Encore Provence by Mayle Peter

Author:Mayle, Peter [Mayle, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
ISBN: 9780140242669
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2000-05-31T16:00:00+00:00

8

In Search of the Perfect Corkscrew

Last Christmas, an extravagant and well-meaning friend presented me with what he called a state of the art corkscrew. It was a most serious piece of equipment – beautifully made, with what looked like a hydraulic leverage system. It was guaranteed to extract the most obstinate cork. My friend told me it was a connoisseur's corkscrew. He demonstrated it for me, and it did indeed remove the cork with the ease and smoothness one might expect from a modern triumph of alcoholic engineering. And yet it has never seen active service in our house. Not one more cork has it pulled; it still sits in its box, unused and unloved.

For an explanation of my apparent ingratitude, we need to go back to a summer lunch in a small village house not far from Avignon. I was the guest of Régis, a man who has for years kindly assumed responsibility for instructing me in the pleasures of the table. (It being well known, as he often reminds me, that any talent the English possess in matters of gastronomy is confined to breakfast and ripe Stilton.) Régis is not a cook, but describes himself as a gourmet/gourmand – that is, a knowledgeable and happily greedy student of the table, alert to every nuance in a recipe or a bottle. He claims that most of his adult life has been devoted to eating and drinking, and he has the stomach and expertise to prove it. He is also a practising chauvinist, convinced that France leads the world in everything worthwhile.

Before we settled down to lunch, Régis had decided that we should exercise our palates – the only form of exercise he ever takes willingly – by comparing the virtues of two white wines from the Côtes du Rhône: a young Condrieu and an older, fatter Hermitage. There they sat, in twin buckets on the table, the bottles glistening with beads of chilled sweat. Régis rubbed his hands as he looked at them, twirled the bottles in their icy water, and then flexed his fingers with the air of a concert pianist about to do battle with Beethoven. Reaching into a trouser pocket, he pulled out a corkscrew, which he unfolded carefully.

With a graceful, practised turn of the wrist, he passed a short, curved blade around the neck of the Condrieu, and the top of the capsule dropped off, a surgically neat cut with no rips or ragged edges. After drawing the cork, he held it to his nose, sniffed, and nodded. He repeated the process with the Hermitage, and was about to put the corkscrew back in his pocket when I asked to take a look at it.

Never had I seen such a handsome corkscrew. It was based on the design of what is sometimes called The Waiter's Friend – blade at one end, lever at the other, screw in the middle. But there the resemblance stopped, because this was to ordinary corkscrews what Condrieu is to grape juice.

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