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| Ah, France! |
BY (c) PAUL HEIDELBERG
Two of the great meals of my life are the following. Both are memorable because of setting.
First, during a meal at Moet @ Chandon winery in Epernay that featured white gloved waiters, and very silver serving trays, I was told The "Queen Mum" had dined at the very table two weeks earlier (The "Queen Mum" was the mother of the current Queen of England, the Duke of Cambridge's grandmother.)
I guess I felt quite privileged to be seated where the former Queen of England had been seated a fortnight earlier.
Also, during the meal I was informed that Remy Moet, one of the founders of the great champagne house that has as its prestige cuvee Dom Perignon, was a childhood friend of Napoleon. When Moet wished to host Napoleon for a visit he realized he had no place for the French Emperor to stay.
So he constructed the very high ceilinged building where both the former Queen of England and I had dined.
So with that meal, my most salient memories are not of the cuisine, but of the palace I had dined in, and of those who had dined there before me.
The second experience came in the Charente Region, home of the world's finest spirit, cognac.
The two big towns in the Charente are Jarnac and Cognac, thus the name for the spirit.
My great Al Fresco dining experience came from host Courvoisier, one of the "Big Four" cognac houses, the other three being Hennessy, Martell and Remy Martin.
Courvoisier is headquartered in Jarnac, but my memorable meal came far out in the countryside, near an old distillery building Courvoisier had used for decades.
I remember we started with apertifs of Courvoisier VSOP and ginger ale. During our meal, held under shade trees on a beautiful, sunny June day that felt like a good day in South Florida in January, we had two huge six liter bottles of Bordeaux wines -- one red and one white.
We sat at long tables -- I was the only writer. Just as at the Champagne repast described above, when I dined with a couple from Scotland who owned a restaurant (Moet & Chandon got good PR from me in expansive stories I wrote for newspaper Travel Sections and wine magazines, and I have thought often, that couple is probably still stocking Moet & Chandon as its house champagne).
So, there I was in the Charente, the only "ecrivain" amongst a table of Courvoisier salesmen from Italia.
After living in Italia for a year and a half while serving in the U.S. Air Force, I knew their homeland well. Most lived in Roma, which I had visited about 10 times on 96-hour breaks.
So our entire meal was punctuated with exclamations of "Piper Club, Piper Club."
In its heyday, the Piper Club was one of the best clubs in the world.
The typical band was a 12-piece multi-Saxed R and B group that persons such as Van Morrison would have loved. The band belted out great tunes as patrons danced on glass blocks on the multi-colored dance floor.
After our meal -- I remember the great Bordeaux wines best -- we had cafe, sans au lait, straight, no chaser, and Courvoisier Napoleon cognac.
I will never forget the Napoleon cognac -- I am just thinking this goes with the first part of this story -- and I have bought several bottles since that June day.
I will also never forget the long drive back to Jarnac in that great weather. My host from Courvoisier asked if I would mind if he opened the sunroof. "No problem," I answered.
So, after one of the best lunches of my life, we drove the back roads of the Charente in glorious weather, still with the aftertaste of Courvoisier cognac and fine French cafe on my tongue.
That drive ranks up there with two other drives I have been lucky to have had.
The first was with Michael Andretti in Miami, when he drove the first auto more powerful than a circa 140-horsepower Volkswagon powered Super Vee Race Car.
The car we drove in was a 900-plus horsepower Porsche 935 Turbo. I wrote a story about the ride while working at The Miami Herald. The piece ran as a preview for the inaugural Grand Prix of Miami.
As Andretti accelerated from 60 to about 160 in a matter of seconds, and then braked and downshifted hard for a sharp turn, I thought, "Wow this is why they like to race."
The other memorable drive came after I was the first foreigner to spend the night in an old coal-and-wood fired cognac distillery that dated from the 1700s. A writing/photo package on that experience was published in The Wine News magazine.
(Most cognac alambic stills are now powered by gas, and operated by computers.)
In the morning, the distillery owner drove me back to Cognac in his 1967 V-12 Ferrari.
"Mon Dieu."
But, even though my host from Courvoisier was not driving a Ferrari -- he was behind the wheel of a much less exotic auto -- it was one of the drives of a lifetime.
Talk about a great feeling after a great meal: The memory is enough to make me exclaim, "Piper Club, Piper Club."
Note: Recently, I came across this photograph I shot in Paris -- I think it fits well with today's memories of France. Don't miss the ancient BMW motorcycle in the photo. I visited the boulangerie pictured here several times while staying in a nearby hotel. I remember the place had great French tarts -- the kind related to culinary matters, not the kind known to walk the streets.
Photograph (c) Paul Heidelberg
