I'll Drink to That Read Online Free PDF Page A

entire populations to the sword, regardless of age, gender or sexual orientation. Even so, his memory must still be honored in France today, because it was his legionnaires, retiring after hard years of service to imperialism, who taught the surviving natives how to make wine—infinitely preferable to cervoise, the rough beer with which they had been quenching their thirst until then. Intermarriage with these Roman settlers and centuries of assimilation formed the Beaujolais character such as it is today: tough, stubbornly attached to the soil and the vine, a tad suspicious of outsiders at first view, but jolly and overwhelmingly welcoming once the ice has been broken. This little town’s founders named their settlement after their boss Julius, planted their vines and never looked back from winemaking.
    Returning northward on a long drive from Spain, my wife and I had veered off the main road into the Beaujolais country in company with our friend Pierre Boulat, one of France’s top photographers and a man who knew his way around. There was a pretty good little restaurant in Juliénas, said Pierre, and we rolled into town on a surprisingly balmy October evening. Suddenly the long drudgery of our drive morphed into a wine lover’s dream, signaled by an auspicious set of road signs at the picture-postcard main square: Saint-Amour and Saint-Vérand to the north of us, Jullié to the west, Chénas, Fleurie and Chiroubles to the south. Down to the left of the bakery near the marketplace, the spire of a sixteenth-century church soared, as it should in all picture-postcard situations, high over the town. Years later, when I had grown to know Juliénas on more intimate terms, I learned that the regional diocese had deconsecrated the church 1868 and sold it to a local notable, a vigneron, of course, who had promptly put its cool stone embrace to practical use as a chai , a wine storage shed. Further progress came in 1954, when a wine dealer, restaurateur and local character named Victor Peyret transformed the church’s elegant choir into a caveau (wine-tasting cellar), complete with vineyard scenes on the stained glass windows and bacchanalian frescoes on the walls. The church is a drinking place today still, the town’s official caveau , signaled as such in books, posters and tourism leaflets. It is always just a bit disconcerting to pass under its portal and enter its stony interior only to discover a bar.
    Presently we were seated in the dining room of a quirky little bistro called Chez La Rose, with a bottle of Juliénas, cool and fresh from the cellar, standing before us and andouillettes grillées , bathed in a reduction of white wine and chopped shallots, ordered and on the way. On the way for me and Pierre, that is. My wife sighed, ordered a civilized roast chicken and muttered insults about savages capable of making a meal out of intestine sausage.
    The table next to us was occupied by a curious pair of gents: a short, agitated little man who emitted a steady stream of wisecracking chatter and a massive character, a head taller, with hands like grappling hooks, who bore a vague but still disquieting resemblance to Boris Karloff as Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. The first wore coat and tie, the second blue workman’s overalls.
    Gradually, as the meal drew on, little sparks, little presages of dialogue, grew between the two tables. This was unusual, because the French, when dining, are usually sensible enough to concentrate on the appreciation of what they are eating, and courteous enough to leave space between themselves and those around them. But on that evening a voice perhaps too loud, a comment or two overheard, an accent unmistakably not French—whatever it was—conspired to set off a mutual joshing that was, if not aggressive, at least challenging in some unclear way. A few bottles of wine undoubtedly did their part, too. The upshot was that in the course of the dialogue they learned that Pierre and I were of the