Feast of St. Amand (d. 679). Monk. Hermit. Abbot. His association with vintners originates from his preaching and teaching in the beer and wine regions of France, Flanders and Germany.
Birth of James Busby. Born in Scotland, Busby was a viticulturist, writer and public servant, known as the “Father of the Australian Wine Industry.” Took first collection of vine stock from Spain and France in the 1830s to Australia. Australian Chardonnay and Shiraz trace their origins to his vine imports.
Some people like to draw their own holiday cards—Aldo sketches seasonal labels for wines that exist only in his mind. The reindeer looks as if it were developing a headache from the bulk of its antler vines.
At any rate, there was no lack of bustle at chef Michel Richard’s Central, on Pennsylvania Avenue. I’d eaten before at his acclaimed Citronelle, in Georgetown. This new restaurant—a James Beard winner—is a casual nouveau bistro designed to move the crowds in and out.
The first impression wasn’t altogether favorable: The atmosphere was closer to loud than energetic, and in scale the room is long and boxy, as if it were a holding cargo for tourists famished after a day traipsing up and down the Mall. The blandly tasteful architecture of the squat corporate buildings just outside the door seemed to have swept in with the evening and rearranged itself as decor.
But, as they say nowadays, no worries. The food came with a quickness that was potentially disconcerting, but visually the dishes were enticing creations—just the right amount of fuss—and, better yet, on the palate they were warmingly robust and tasty: Our friend Diana, who joined us, thought her cassoulet was a bit dry, yet it was undeniably a handsome dish for winter, with a plump duck leg sitting neatly on a mound of beans in which the sausage was concealed like holiday coins. And my beef cheeks with tagliatelle were absolutely delicious, rich but not cloying—and amusingly presented as two columns, one of the meltingly tender medallions of beef, the other of the pasta, folded over neatly, with shaved carrots sprinkled down the middle.
The bread, by the way, was terrific as well, and a traditional salad of frisee, lardons and poached egg was very satisfying.
Given the heartiness of the fare, our server recommended we drink the Dom. Ligneres “Aric” from Corbieres, France, which I’d never had. We found the wine to be big and dusky and, regrettably, an uninspired, one-dimensional match for the sophisticated comfort food from the kitchen.
The wine list was dominated by California and French wines with a smattering of Italian, Austrian and Spanish labels. I noticed some interesting reasonably priced gems: a Chablis from Dom. Bernard Defaix, a pinot blanc from Marcel Deiss, a reisling from Dom. Weinbach, a Givry premier cru from Michel Sarrazin, a cabernet franc from Frederic Mabileau, a gamay from Christophe Pacalet, a syrah from Dom. du Tunnel and a banyuls by the glass from Dom. de la Rectoire. Central also offered by the glass a Cremant d’Alsace brut rosé from Lucien Albrecht.
So: We came away sated and pleased, if not quite relaxed—maybe that’s Washington?
Also, if I can momentarily join those tourists traipsing up and down the Mall: We visited the new World War II Memorial, a spectacularly unimaginative site that, apart from access ramps, looks conservative enough to have been first sketched around the time of the Potsdam conference. With its funereal iron wreaths and dancing waters, it looked like a forlorn little postmodern joke on Il Vittoriano, the enormous Victor Emmanuel monument in Rome. Grrr!
I told Aldo a better title for this would be Stuffed Game, but he thought that didn’t capture the turkey’s sense of panic, futility and stupid pathos at holiday time. And there is something touching about the little yellow feet pressed up against the glass at the bottom of the bottle.
The title itself, taken from a George Herbert poem, strikes the precisely correct balance between the spiritual and, well, spirits: “When God at first made man/ Having a glass of blessings standing by/ Let us (said he) poure on him all we can.”
Pym’s comic novels are parochial affairs involving, mostly, tensions in Anglican vicarages and the lives and longings of highly literate, rather lonely people who occupy their time with careers as index-compilers, translators, proofreaders at scholarly journals and the like. Blessings is a little different in that its narrator, 30-year-old Wilmet, is comfortably married, with subtle but not inexpensive taste (“I always like myself in deep clear colours”). She has a great deal of leisure time in which to flirt and be flirted with, although she approaches men with an innocence not far removed from Jane Austen. Nothing outwardly momentous occurs in the book, although she clears up some misconceptions about her marriage, friendship and romantic fantasies—and this is momentous enough.
The road to this new maturity is dotted with constant breaks for lunches and dinners, usually with company that is highly amusing and quite happy to share a cocktail, a glass of wine or sherry. She will have a Tio Pepe while waiting alone for a late lunch companion. On another occasion she will have a glass of Chablis with a chicken fricasee at home. She invokes a spumante, its bubble gone flat, when remembering her younger days in Italy.
Pym, a quiet master of the comic novel, uses such details very carefully: These references to wines and drinks are slipped in nearly always in a scene in which Wilmet is feeling gay, nostalgic, romantic, triste or all of the above—scenes in which she is being most essentially her daydreaming self. Just as she dresses, so she drinks: Alcohol seems to be a matter of “deep clear colours” that add a certain lilt to her mood. If, in an early chapter, Wilmet elects to have a martini at the start of a dinner party, it’s because “it doesn’t seem quite the weather for sherry—too mild or something.”
The conversation turns to which sort of wine would best complement a dessert of gooseberries. “If you like,” says a guest, “I will raise the matter with my own wine merchant—a man of considerable courage, even panache.”
Much later, Wilmet has lunch with her old friend, Rowena, and with both affection and envy the two of them observe young lovers meeting at a nearby table:
“They’re going to drink a whole bottle of claret,” said Rowena in a low rather sad voice. “What will they do afterwards? Walk in the park? … They might go to an art exhibition… Really modern art is extraordinarily sympathetic when you’re in love and have eaten and drunk well.”
There’s no need to go overboard with any of this, except that Pym captures so well, and so glancingly, how subtly wines and spirits feed a sense of glamour, anticipation and sensuality. (Pym’s characters tend toward a frumpy, tentative mousiness, which might make the transfigurative aid of wine even more significant.) You can also argue that she includes a cautionary note of the abuse of alcohol: Wilmet is mildly (and misguidedly) infatuated with an old friend, Piers, who clearly drinks too much. But that doesn’t make him any less funny or charming—it just hints at a personal conflict within him that Wilmet is slow to understand.
I suppose this is really a very roundabout way to encourage people to read this wonderful writer. And if you have a glass of sherry with it, you won’t be any the worse.
In his leisure time, which takes up the bulk of his life, Aldo is fond of sketching images with a wine theme. I post this image at his request. He describes it as “the concept of terroir as embodied in the figure of the divine eternal feminine.” I think it looks more like a young woman with an eye open for the nearest toga party, but Aldo’s sensibility is his own.
