Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
The Out-of-Towners
'So you must know your wine, then?'
It's a question I'm often asked when people learn that I live in France, along with 'You must
be fluent by now?', 'Why?' and 'What are the French like with you, because they hate us, don't
they?' To which the answers in order are, don't be silly, don't be silly and don't be silly.
The answer to the wine question though is 'No', I do not 'know my wine'. I like wine and
certainly since moving to the Touraine I have developed a taste for crisp, dry white wine to go
with my only other previous wine preference of the catch-all 'a heavy Bordeaux'. I know noth-
ing of grape, vintage, nose or assemblage. I am a happily ignorant amateur who occasionally
stumbles upon a good wine (you know it's good because other people tell you it is) and has no
idea how.
There is the myth of course that to find a good French wine you merely need to hang around
the wine section of the supermarket long enough to see what the locals are buying, the logic
being that they're French, they know what they're doing. It's a remarkable generalisation, a bit
like saying that if you're not sure which firearm to purchase hang around the streets of Notting-
ham for a bit, or if you're unsure what shade of fake tan works best for the 'orange' look, visit
Liverpool for the weekend. Not everybody in France knows about wine and loitering around
the shop isn't always recommended anyway.
Natalie and the boys may get their fix from rescuing various animals and living the coun-
tryside to its flying, buzzing, itching extreme, but for me it's supermarkets. I have a weakness
for French supermarkets, growing up they seemed incredibly exotic and offered far more
in those days than their UK counterparts and though that is now the opposite (because you
know, the English must have their kumquats in January) the love affair persists. Most of their
products are now as ubiquitous in the UK as they are over here, for instance the local, world-
famous goats' cheeses, the AOC Selles-sur-Cher and the AOC Valençay, are both readily avail-
able in most outof-town supermarkets in England these days, though obviously at four times
the price. Also, the loyalty schemes offered in French supermarkets are largely derisory affairs
and customer service begrudging at best, but maybe that's another reason why I like them.
I asked an assistant in our local Super U if they had any more gin, as there was none on the
shelf. He looked at the shelf perplexed and then wandered off, I thought to see if there was any
in the warehouse, but he never came back. I quite admire that attitude. As someone who was
