The Marseilles Trilogy

If, like me, you have a penchant for a noir crime novel and are partial to the food and wine of Provence you should make a bee-line for Jean-Claude Izzo’s peerless ‘Marseilles Trilogy’, published (in style and in English) by Europa Editions and excellently translated by Howard Curtis. The dark underbelly of Marseilles is exposed therein with insight and affection and it is littered with references to the local wine and cuisine. Izzo was born in Marseilles, to Italian immigrant parents, in 1945 and the soul of the city is infused in his writing. He died in 2000 aged 55 having achieved fame in the 1990s with the publication of 3 novels featuring retired cop Fabio Montale. Collectively known as the ‘Marseilles Trilogy’ the books draw heavily on Izzo’s upbringing in Marseilles, national service in Djibouti (where he worked as a photographer and journalist for a military newspaper) and early career in the book trade.

Jean-Claude Izzo 1945-2000

Food and drink were clearly important to Izzo as he draws the reader into details few novelists would consider. How to make the perfect pistou soup, bouillabaisse and aïoli are debated at length and the numerous references to wine are precise and clearly based on a deep personal knowledge - “I put down two litres of red wine from the estate of Villeneuve Flayosc, in Rouquefort-la-Bédoule. A wine a Breton friend named Michel had introduced to us the previous winter. Château-les-Mûres. Really delicious.” Pleasingly, on page 102 of the final book ‘Solea’ our Vieux Marc Égrappé [£29.95 since you ask] gets a mention: “Fonfon had brought along a bottle of Bunan. An old stemmed marc from La Cadière, near Bandol. “Taste this,” he said. “It’ll make a change from that Scotch of yours.” It was delicious. Quite different from my Lagavulin with its slightly peaty taste. The Bunan was dry, but extremely fruity, smelling of scrubland. By the time I’d won two games of rummy and lost eight, I’d already enjoyed four little glasses of it.”Izzo’s other great passion was music and his catholic tastes encompassed everything from jazz to rap, reggae and Neapolitan folk. Again the referencing is incredibly detailed but it’s the food and wine descriptions that really stay with you: “Her bouillabaisse was one of the best in Marseilles. Scorpion fish, gurnard, conger, dory, angler fish, weever, pandora, rainbow wrasse…A few crabs, too, and sometimes a lobster. Only rock fish. That’s what made it different. And for the sauce, she had a particular genius for combining garlic and peppers with potatoes and sea urchin. But her bouillabaisse was never on the menu. You had to phone regularly to know when she was making it.”

If that doesn’t stimulate your appetite for a Provençal feast then you are probably best off sticking to the latest Dan Brown but if you really want to transport yourself to the bars and terraces of the Vieux Port and the Panier then Izzo is in a class of his own.

“What makes [Izzo's] work haunting is his extraordinary ability to convey the tastes and smells of Marseilles, and the way the memory and obligation haunt every step his hero takes.”

The New Yorker

Pestle and Mortar

I’m not sure if it was my idea or Rowley’s. A bit of both probably. It was certainly hatched over a fine lunch with some good bottles open for inspiration. The concept was pretty simple really - to host a Provençal feast partnering classic dishes with local wines. Obviously, this was to be a summer celebration and we had to select a date before schools broke up and mass migration from the capital began. So last Friday lunchtime some 40 diners sat down for the inaugural ‘Grand Aïoli’at Le Café Anglais. In fact we started off standing up, enjoying a glass of a white Coteaux d’Aix 2009 from Domaine des Oullières, that was served as an aperitif with some excellent sardine pâté, saucisson sec and black Niçoise olives. This dry, herb-tinged wine is a new discovery of ours that is grown at altitude on the southern slopes of the Chaînes des Côtes and it is fresher and fruitier than many of its peers. It hails from an unusual blend of Grenache Blanc and Rolle and is très Provençal. The same estate bottles a decent rosé too but it is the scrub-scented white that really transports one to La France Profonde.

