I'll Drink to That (26 page)

The graceful little bottle had shown itself to be extremely popular with his bread-and-butter clients of the restaurant trade, and it was going well in the United States, too, under the Lichine label. It was no secret in the trade that Charles Piat, the most important
négociant
of the Beaujolais, was dying to get his hands on it. Piat was convinced that it had potential for sales of greater scope than either Lichine or the little
courtier
Duboeuf had been achieving, and he had elaborated a plan to market it with a new wine, different from anything else he had done before. Georges got together with Piat, and they struck a deal: for 6 million old francs, he ceded all proprietary rights to the
pot.

Charles Piat had guessed right. Filled with the wine he named Piat d’Or, an ingratiating, easy to drink, slightly sweet, gold-colored concoction created specifically for the foreign market in this new packaging, the
pot
was hugely successful. Critics and wine sophisticates almost unanimously panned Piat d’Or as a wine, often gracing it with adjectives like “ghastly,” but for first-time drinkers its soft, uncomplicated fruitiness was all seduction, and the
pot
went on to sell upward of 35 million bottles a year. The basic white Piat d’Or was later joined by a red variety, and the profits of this marketing coup made a hefty contribution to the erection of a monument to Charles Piat’s perspicacity, the new company building that dominated the scenery on the main N. 6 highway just south of Mâcon, a giant, gray, windowless cube that fairly shouted out to passing motorists that Piat was the big dog, number one in the Beaujolais.

Had Piat been able to peer a bit more deeply into the future, though, it is not so certain that he would have made the deal for the
pot,
because there was something of the kiss of death about the transaction. Today the giant gray cube is nothing better than an anonymous warehouse and the Piat company doesn’t exist anymore, having been absorbed into an English conglomerate. It is Duboeuf who is number one now. From time to time, he rents space in the warehouse.

The company officially known as Les Vins Georges Duboeuf came into existence in 1964, when Georges changed his status and professional card from
courtier
to
négociant-éleveur,
a fully fledged wholesale dealer, assembler and preparer of wines. In spite of the rather grand title, he was only a minor curiosity within the club of Beaujolais and Burgundy dealers, a niche player specializing in direct sales to the high-end restaurant trade. But the move from independent wine scout to an officially registered dealership at last made Duboeuf respectable, moving the banking establishment to deem his company worthy of being trusted with small-business loans: there would be no more trips to Vaux for raising cash. With his account boosted by an infusion of funds from the Crédit Agricole bank, Georges set about increasing his reach. One of his first acquisitions was a big old Renault truck with opening side panels, recently retired as government surplus after years of service as a traveling X-ray and blood-donor unit. Georges had it cleaned up and fixed up, installed a portable bottling chain in the back, painted it Good Humor Ice Cream white, added his name in big red letters and hitched a white trailer behind it for carrying all the miscellaneous gear that this operation required. With that, he was in possession of the best and most modern mobile equipment for estate-bottling in France.

As much as anything else, it might have been this nifty bottling truck—the red flag—that focused the minds of the region’s established dealers. They watched in alarm as Georges branched out from his niche clientele to wine retailers throughout the country, around Europe and finally worldwide, while simultaneously developing an innovative mail-order business. For the previous ten years or so, he had been the polite young man from Chaintré and Romanèche who quietly went about his quiet little business. Now he wasn’t playing that game anymore, and he had that lean and hungry look.

“They tried to take away his clients, of course,” Papa Bréchard told me with a chuckle. “They made some pretty heavy threats to a few of the vignerons; they sent flyers around and they put pressure on some of the
courtiers
who worked with him, but eventually all that just petered out. Trying to undersell Duboeuf didn’t work because Georges wasn’t interested in the low end of the market. What the other dealers didn’t realize back then was that it was already becoming an honor to sell your wine to Duboeuf, because everyone knew how good he was, and how tough about quality. He only took the best. And he was one of us.”

