the most treasured of the Peyraud offspring.

To earn the appellation Bandol, the law requires eighteen months in wood. As evidenced by that 1971, eighteen months in wood is the minimum at Domaine Tempier. Their 1983, a wine with lovely black-cherry-like fruit and a more delicate structure, was bottled immediately after the requisite eighteen months in foudre in order to preserve its freshness.

Two quirks in the cellar treatment at Domaine Tempier are the source of endless dispute among those who follow their wines. Neither at the harvest nor at the bottling will Jean-Marie use sulfur dioxide (SO2). It is never allowed contact with the wine, although it is used to clean winery equipment such as hoses and empty casks. Sulfur dioxide is a gas employed for its antiseptic qualities by practically all wineries. It sterilizes, stabilizes, and disinfects. In its free state the gas protects the surface of a wine and thus acts as an antioxidant. Unfortunately, it can also anesthetize one’s olfactory organs, and nobody seems to know exactly how beneficial it may or may not be to one’s health when taken in daily doses. Lucien sniffs SO2 when he feels a cold coming on, and he maintains fiercely that his wine can be drunk to excess without fear of a morning-after headache because of the absence of SO2.

JEAN-MARIE PEYRAUD

Domaine Tempier’s red has a tendency to sparkle or pétiller a bit. This bit of sparkle is carbon dioxide (CO2), which has nothing to do with sulfur dioxide. Carbon dioxide is a natural by-product of fermentation, while SO2 is an additive. All wines have CO2, but it is usually removed before a wine is bottled, or quelled by dosing the wine with SO2.

Some people like that CO2 sparkle. Richard Olney finds it charming, the sign of a natural wine, and so do I. Other tasters are shocked and consider it a flaw. Restaurants form an important part of Domaine Tempier’s trade, and this pétillance that appears in their wine from time to time (for example, when the weather warms up or storage conditions are not cool enough, or at the season of the grapevine’s flowering and at harvesttime) drives restaurateurs crazy. Monsieur Big strides in with a cute young thing on his arm. The sommelier pours a glass of Tempier. Mr. Big puts down his cigar, swirls the glass in a grand circle that practically covers the circumference of the table, sniffs it approvingly, takes a sip, then he grunts, wrinkles up his nose, and announces that the wine is fermenting in the bottle! “Take it back,” he commands while his date rubs knees with him under the table.

It is a great night for him, but the restaurateur is looking at a ninety-franc bottle of wine that must go into the sauce. Instead, his solution is to recork it and send it and all the rest back to Domaine Tempier.

While certain connoisseurs are clapping Jean-Marie on the back for the success of that same wine, enjoying that natural, freshening little prickle on the palate, he is looking at the loss of a sale, the loss of a client, and a painful round-trip shipping bill.

Still, Jean-Marie persists against the dread SO2. “Besides,” he says, “that little bit of carbon dioxide permits our wine to conserve its youthfulness longer.”

Despite this dedication all along the way to produce as natural a wine as possible, Jean-Marie filters before bottling. “Lucien always filtered his wines,” Jean-Marie avows. “I have continued in this tradition in order to avoid an excessive deposit. We might get by without filtering, but we sell about 60 percent of our production to restaurants and there are many who do not know how to explain to their clients that a wine that has aged awhile in bottle throws a deposit. If I didn’t filter, I would have quite a deposit.”

Why, then, does he refuse to change his policy concerning SO2? Why not dose the wines with SO2 to quell any possible pétillance, in order to please those same restaurateurs?

“Oh, you know,” he says, “all they have to do is aerate the wine by decanting and that little prickle would disappear.”

Yes, and all they have to do is decant it and the sediment would disappear at the same time!

But I did not say it. I did not persist in elucidating what is a quirky contradiction. I was afraid that if it were posed too nakedly he might solve the dilemma by gassing his lovely, lively wine with SO2.

Instead, I began to select my cuvées each year before the bottling. My wine goes directly from the foudre into the bottle, unfiltered, with a tendency to pétiller, and I am convinced that the bottle of Domaine Tempier that you order in the United States is therefore more complete a wine than the same vintage served in France, which will have been filtered. Mine may have a little sediment, a delicate sparkle, but it is a natural wine; it is alive; nothing has been added or taken out.

