LEAVE YOUR COMMENT
Joe Ray
Food & Travel / Words & Photos
EATING
THE
MOTHERLAND
Food writer and photographer Joe Ray's gastronomic visits in Europe - the home of his ancestors - and beyond.
Archives
Blogs by journalists
/////////////////////////////
Click here
to receive email updates
when stories are posted
////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sending The Wine Back
One of the most intimidating things to do in a Parisian restaurant is to send back a bottle of wine.
It’s a shaky gamble; unless the thing just stinks like a bottle of wet newspaper, it could just be that you’re tasting a wine that’s just not that great. Your nose could be lying. Who knows?
We ordered a bottle of Anjou the other night at Aux Negociants – which proclaims itself a ‘bistrot a vins.’ “Wine†is their middle name… or something like that.
The chef, who often serves as a waiter, plunked the bottle down and walked away before we could taste it.
Sniff, sniff.
To my nose, it alternates between smelling like a fair-to-middlin’ wine and something worse.
Sip.
It tastes like fair-to-middlin’ wine and something worse.
‘The chef is going to have a field day with me if I’m wrong,’ I think, followed closely by, ‘I don’t feel like paying 20 euros for this crap.’
“Is this what this should taste like?†I ask chef, trying to be polite while getting my point across.
He grabs the bottle, grunts and walks it back behind the bar where his wife (?) runs the show. She pours a bit in a glass, sniffs, and the only word I catch in her aside to the chef is “bouchonné†(“skunkedâ€) as she dumps it. She dispatches chef with a new bottle and clean glasses that he wordlessly plunks on the table.
Sniff.
Next to the old one, it smells like a bouquet of flowers.