This was a vermentino we had bought in Nice on a vacation to Provence in 2005—a beautiful Indian Summer trip at the end of October unexpectedly blessed with blue skies and high temperatures. The only day of rain had been when we were at Arles, and even then a downpour suited our walk in the mossy ancient cemetery. But Nice was perfection: We walked along the Baie des Anges that we knew principally from an old Jeanne Moreau movie. And at dinner on our first night—at the restaurant Chantecler, in the Hotel Negresco—we had our first bottle of local wine, a charming, brisk and lemony vermentino from (so our sommelier told us) the finest estate in the area. That would be Ch. de Bellet, a vineyard that didn’t bother exporting to the States.
Well, we decided,we must have this fermented souvenir! A case!
With our not very strong command of French, we drove out of town and up through small, curving roads to the chateau itself, where we met with the grand dame of the house. She was a dignified old woman with fine gray hair, a fine tailored suit and—so it seemed—no great confidence that we weren’t con men, murderers or just dumb American tourists who had alighted on her property like a couple of flies. Although she kept telling us that it was her daughter who handled sales, we agreed to buy a case of her 2003 Cuvée Baron G., promising to return after our planned driving tour of the area.
We did return a few days later, almost at dusk (hours were squandered getting lost): The chateau was dark, and a huge dog barked in warning from the yard. The moment felt ominous and existentially dire. We actually called out “Hello!” or, in a simulation of the French, “Allo!” No light was switched on, no door was opened. We were annoyed and perplexed and insulted, although if this were the States the lady of the house would probably have been concealed behind curtains with a loaded gun. Or she would have sent out her security squad.
In any event, the little convenience store down the road sold her Bellet. We bought a few bottles there and lugged them with other accumulated bottles onto the plane home (actually, we left them all in the rental car at the airport, which resulted in some panicked scrambling). Then we put our cherished baby Bellets in the warehouse. As time inched along, our bottles of Bellet gained a nostalgic glow. We imagined uncorking them, expecting the wine to transport us back to Provence and that Indian Summer.
And yet we procrastinated—I suspected we shouldn’t, that a 2003 Bellet was not a wine to be aged into 2006, 2007, 2008…. But Aldo kept saying we should put it off, mostly (I suspect) because he didn’t feel like going to get it from the warehouse. Sometimes he acts as if a walk through Chelsea is a journey across the moors.
Ah, Aldo, inestimatable travel companion, I should not have trusted you on this point.
When we finally had the Bellet last week in a rather celebratory mood—spring finally seemed to have arrived—it was no longer the Bellet. The color had taken on a tint somewhere between amber and molasses, and the wine was as dead on the palate as a sardine on a cracker. Where was Provence? The drive through the Gorge du Verdon and the flat marshes of the Camargue? Mont Ventoux? All that crisp burnishing late afternoon sun? Gone.
All we tasted was the formidable shadow of Madame de Bellet.