As we were seated a second wine was being poured - the Cassis: Clos Sainte Magdeleine 2008. This inimitable white wine comes from the Mediterranean coast between Bandol and Marseilles and is produced, by the Sack family, from a blend of Marsanne, Clairette and Ugni Blanc. It made for a marvellous foil to pungent bowls of freshly-made aïoli that accompanied hard boiled eggs and crudités of thinly sliced fennel, peppers and carrots along with peppery radishes and sticks of celery. My lunch guest, outspoken, wine-writer extraordinaire, Malcolm Gluck kindly provided me with his tasting note: ‘This is one of France’s great undiscovered ’secret’ whites, preferable to many a soi-disant ‘great’ white burgundy in feel and fruit. It is beautifully textured, like ruffled silk, and it has a genteel finish of gooseberry and citrus.’

The enviably well-appointed Clos Sainte Magdeleine vineyard at Cassis.

Things took on a distinctly piscine theme with the next two dishes to be served. Large platters of lightly-salted (wonderfully flaky) cod with new potatoes, and sea bass cooked with artichokes and olives were passed around all accompanied by lashing more aioli and a delicate,coral-pink Côtes du Luberon rosé from Château la Canorgue. Fortunately we were blessed with a lovely warm day and the high-ceilinged, light and airy dining room and friendly chatter really helped evoke a Provençal ambience to this most relaxed of lunches.  

Some more robust cuisine was called for to partner a chest-thumping red Bandol: Mas de la Rouvière 2003 that, with bottle-age, was beginning to show the forest floor scents and game and mushroom tastes that define a good Mourvèdre. Le Café Anglais rose to the occasion with beef brisket served with chickpeas, and a superb roast ham with French beans. Once again Malcolm waxed lyrical: ‘Astonishing coal-edged tannins, quite remarkably gorgeous and roasted, clinging to fruit which is seems as if it has been pressed in a coffee grinder. There is a herby element, perhaps cinnamon, certainly a touch of white pepper, but more sensually there is chocolate. Altogether a wine of momentous, almost heady, richness.’

Fortunately, I still had the stamina to toy with some lovely mature Brie de Maux

(chef’s licence: ‘there aren’t many cows in Provence’) and a budget-busting glass of Domaine de Trévallon 2006 that was just beginning to show its full potential and earthy garrigue flavours.

While we could have all departed fully sated at this juncture a divine peach and almond tart proved irresistible. Not too sweet with a nice grainy texture, served with small glasses of cold, golden Muscat de Beaumes de Venise 2007 from the peerless Domaine de Durban. A perfect finale to a perfect repast. Those wishing to attend next year’s event would be prudent to contact us and get their names added to the waiting list!

Château Grillet

Sadly many of France’s great wines are beyond the everyday drinking budget of the majority of us domiciled tax paying mortals and there can’t even be many M.P.’s left with the chutzpah to put a bottle on expenses.

Château Grillet is necessarily costly as it is made on steep hand-tended slopes, in a miniscule (3.8 hectare) monopole appellation, from the low-yielding, capricious Viognier grape, in a country that invented the 35 hour week, but once you sample a drop you experience a brand new taste sensation that will forever after shape your palate.

A couple of years ago a well meaning pilot friend of mine pulled the strings to have my ticket upgraded to first class on a long haul flight back from L.A. While I used to sit in blissful ignorance in economy I can now envy the pampered potentates beyond the curtain with a new level of intensity. We should all be aware of what we are missing out on!

I beseech you to cash in that ISA, raid the kids piggy banks or cancel your National Trust membership and indulge yourselves in the vinous miracle that is Château Grillet. Joking apart, the recent vintage run from 2004 through to 2007 has been astounding. All four vintages exhibit the wine’s exceptional, haunting mineral bouquet and multi-faceted palate with notes of dried fruit, nuts, cream and caramel preceding a long, elegant, dry finish. Take care though, this is one white wine that certainly merits decanting and can take an hour or more to open out in the glass.