* * *

No wine domaine would be the same without the personality of the woman of the house. Winemakers’ wives play a central if rarely public role. Some are never seen to venture into their husband’s cellar, and it is not unusual to glimpse a spark of jealousy when another woman does.

It is a favorite saying in France that a wine reflects the character of the man who made it. But is it not an equally persuasive argument that in the wine you see the character of the winemaker’s loved one? After all, like an artist (one would hope) a winemaker attempts to create a wine that satisfies his ideal of what is good or beautiful. And, one would hope (presume?), he has chosen a wife or lover because she personifies his ideal of beauty, beauty not merely in terms of appearance but in terms of personality and character, the whole person.

In one village from which I once purchased the wine of two domaines, Madame A of Domaine A had a chic haircut, peroxided hair, wore the latest fashions, lots of makeup, drove a new Mercedes, and struck quite a figure. Men noticed her on the street. Her husband’s wine was flashy, too; it leapt right out of the glass, and for a while it quite seduced me. Beneath its rather dazzling perfume, however, I began to notice a lack of depth over the years, a superficiality, and I lost interest.

Madame Z of Domaine Z did not disguise her age. She loved to cook at home for her family and friends. To her, nothing was more important than her family’s well-being and she stood solidly behind them, no matter what. She had a warmth and generosity that are rare. She was happy in her own skin. Her husband’s wine does not shout or wave a red flag, and I continue to discover qualities in it that were not evident upon first tasting.

Is it going too far to see a parallel between the women and the wines? Certainly, the wine of Domaine Tempier would not be the same were it not for Lulu, whose personality is similar to that of the domaine’s wine, with her qualities of vigor, earthiness, and finesse. Nor has Lulu’s sparkle been gassed with SO2, although there may be a light filtration from time to time to clean up for public consumption what is surely a saucy, even wicked sense of humor.

Discussing grape varieties with a grower in the Rhône, I mentioned that I bought a wine largely produced from Mourvèdre at Domaine Tempier.

“Ahh, Lulu”—and the grower sighed, as his eyes brightened—“she is a legend, you know,” he said with a fond smile.

I cannot really talk about it knowledgeably because I arrived after those heydays of the fifties and sixties when she entertained so often and apparently so memorably.

One hears stories, however. Her beauty was remarkable, that is certain, and men would stare at her from around the table, their heads full of several vintages of Domaine Tempier, concocting fantasies about this spirited Provençal beauty who kept placing delicious platters of food in front of their hungry faces, satisfying at least one of their appetites.

With a racy twinkle in her eye, Lulu confided a story of one of those admirers who was always trying to corner her off in a room alone. She speaks the way Colette writes, in a voice almost infantile, and with the same imaginative detail. “One day he succeeded in getting me alone in his car. He was a handsome man. Nothing ever happened between us, but I admired him because he was so direct. ‘Lucie’ (he called me Lucie), ‘I don’t love you, but you turn me on.’”

With that, she broke into an infectious laugh, relishing the memory. “Oh, his words were even more graphic than that, I assure you, but I like that straightforwardness.”

We were in fact in my car because Lulu had offered to give me a tour of Marseilles, her birthplace.

She claims that Marseilles, despite its renown, is not touristic. “I don’t know what it is,” she said, then lowered her voice to a whisper. “Maybe it is because, you know, Marseilles has a bad reputation. Maybe tourists are afraid of it.”

Our first stop was at the eastern outskirts of Marseilles, in a fishing village named Aux Goudes, situated in a calanque (rocky inlet) full of old wooden fishing boats. There were no fancy yachts as one sees at Bandol, Cassis, or in Marseilles’s own Vieux Port.

Aux Goudes is mentioned in no guidebook; it is rustic, simple, with cheap little restaurants, and Lulu said it is where the working class of Marseilles, the postmen, the dockworkers, might hang out on their days off.

It is surrounded on all sides except its sea side by craggy, bizarre limestone formations. The white rock against the Mediterranean blue is striking.

If one follows the single road through town, it dead-ends across from the huge rock island Meiure, which is colored as if it had received a gigantic pigeon dropping.

