2008 Beaujolais

Yesterday morning was a lazy late Friday.  Pete and I started our date-day in a near by brasserie for breakfast.  Although it was after 11 am it was quite baffling not to have the normal friendly chat and the strong aroma of coffee accompanying the frequent loud roar of the coffee machine.  There was an absence of customers, with only a few workers congregating outside the door for a morning cigarette. The usual scattered newspapers and quiet radio chat in background analyzing French politics, was all replaced by frenzied movement of dozens of boxes coming into to the store and a strong smell of cleaning chemicals. The coffee, finally served, was luke warm with no sign of friendly chat.  

The owner's hectic behavior, a mix of excitement and anxiety was puzzling to say the least.

Feeling our foreignness, we sipped our compromised cafe creme and double espresso and started a game of chess in the corner as the owner announced, amidst an endless amount of boxes behind the bar "IT IS THE BEAUJOLAIS DAY! are you coming later?" His voice shreiked with excitement

Well, Beaujolais Day, we learned thereafter, is almost a national holiday -- people drink and play music all through the night celebrating the coming out of the yearly crop.  The beaujolais is the only wine that does not need to age and November 20th is a national beaujolais birthday.    

Later, being the first one to arrive for dinner at 7:30, in our favorite restaurant the waitress opened a 2008 beaujolais bottle for us. She waited with  serious anticipation for the first taste "Bon?" she asked with true curiosity, as if asking for the baby's weight right after birth. "Super" Pete quickly relieved her anticipation.  She filled the wide glasses first for me, then for Pete and then... for Adam -- no questions asked -- c'est normal. Adam could not contain his excitement grading his half full glass like a newly given treasure.  I looked with puzzlement at Pete and could see in his eyes "only tonight...its a holiday" I looked around the restaurant -- no Americans. Well, what could I say, "Ok Adam, but with your food".  The worst confession I would like to make is that Adam liked the wine and did finish his half glass. 

Adam and I polished our steak entrecote and Pete used the baguette to dry clean his dish of seafood risoto.  The Jazz singer, picked up Adam as her main audience.  He was fascinated by her performance, when not trying to figure out the sound system and the wireless microphone.  She, with a smoky look, sang Louis Armstrong songs in a pronounced french accent -- leaning on our table -- and wrapping her red shawl around her revealing black dress.  In between songs, to smooth her tarnished voice, she took long mindful gulps of the beaujolais -- whose redness thoroughly matched her red shawl.

Today, we learned from  some in the know French friends that this year the wine has a hint of banana -- that ended all hints of the fantasy that I know wine.  We also learned that the beaujolais is the bench mark for all the 2008 wines, the vines the grapes will share similar qualities.  Thus the Beaujolais' prophetic capabilities explains further the sense of dread and prayer the French exhibit as they open their first bottle.

Maybe it seems that I went overboard with the Beaujolais description but it is nothing compared to the preoccupation we witnessed here.  I took some pictures on the way back from the restaurant of enormous tipsy bands making beaujolais music for a proof.

But before the dinner and after our chess game I took Pete to my Gym to show him another piece of French life, and that is, how the French work out.  We arrived at my "Club-Med" gym in the well off part of the 17th arrondisment.  The interior design tells the tale.  The lounge area is big and surrounded by cushy seats as well as coffee and soda machines.  It is usually densely occupied with people reading papers, magazines chatting, watching TV and the occasional whiff of cigarette smoke.  The Gym itself, on the other hand, is mostly vacant, and the few  who work out are graciously and rhythmically moving on the machines with an ever so slight trace of sweat around their neck or along the back.  Whenever I see someone with a wet big t- shirt and old tennis shoes huffing and puffing, I start to speak to them in English and I am never wrong.   There is absolutely never an offensive smell of sweat in the gym but rather the fragrance is a mixture of expensive of perfumes and aftershaves.  All the french people who belong to the gym are in great shape and are very tan -- don't ask me how -- I have learned to live here with enigmas.  My only hypothesis that they go from the gym to a tanning club close by, or to the hairdresser, or to the nail salon, or for a massage or perhaps to the great brasserie at the corner with lunches to die for.  Which of coarse bring another enigma does anyone work in Paris? If yes when?

On the way to pick Adam up from school, we talked about the Parisian, the gym, and the beaujolais. We love Paris, we are in it, but we are to be ever observers.  Becoming a Parisian who ignores the sirens, the dog poop, the smoke, the cold, and the crazy driving  is too big of a commitment. And even with a commitment to join -- there is no guarantee you will be accepted.  Paris is for the short, intense and passionate encounter.