There is a good case for savouring such legendary wines without the distraction of food but classic accompaniments are sweetbreads, roast veal, chicken with truffles, boiled lobster, turbot in champagne sauce and foie gras. Well-heeled patronne Isabelle Barantin favours drinking her own wine when it is about 15 years old but I think the current purple batch of outstanding, youthful vintages will provide more rewarding drinking right now than anything from the (much patchier)1990’s.  

Remember we are not looking for the exuberant, up-front tropical fruit flavours of neighbouring Condrieu here we are looking for elegance, finesse, restraint even, and Château Grillet delivers these in spades - so treat yourself to a bottle or remain forever ignorant.

Jason Yapp

I am surprised at the chutzpah of some UK merchants trying to ‘talk up’ the 2008 Rhône as a ’superior’ vintage that merits buying en primeur. The cold facts are that the 2007s (many of which are still available) are better across the board and the keenly anticipated 2009s should (on the basis of our early tastings) also be far superior.

If one takes a look at the prognostications of leading pundits they seem to concur with our sentiments:

Jancis Robinson ‘Rhône 2008 - The Overview’   jancisrobinson.com   November 2009

‘You must come back and taste the 2009s’, was the common refrain when I visited the Rhône Valley last month. I was there to taste the 2008s, which was a strange exercise as, the more I tasted them, the more I realised that most sensible wine buyers will want to stock up on the exceptional 2007s while they wait for the eagerly anticipated 2009s. Overall the general characteristic of the 2008s in both northern and southern Rhône is that they are decidedly muted - especially after the super-concentrated 2007s.’

John Livingstone-Learmonth   Decanter Magazine ‘Rhône 2008: Buy With Care’   April 2010

‘The 2008 vintage in the Rhône came as a jolt to many growers…It was a marked departure from the free-wheeling seasons that nature delivered for most of the 2000’s. There are no blanket rules for buyers except caveat emptor: try the wine before buying it.’

Robert Parker    The Wine Advocate   eRobertParker.com

‘The 2008 southern Rhône vintage is reminiscent of 1999. While challenging in many cases, the good estates and serious vignerons who performed a heavy triage because of mildew in late summer, have produced good to very good wines. As in every challenging vintage, there are some outstanding efforts. To reiterate, the good news is that 2009 is looking like a potentially superb vintage. Even if you miss out on the 2007 vintage, 2009 may come close to rivaling that stupendous year, but the quality cannot be ascertained until the wines have finished their malolactic fermentation in late spring, 2010.’

 I can see very little incentive in laying out cash for buying these wines in advance although many of the top growers have produced wines of great delineation and charm. The 2008s will not have the aging or the investment potential of the 2007s and 2009s - so why fork out for them before they are bottled? Or to put it another way. Why make such song and dance about a journeyman vintage?

Jason Yapp                                                                                                               

In this day and age, I’m conscious that I am showing my age by the fact that I still use a wrist watch as my main means of telling the time. Younger generations are choosing iphones and such like to keep a track on the hours of the day and I’m sure that when my young children learn to tell the time there may well be a new bit of technology that will help them out. My 5-year-old daughter recently laughed out loud when I showed her a photograph of a record player but  she’ll never know the excitement of buying a 45rpm single, or remember the Jam getting five successive vinyl 45s straight to the converted number one slot.  I digress…

Now, working in the wine trade, I’ve come to realise that I’m marking the passing of time in a different way. Last summer, I’d take a favourite wine almost for granted - my first Yapp favourite being the Lirac 2005: La  Famille Maby. A modest collection at home was soon dispatched and replacements sought - easy. Then, just before Christmas, I went to replenish my supplies only to hear the shocking words from our shop manager “we’ve moved on to the 2007 vintage now”.  Don’t get me wrong, the Lirac 2007 is still a great vintage (as it was for the Rhône generally) but it wasn’t my beloved 2005.