There is a dazzling view of Marseilles across the bay, and of the impregnable-looking Château d’If on its Alcatraz-like island, from which Alexandre Dumas’s Count of Monte Cristo escaped by feigning death and chuting out into the sea in a body bag.

I remarked upon the number of seedy nightclubs in the village.

“Oh, of course,” Lulu said, her voice full of intrigue, “Aux Goudes is très Mafia. They come at night to make their deals. They might keep a woman out here to visit. Lots of racketeers come here.”

We drove into Marseilles itself on the Corniche President J. F. Kennedy, a boulevard that runs right along the ocean for about five kilometers.

Lulu directed me to turn off down a one-way street … but in the illegal direction! “Don’t worry about it,” she said, as if she owned the city. The street was just a touch wider than our car. Without meeting another car head-on, we arrived at another calanque, a little inlet with houses built upon the rocks, “for the privileged,” Lulu said. “It’s always sunny here and you will see people sunbathing even in the dead of winter.” These are grand old Marseillaise houses with stunning views of the sea, houses built during the last century, sporting individual features and plenty of personality.

“A movie star owns that one now,” Lulu said, “and the one over there is a hôtel de rendez-vous. Two of my friends stayed there and they were regarded with suspicion because they were married. You know, people go there with their girlfriends. They didn’t know what to make of my friends who wanted to stay two nights.”

For lunch we arrived at our third inlet of the day, this one named Vallon des Auffes, and it will be found on the map should you find yourself with an appetite in Marseilles. The Michelin green guide says of the Vallon: “An animated little fishing port, it represents one of the most characteristic sights of Marseilles.”

We parked illegally (“Don’t worry about it,” Lulu insisted) and walked alongside fishing boats and fishermen who were mending their nets. The Corniche J. F. Kennedy passes over the harbor atop a massive stone bridge whose archways allow the boats to enter and dock in the calmer, scummier waters of the Vallon.

The restaurant was Chez Fon Fon, and the septuagenarian chef welcomed Lulu with a big hug. We were seated at a window table looking out over a rather wild sea which crashed madly against the base of a lighthouse a few hundred yards offshore.

A pastis was served, on the house, for openers, accompanied by a bowl of black olives marinated in oil and herbs.

In this setting, one is wont to order something fishy, and the chef proposed a bourride, a sort of fisherman’s stew not entirely unrelated to bouillabaisse. There is a broth thickened with aïoli, croutons, four fish served on a separate platter (that day loup, Saint-Pierre, congre, and capelan), and two bowls of rouille and aïoli. To the broth, one adds various chunks of fish and the croutons, which one tops with either the rouille or the aïoli or both. It is not something you eat with dainty politesse; there is slurping, dripping chins, and murmurs of appreciation.

Lulu was keeping me up to date on the situation in Marseilles. She explained that there is a vicious war on between the Corsicans and the Arabs to control prostitution, and that assassinations are commonplace.

“In the winter we call the whores les femmes avec les cuisses violettes [the women with purple thighs],” Lulu explained, “because they wear such short skirts. When the weather is freezing, their thighs turn purple.”

When we returned to our car after lunch, we found a lone fisherman next to it baiting his hook with a big morsel of sardine.

“You think you are going to catch something bigger than your bait?” Lulu asked.

“You see,” she said, turning to me, “no one in Marseilles says anything serious. Everything is a joke.”

As we were driving up the circuitous route to the Basilique de Notre Dame de la Garde, a cathedral where seamen appeal for safe passage and where tourists appreciate the dominating view above the city, another driver started out directly into our path from a side street. I had the right of way, but he was charging out regardless, so I began to hit the brakes. When I noticed a slight hesitation on his part, I challenged him and swerved around the nose of his car as he jerked to a stop.

Lulu liked that. “You see? That is very Marseillaise, what he did. That is how they drive, and that is how they act. He was supposed to stop at the sign but tried to bully his way and get away with something. You did the right thing. It’s the men, and they’re even worse if they see a woman driving. Then they try to intimidate you, they just pull right out as if you weren’t there. When I drive in Marseilles, I have to have courage and stand up to them. I won’t let them get away with it. Now you know the Marseilles personality.”