That “one of us” is a mantra that returns again and again in the Beaujolais whenever a visitor takes the trouble to go to the smallholder vignerons and talk with them about their life, their land and their craft. The contrast between their homey little
caveaux
and the palatial tasting rooms and presentation cellars of the big-money Bordeaux châteauxcould scarcely be greater, and the personalities invariably follow suit: hands unsullied by physical labor, natty and stylish as an English toff, the typical Bordeaux owner reflects the lofty, world-weary ennui of his wealthy cousins on the other side of the Channel, while the Beaujolais peasant is a pure representative of
la France profonde
—muddy shoes,
bleus de travail
(work overalls) and calloused hands. The fact that Georges Duboeuf had been born to exactly that same world and had sweated at the same vineyard chores raised his prestige among winegrowers far above any status that the
négociant
establishment could hope to achieve. Knowing as well that he tasted wine twice as fast and twice as accurately as anyone else only added to their esteem for him.

“There’s an amazing bond of loyalty between him and vignerons,” reflected Marcel Laplanche at his vineyard in Blacé, at the limit of Beaujolais-Villages country. “He always takes the trouble to come see them in person, and they respect him for being so difficult about quality. He bargains hard on prices, but he’s fair, and there’s a tremendous prestige attached to selling to him. What it means is that he’s chosen you, you see? When Duboeuf buys your wine, it’s the sign that you’re in with the best. It’s like winning a medal. Sometimes people criticize him, but you know why? They’re jealous.”

Few winegrowers of the Beaujolais are as intelligent, energetic or articulate as Nicole Descombes Savoye in Villié-Morgon—yet another of those strong, admirable women that the region seems to breed. Blonde, dainty and remarkably attractive, she does not look one bit like a person who spent most of her girlhood at hard physical labor, but such was her destiny as daughter of the late Jean Ernest Descombes, another rare personnage of the Beaujolais, a man renowned as much for his floral, surprisingly delicate Morgon as for the roguish ribaldry of the
caveau
that he lovingly decorated himself. Descombes was one of Georges’ earliest discoveries, and from the moment he became a
négociant
he bought Descombes’ entire yearly production. Nicole maintains the tradition today and is enormously proud to see Papa’s name continuing to feature prominently on the label. She happily admits that both she and the wine she makes are “Duboeufalized.”

“Whatever anybody says, it is Georges Duboeuf who made Beaujolais what it is today, and who gave it a worldwide reputation,” she proclaimed roundly, popping the cork on a bottle of her delicious 2003 Morgon and pouring me a glass without so much as a by-your-leave. “He is very, very close to the vignerons—he’s devoted his life to them. If there’s something that isn’t quite right with our wines, he lets us know right away. At harvest time when we begin vinifying, I bring samples of the
moût
(must, the young juice turning to wine) to him in Romanèche every day, and I check in with his lab two or three times a day. Georges is always watching over how our wines are developing. Not many people outside the Beaujolais realize how important his advice is for us. Plenty of times he has saved a vigneron’s year. He
knows.
”

Smiling with filial affection, Nicole surveyed the unmistakably masculine décor of the
caveau
that her father had bequeathed her for receiving visitors—the gravel floor, the lineup of lacquered barrels, each one marked with the name of a
parcelle
of his vineyard, the walls covered with photos of Papa and Grandfather, of Duboeuf, of Bocuse and other great chefs, the pile of naughty business cards with the corny old “happy feet” drawings (his toes pointed down, hers up) that might have drawn an “
ooh, là là
” in the fifties—and conceded that she had asserted her feminine prerogatives firmly enough to have taken down the somewhat more explicitly naughty illustrations with which Jean Ernest had been pleased to decorate his walls. Even with Nicole’s editing of the décor, though, every inch of the
caveau
still bespoke a man in love with his trade, his place in the world and the work of his hands. With his daughter, it was no different.