I moved house last week and in all the boxing and packing that goes on I could hear bottles being clinked and wrapped back in the old kitchen and, as well as worrying about my guitars being damaged, I was equally concerned about my last bottles of Lirac 2005, Châteauneuf du Pape: Père Caboche 2004 and Saint Joseph 2007: Domaine Georges Vernay.

So, if there is a moral here, it must be to make sure you appreciate your favourite vintages while you can and have a few put aside for another and not necessarily rainy day - you may want to mark the passing of time with an old friend!

Over the past few months, a new currency has been adopted in the sleepy village of Broughton Gifford and its surrounding hamlets. This came as a result of all the juggling that goes on in getting small children to and from where they should be.  Those of you who do this on a regular basis will know that, from time to time, it requires the calling-in of favours from other parents - this originally loose arrangement is now negotiated and supported by Yapp wine.

So, how does it work? The base currency and exchange rate is roughly 2 hours of childcare for one bottle of Lirac: La Fermade 2005 from La Famille Maby which, at £9.95 a bottle, is excellent value both in childcare and wine terms. Extra half hours of childminding can be arranged with different wines and vintages - it appears the Côtes du Rhône: Cuvée Personelle 2000 gets an extra hour when compared to Côtes du Rhône: Saint Gayan 2007. I’ve yet to broach how long we’d get for some Côtes du Rhône Villages Rasteau: Saint Gayan 2006 - one of my personal favourites.

The upshot of all this activity is that now, outside the school gates and the village hall, you’ll overhear parents discussing the merits of the Catalan Carignan 2007 and its 130 year old vines and how the Lirac 2005 is a little smoother than the 2007.

The big question next time we get to venture out will be - shall I “cash in” my very small number of Brézème: Eugène de Monicault 2004 bottles for a babysitter or stay in and drink in style - I suspect I already know the answer to that one.

  Anyone who has visited our attractive premises in Mere can’t help but notice the two vintage Citroens that adorn (decorate) the courtyard. 

 The rakish black 1955 Traction Avant (produced 1934 – 1957) originally belonged to the doyen of Champagne, Bruno Paillard.  In his pre-Master of the Universe days when he was a cash-strapped Champagne negoçiant, Bruno sold it to Robin Yapp following a long lunch or possibly poker hand, the exact details are lost in the sands of time. Francs were exchanged for car keys and Robin drove it back to Mere. Allegedly Bruno has first refusal if we ever consider selling it.

Our liveried H-van dates from 1979.  The vans themselves, with their distinctive corrugated body work inspired by German Junker aircraft and which added cheap, light-weight strength, were produced as delivery vans during the period 1947 – 1981.  Our model grew up on a vineyard in the Loire before moving to the UK in the nineties and settling in Mere where it undertakes local deliveries in its semi-retirement.

Plaquemusephilia may well sounds like a rare dental condition which might be apt considering that Yapp Brothers was started by Robin Yapp, whose profession BW (before wine) was that of a dentist. But in fact, it is the name used for collecting Champagne cork capsules. I hadn’t realised that these were so collectable until my recent visit to see our Champagne producer, Gilles Dumangin, at his house in the picturesque village of Chigny-les-Roses, situated on the plains between Reims and Epernay. Most of the local houses seemed to have specially made wooden boards either hung up on the wall or placed on a coffee table to display their collections.

Historically, champagne bottles used to have a simple piece of wood wrapped in cloth and then sealed with wax as a stopper. This method, especially with the pressure build up in bottle during secondary fermentation, wasn’t ideal and resulted in many explosive incidents and much wasted wine. Then, along came Adolphe Jacquesson – a hugely creative person, who devised numerous methods to improve the processes connected with the making of champagne which, at that time, were still very much at the trial and error stage.