Next, Lulu directed me to the Porte d’Aix, a Roman-style Arc de Triomphe that greets drivers arriving from Aix-en-Provence. It is really rather thick, solid, and squarish, standing out-of-place today in the middle of a busy crossroads.

In her childish voice Lulu explained, “People around here always say, ‘She has an ass like the Porte d’Aix.’ I wanted you to see it so you’ll know what they mean.”

We visited a couple of museums near the Vieux Port, one featuring Roman artifacts, the other Provençal antiques and fabrics. Then we headed back toward Bandol. The weather had turned frigid and we were exhausted.

“Next time you come,” Lulu said as we edged our way into the traffic on the autoroute, “I’ll give you a tour of Marseilles by night.”

Now, that should be something! Unfiltered!

* * *

One evening I dined outdoors with a dozen Peyrauds. It was almost nine o’clock, but the sky was still radiant, with a touch of fiery amber. Around a table crowded with heaping platters of boiled red beets, carrots, cauliflower, artichokes, fennel bulbs, baked sweet potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, sole fillets wrapped around dill blossoms, and a heady octopus stew, the pièce de résistance was passed without cease despite its nearly impossible weight: a huge marble mortar filled with an aïoli that François had worked up by hand with a wooden pestle. Aïoli is Provence’s garlic mayonnaise. Some poor souls find it indigestible; others feel their blood stir with excitement as they wolf it down. This aïoli had an entire head of garlic in it, two egg yolks, a pinch of salt, and a liter of Domaine Tempier’s own olive oil.

Catherine, Jean-Marie’s wife, coughed and sucked in air to cool off her mouth.

“It’s not too strong, is it?” asked Lucien, reaching again for the mortar. “You think there’s too much garlic?”

“No, no, I have a little cold,” Catherine replied.

“An aïoli is good for colds,” Lucien said, and plopped another heaping spoonful onto her plate.

Jean-Marie poured more Bandol rouge into each wineglass, empty or not. “You’ve got to have a cool young wine with aïoli,” he said. “An old wine would be lost. Papa, remember when Madame Blanc invited you to dinner with Gigi?” (Gigi has worked in the Peyrauds’ cellar since the early fifties. He is a huge hunk of a man, with a gristly Provençal accent.) “Madame Blanc served an aïoli, and after one bite Papa glanced over at Gigi and shook his head because there wasn’t enough garlic in it. ‘Do you like aïoli?’ Madame Blanc asked. ‘Oh yes, madame,’ Papa said, ‘it’s very typical of Provence.’ The next year she invited Papa and Gigi and again she served them aïoli. ‘Do you like aïoli?’ she asked. ‘We love aïoli,’ Papa answered, ‘but maybe it could use just a little more garlic.’

CHEZ FON FON

“These dinners became annual events,” Jean-Marie continued, “and Madame Blanc always served the same thing, and Papa always complained that there still was not enough garlic.”

“It’s true,” Lucien interjected. “She was a nice woman, God bless her soul, and a good cook, but she didn’t understand aïoli.”

“So one time Papa and Gigi showed up and there sat the big bowl of aïoli on the table. Gigi took a bite and practically choked on it, but he was able to swallow it and of course he had to clean his plate to be polite. ‘Do you think there is enough garlic in my aïoli?’ old Madame Blanc asked sweetly.”

Jean-Marie squeezed his hands around his throat and breathlessly mimicked Lucien: “‘Yes, madame, that is a true aïoli!’ Madame Blanc announced with pride that she had used one head of garlic per person. Gigi didn’t eat garlic for ten years after that, and Papa was sick for days.”

“Oh, Jean-Marie,” scolded Lucien, “you always exaggerate.”

Everyone around the table was laughing except Jean-Marie, who was clearly offended by Lucien’s denial. “Okay, Papa, tell us what really happened.”

“Oh, my son, why must you exaggerate everything? Gigi was back eating aïoli within a year or two.”

“Aha, but you see, it’s almost the same thing.” And Jean-Marie turned his attention to another ladle of octopus stew and another scoop of the dwindling aïoli.