Jean's Wine Cellar
It all began in Paris. That's where Mr. Boulet, the wine merchant, would knock at the front door and sit with Evelyne's father, Jean, once a month and talk about all things oenophilic -- the uncorking, the flavor bouquet, and the best buys of the season being just a few of them. Mr. Boulet, a rather large man with shiny black shoes, would pass his knowledge on to Jean, one sip at a time, and then, just before dinner, with great respect and a joke or two, make his best attempt to sell, he too having a family to support. Evelyne, only seven at the time, watched from across the room, her mother in the kitchen or, if someone's button had fallen off that day, sewing nearby.
When Evelyne turned ten, her father, having just been promoted, moved the whole kit and kaboodle to Strassbourg, 397 kilometers away from Mr. Boulet, but fortunately, deep in the heart of Alsace, the region, some Alsacians like to say, that's the birthplace of France's finest wines. For the entire time Jean lived in Strassbourg, he never bought a single bottle from a store. Not once. He couldn't. He wouldn't. Only from a vineyard would he buy, needing to be close to the source.
Wine, always better than the weather in Alsace, was much more than a hobby for Jean. It was, a kind of layman's sacrament -- an alchemical blend with a nose, the fruit of God's green earth and his own unquenchable effort to master something wonderful in this world.
In 1965, Jean Charles Pouget built his first and only wine cellar. That's when he moved the family West to the village of Courcelles-Chaussy. Once a year, in August, he would drive the 14 hours to his mother's farm in Aveyron, his wife in the front seat, his daughters in the back, and there, on that farm, they would stay for 30 days and nights. Evelyne and Joelle lived in the attic with their three cousins, jumping from bed to bed and taking turns looking out the only window to the fields below. Sometimes they would see their grandmother twist a chicken's neck until it moved no more. Sometimes they would see her, barehanded, pull nettles from the ground.
At the end of the month, on his way back home, Jean would stop once or twice at selected vineyards and buy a case of the best wine he could afford. Later that night, he'd carry both his girls from the car to their beds, then the wine to the cellar. Bergarac was always positioned top left, Gaillac below it. Cotes du Rhone was in the middle, Bourgueil and Gris de Tohl always on the right, each shelf marked with a small paper label in his own script -- the only handwriting that remains of this man today.
Sometimes, Jean would invite Evelyne into the cellar to help him turn the bottles so no sediment would form. A few feet behind him was a hutch, it's hard-to-open drawers now filled with corks. On the highest shelf is a large jar of dried mushrooms, one Evelyne's mama can no longer remember. In the middle of the room sits an old tree stump -- the place where Jean sawed wood in winter to carry upstairs and feed the fire -- sitting as he did with Henriette, and sometimes, his daughters, sipping wine from that night's selection. You can still see the groove in the tree stump from all his many cuts.
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