Customer Reviews

Puligny-Montrachet: Journal of a Village in Burgundy

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Simon Loftus is a wine merchant, hotelier, restauranteur and writer of wine catalogs and two other wine books, Anatomy of the Wine Trade: Abe's Sardines and Other Stories and A Pike in the Basement: Tales of a Hungry Traveller.

Mr. Loftus decided to spend a year living in Puligny, and all wine lovers with the least interest in the wines of Burgundy are richer for his decision to write this book about his experiences.

Mr. Loftus spends a few pages speculating about the Greeks who may have planted vines here, and the Romans who certainly did, and a bit more on the monks who developed modern viticulture by trial and error over 1,000 years. He tastes some village wines in the cellar of a shop keeper, not very good wine he concludes, but sold at a high price because it bears the Puligny appellation on the bottle. He reports on long hours spent with small producers -- Gerard Chavy, Camille David, Daniel Joly -- detailing their stories and their problems.

A large producer in Puligny has has only 25 acres; one of the most famous is Domaine Leflaive. Mr. Loftus describes a party there on June 23, 1990, when Vincent Leflaive receives a Government decoration in his own gardens. "Wearing his habitual cravat and a double-breasted blazer of old-fashioned cut, he looked like a rather rascally yacht owner of the late 1930's, but there was a tear at the corner of his reptilian eye and a smile of heart-warming simplicity on his face."

Mr. Loftus has the gift to bring the village alive; here he is describing a procession which is part of the annual Saint Vincent Tournante, which is hosted by a different wine village on the first Saturday after January 22. In 1991 it was Puligny's turn. The village would welcome 150,000 visitors over two days.

"It was a cold morning; misty air, frost on every branch and vine, a chill smokiness that muted color and softened every sound. A quiet murmuring of cheerful conversation rand along the lengthening line, a droning continuous beneath the music of the bands, but many remained silent and self-absorbed. Impreceptibly I became aware that whatever the promotional trappings of the rest of the weekend's festivities, there had survived in theis procession an unexpected devotional camaraderie, a sense of pilgrimage and penance, celebration and thanksgiving. As the banners and the bands, the people and their saints flowed down the hill and through the vineyards, time flickered. This was a Journey of the Magi, illuminated in the winter landscape of the medieval Book of Hours, or a nineteenth-century Mission of the Cross, painted by Courbet; and every face had been viewed through the lens of Marcel Carnet or Cartier Bresson. Whether mobile, melancholy, and down at heel or jaunty and sharp, alluring or dowdy, stiffly gaunt or bon-homonusly well-fed, each was unmistakable, indefinably and timelessly French."

The book contains 34 photographs by the author and appendixes of the wine appellations, vintages, tastings, and producers.

Amazon doesn't excerpts from this book, but you can find at least one chapter on line at Google Books. Find a copy of the book if you can; if not, I urge you to take the time to search extracts out on Google. It is an excellent snapshot of one of the most important wine villages in Burgundy.

Robert C. Ross 2008