Definition: esprit de vin 1

Tuesday, 14 November 2006, programme "Le Fou du Roi" France-Inter

Bernard Pivot has become a wine expert. Through sheer hard work. For a long time, this stick-thin man of words was a sort of Nicolas du Livre, a taste-writer with a television show called "Apérostrophe" or "Bouilleur de culture." A taster with a sharp tongue and an eclectic taste in books, ranging from great bourgeois literature to heavy tomes, he welcomed renowned writers to his table to present the best of their work. It was a sort of prestigious weekly gathering of literary figures!There was a bit of everything: palm writers, mass writers, gentle writers, sparkling writers, and even one or two drunken writers here and there... By frequenting both the dregs and the elite, aided by his bookish intoxication, he fell into the vat and started drinking from the bottle. I must confess that last week I was given a bottle of his latest production as a gift. A jeroboam. The title is lovely: "Dictionnaire amoureux du vin" (A Lover's Dictionary of Wine). Rumour has it that there are flyleaves, so I religiously took it down to the cellar. It will decant. And improve. There is already a little sediment. But for a book, that's perfectly legal... I drank it diagonally, between the lines, just as he must have read many writers between the vines... In any case, you don't have to drink it to believe it! My friends who have tasted it say that his book has bouquet, that you come out of it drunk.Clusters of words, sheets of lines, pulp fiction... I just drank the label, the^back cover, and I must say, I didn't spit anything out! And if it doesn't last half a century, no big deal. When it comes to wine or writing, it's all about litres and deletions...

To hell with cholesterol

Cirrhosis, ulcers

And other nonsense

That clog our arteries

Without wanting to set a precedent

Suffer only in brief verses

In these times of mad cows

I defend fine wines

Let's take the juice from the vine

Let us turn, turn the grape varieties

Our land has received

Wine in Hermitage

Let us irrigate our heads

Even if the ship rocks

There are butterflies under the rock

And saliva under the tongue

A hundred times on the sharecropper

Let's put our livestock back

The harvested homeland

Shows off with our beverages

We've got our sides roasted

Our livers are fried

And Givry lemon

We are bound by wine

Blackcurrant orange or blackberry

We fight over the Chinon

But at the foot of Saumur

We can't see Mâcon

Against pessimism

Let's immerse our atoms

In a bouquet of Crozes

All roads lead to aroma

O wine, give me tannin

Your scents and your flora

The heart has its grapes

That reason devours

I know some Tokay

That Pommard killed

Pouilly and Gamay Graves

At the bottom of Cabernet

Made of hiccups and broc

The liver, the eyes, Bandol

They stuffed themselves with Médoc

And fall into Pom'rol

They dream of vineyards

That make life less dull

Rot is noble

And the Sauternes lorries

I saw farmers

Sublime thanksgiving

Treating without mercy

Their bottles of Cornas

Intoxication is eternal

Such are the ways of drunkards

Natural Chasselas

They return to the bottle

Wine keeps you going, Anjou

Sure, it burns your vessels

But it makes everything beautiful

You were born stupid, you Meursault

O fountain of Jaja

I'll drink from your barrel

And persona grappa

I will fall into the Pinot

Finally defying convention

I will die in your lees

Pointing towards St Peter

Guardian of paradise

Long live the Muscat vine

With all due respect to the narrow-minded

Of the vigilant picrate plans

Who forbid us from smelling

Let's scrape the bottom of the barrel

They are iconic

Let's place our drinking troughs

Under the auspices of Beaune

There is must in the press

Sweetness in the vats

While we wait for the big night

Let us drown ourselves in the aroma

As for our guest

Should I say tipsy

Marinated wild boar

Pillar of Bauge-olais

Raised well in the cellar

On vine leaves and bib'ron

Just seasoned

With a dash of litron juice

Old demon of Lyon

Eminent bon vivant

A.O.C. graduate

Bacchus level plus five

Blower of balloon glasses

Horse on the label

Champion cork shooter

Nelson but not cheap wine

Vintage liqueur

Ouch, barrel, barrel

Crime-inducing sucker

And chimerical acid

Our vine prince

Has subversive wine

Brandishing the acres

Of a Beaujolais château

Pivot: a tongue of iron

With a velvety taste

Raising his glass high

To the spirit of Saint-Amour

Don Quixote of Beaujo

Slaying the adjuvant

Fighting with body and guts

For the windmill

He goes to the Fleurie

Solid as a Chénas

Roaring with his eyes Brouilly

In Pivot veritas

Deviser for Régnié

Such is his conviction

He rolls with his belt buckled

In place of Morgon

He will never say

That Chablis is rubbish

But he will support you

That Juli-e-nas

Doesn't have the fire in the vintage

But if some piss hard

He's sure to love Chiroubles

Day and night he soaks it in

Tasting in vivo

If there are teeth that bathe

He even fishes in cloudy wine

Those are Pivot's teeth.