“Look,” Nicole went on. “I know wine. At age fourteen my father told me I had to drop out of school and come work with him in the vines. The school director came looking for him, saying I was a good student and that I should continue in school. At the time, my ambition had been to become an airline stewardess—that was very fashionable then—but my father refused. ‘She’s the only child we have,’ he said. ‘She has to work with us in the vineyard.’ So I did it. I worked between the vines with a pick and a hoe; I grafted the vines, and in the winter I pruned them. When I told Mother my feet were cold, she told me to put straw in my boots. We worked all the time, right through Saturday, when my girlfriends were out having fun. It was hard work. Too much. I vowed I would never marry a vigneron—but that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

“With all that experience, though, Monsieur Duboeuf knows my wine better than I do, and he works harder, too. The other day he called me at half past noon. He had just gotten back from Tokyo at 4 A.M. that morning, but he was in the office. There aren’t many people who can do that. He’s much harder on himself than he is with anyone else. He created his company from nothing, and he runs it like an act of love. It makes him sick to see vignerons in trouble. He gets letters every day asking him if he wants to buy their wine or even their vineyards. He’s basically a very straightforward, uncomplicated person who works for the good of the Beaujolais. So, yes, I admit that I’m
Duboeufalisée.
And, yes, I put him on a pedestal. We all do.”

Nicole’s blue eyes positively flashed defiance, as if daring any person present in flesh or spirit to deny the least syllable of her addition of the Duboeuf qualities. Nor was her tribute all that exceptional: hero worship of the man is pandemic in the Beaujolais. It is a curious and very unusual situation, certainly one that I have never encountered before, not where businessmen are concerned, at any rate. Capitalists anywhere may be respected for the jobs they create, the boost they inject into an economy, the skill with which they manage a company, or their civic actions, but even so they remain basically distant stick figures, more symbolic than real: the boss, the CEO, the owner, the guy who manufactures widgets and rides in a corporate jet. Who ever could feel a direct human bond with a Henry Ford or a Bill Gates? But Duboeuf is a good deal more than just the leading VIP of the region where he was born and raised, because in his person he incorporates and represents the projectionof what his fellow citizens like to see as the best qualities and virtues of their microculture. The standing he enjoys in the Beaujolais is more akin to the admiration usually reserved for sports heroes who have led particularly brilliant and unblemished careers, like a Pelé, a Jackie Robinson or a Cal Ripken. It has not yet been demonstrated that Georges Duboeuf can walk on water, but there’s more than a hint of Robin Hood in his story.
Il est des nôtres
(he’s one of us).

In the forty or so years that I have been frequenting the area, I have met no more than two or three persons between Mâcon and Villefranche, his competitors included, who ever had anything but praise for Duboeuf, and usually of the extravagant sort that Nicole Savoye pronounced. (The reproaches of the rare grousers were so lacking in specifics that it was easy to discount them as examples of envy or simple cussedness, like those salon gourmets who will tell you they had a bad meal at Paul Bocuse’s restaurant.) Beyond the limits of the Beaujolais, though, in Paris, Lyon or Lille, plenty of individuals who have never met Georges Duboeuf will express deep suspicions of him. The instinct to pillory anyone at the top of the game seems to be almost engrained in the national character here. That gets Michel Rougier’s dander up, but good.

“The French hate success,” he spat. “They can’t stand it. If someone reaches a certain position, rather than being inspired to emulate him, all they want to do is bring him down to their level. Americans admire success, but the French are jealous of it. They’re envious and petty.”

As well known as they are for criticizing other nations, the French can do a pretty fine job when they turn it on themselves, too. At this exercise, Rougier was something of an
artiste.
As director of InterBeaujolais, he ran the organization that represents the combined interests of growers and dealers. Born and raised in Lyon, he was a purely urban type who parachuted directly from the world of business to manage the little Beaujolais bureaucracy in Villefranche, and his appearance was about as un-
folklorique
as a wine professional could possibly be: the same earnest manner, rimless glasses, gray suit and conservative tie whether he was arguing with government emissaries, hosting a Beaujolais visit by Hillary Clinton or drinking a
canon
with vignerons in the bowels of a
cave coopérative
. But Rougier’s administrative experience and unsentimental eye brought him to some pitiless conclusions to explain the seemingly irresistible rise of young Georges Duboeuf’s company.

“Today there are only five
négociants
left in the Beaujolais,” he explained. “There were twelve or fifteen of them when I started work here twenty years ago. What happened to the others? I’ll tell you what. They went under because the guys used to wrap up their work day at nine o’clock in the morning. They knocked off and went to the local bistro and sat around all day long drinking
canons
and bragging to each other about what great businessmen they were. They were taking it easy. But Duboeuf was working.”