Jacquesson is credited with the idea of planting vines in rows in collaboration with Dr Guyot and for a process of measuring sugar density with the chemist Jean-Baptiste François, but his most famous patent (1844) was the muselet – a wire “muzzle” still used today to hold the corks of champagne and sparkling wine in place.  In these early days the capsule de muselets were just made out of plain discs of metal but, as things progressed, growers began imprinting their “house” mark for promotional purposes. Today, there are unlimited amounts of imprints and themes, from famous people to wildlife to astral constellations!   

The wooden boards are available (in France) in a variety or different shapes – a map of France, Champagne bottle, grape bunches etc – with indentations for 20, 30, 50 and more capsules. I went for the square wooden board with (no messing around here!) 150 slots – thus ensuring, of course, that I will have to keep drinking fine champagne or sparkling wine until I fill the board up. Currently, I have 21 to go but I’ve also included several blank coloured tops which aren’t particularly interesting so, as I gain more capsules, these will be relegated from the main board. Hmmm, unless, of course, I get another board……

I was struck recently as I perused the modest collection of bottles I pretentiously call my ‘home cellar’ (the really good stuff has to be kept out reach I’m afraid) by the dreadful uniformity of its contents. There was certainly enough variety in terms of style but everything was held within the globally invariant, ubiquitous, standard 75 cl bottle. Don’t get me wrong I think 75 cl’s is a wonderful, arguably ideal, size but variety is the spice of life and I was lacking it!

Why? Was this because we now live in an increasingly choice-less society or a sad reflection of my ‘half a couple with kids’ status? There are lots of reasons for straying from the standard measure and plenty of variations. Firstly and most commonly there is the half bottle (37.5cl’s) the case for which is indisputable. A full bottle is a hefty dose for a lone imbiber, they’re also good for drivers (sharing), restaurant goers (more choice) and impromptu picnickers (less baggage). Another asset of the humble half is that they have a greater ratio of air to wine and are thus earlier maturing - conversely larger formats age more slowly, which can also have its advantages. Sadly, as worldwide demand for quality wine increases the willingness of wine producers to bottle in ‘other formats’ diminishes.

The magnum or double bottle (1.5 litres) should never be overlooked. The name sounds great, especially when ordered with confidence in a restaurant. They look fantastic and add panache to any dinner table. Moreover they hold twice the volume, which should keep the party going while giving the host less work opening bottles. They’re also ideal for ‘laying down’ long term.

Two sizes that I eschew are half litres (a largely failed European glass manufacturers marketing initiative), whose only possible justification is for sweet wines, and litres - that are just too studenty (and I have been there). One size that is sadly now almost obsolete is the pint or ‘Churchill’. Apparently Sir Winston deemed this the perfect size for his individual consumption of his beloved Pol Roger Champagne and had bespoke bottlings produced accordingly.

Champagne is where one must turn to really enjoy the full gamut of bottle sizes and the names alone justify their continuation: quarter bottles (18.75cl’s) are hard to find but are useful for smuggling into hospitals and theatres and have recently enjoyed a revival (in 20cl bottlings) amongst the nightclubbing fraternity - who drink direct from a straw! We’ve covered halves, bottles and magnums which leads us on to the really good stuff: Jeroboam or double magnum (3 litres or 4 bottles), Rehoboam or triple magnum (4.5 litres or 6 bottles), Methuselah (6 litres or 8 bottles), Salmanazar (9 litres or 12 bottles), Balthazar (12 litres or 16 bottles), Nebuchadnezzer (15 litres or 20 bottles) and lastly for those feeling particularly festive Melchior (18 litres or 24 bottles). Many of these sizes can also be found in Bordeaux, which also boasts Marie-Jeanne (2.25 litres or 3 bottles) and Imperial (6 litres or 8 bottles).

The only downside of bigger bottles is that if they’re out of condition you lose more wine - so it’s worth checking terms with your supplier before you invest in anything too grand. That said we have a duty to maintain these ‘odd’ sizes for future generations and think of the impression you’ll make at the bottle bank!