Dou Dou’s Wine Expedition — And The Time Our François Didn’t Know What Hit Him

Dou Dou had organised a trip for himself, myself, Anne and Joel to a vineyard owned by an old rugby buddy. Dou Dou was expecting us at 11am at his neat timber-framed house — with his very own pear tree bearing ripe, yellow fruit right outside his front door —  except his old bedside clock had stopped at 9.30am, and here was Joel now, chortling away and slagging him unmercifully and Dou Dou still tying up those pinkish shorts he’s wearing in the photo below, half-laughing, half-apologising as Anne artfully studied a distracting vase. 

The patron — another François — was fully clothed, mercifully, as we drew up, and Anne and I were already charmed by the gloriously ramshackle old sheds, moss-encrusted stone garden furniture and rusted obsolete machinery, and what would be described in an art gallery as an installation, made up of old wine bottles in front of an old stone wine vat, as we headed out to the vines themselves.

This François, in his mid-sixties, tall, extravagantly moustached, the sunblushed sinews beneath the navy short-sleeved Rugby World Cup 2007 top still taut and work-ready, led us up one winding line of vines, before pausing, both elbows resting proudly on the highest wire of one well leafed strip. 

He leaned into a most vivid plotted history of the Sauternes wine region, with detailing daubs on the chateaus and landmarks that dotted this cloudless blue-skied panorama, digressing into the very make up of the soil beneath us, and its part in the uniqueness of the wines produced here — of which he was so affectingly proud — and the life and climes of the grapes he held up in the humid midday air, like a high priest consecrating his host. All the moment lacked was the tinkle of sacramental church bells.

Later, back in his cave, deep, dusty and which reeked of maturing alcohol, history and character, he expertly decanted the sediment from the nectar as he discoursed on the time, the expertise and ultimately the love his family had invested in these rolling acres and in these sweet grapes, and in their harvesting, which is still done by artful hand, and the painstaking transfiguration into the elixir we were now tasting at the source.

And not to forget, the bacteria and the peculiarities of weather that could turn a good season bad almost overnight. 

At several points, François would close his eyes to better savour one of the many samples syringed up from the ancient wooden casks in his cave of ages and released into his glass and ours, as if to sweeten the acidity, tannin, alcohol and body of his very voice, before resuming his sonorous homily. We also left with a CD of songs from the men’s rugby choir he and Dou Dou also sing with.

The very next day, we spot our own François, the artist and stone wall expert, with beaded beer glass in hand, swopping yarns and lethal gossip with the locals on the terrace outside Suzette’s bar on the cobbled main square, after a two-kilometre trek in the nearby hills to clear his head, on this week day he has chosen to take off from his work.

Now 67, he is still humping and hefting away as this heavy, heavy work demands. Hardy as you like and slow-baked to a burnt umber, he is a special man, and I am so glad to meet him again. And for Anne to have enjoyed both him and our garden soiree, or at least vaped on the heady fumes of the fellowship of this ring of rogues and genuine one-offs, as her unfamiliarity with the presiding language could only allow.

But she got it, she tells me, and it is obvious she was taking in the fun and the affection permeating the mellow warm September air. The good food and alcohol definitely helped: the multi-accented flow of French, accommodating English and occasionally slowed down French for her benefit — and mine, often — more fluent and seamless with each glass.

Francois is so laid back it’s like life is a constant surprise for him. Joel loves to tell the tale of the time a piece of scaffolding fell on François’s head from a couple of feet above, and a baffled François touching his head and mildly mouthing ‘Aie!”, a full 10 seconds after the hit. François would later explain he was so confused by this unexpected assault he didn’t quite know how to react.

I’ve seen François pushed but never stressed enough to vent, not to mind explode, and this constant equanimity and good humour is something he shares with his soul father Joel.

The only time I ever saw Joel genuinely angry was when he showed the door to the annoying tax official who had been pressurising him into putting some order on the paperwork he detested and had always neglected.

No tax officials were physically harmed in the making of that scene, but this one did get his bureaucratic backside out the front gate and up the road fairly fast.

The twinkle was back in Joel’s eye pretty soon and the incident was soon another good story — and slagging opportunity. I never did ask whether  Joel sorted out his financial affairs, but I suspect Monsieur Le Tax Man eventually extracted his dues.

And that time Joel found a kid’s gun on a chantier, or work site, and turned to me, pointing it. For this you have to picture a tall, already balding Frenchman, deeply brown and bare-chested in grubby work shorts in the summer heat, putting on his best menacing head and beading the pebbles of his dark brown eyes on my amused grey ones, and rasping: “Okay, part-nere, u have ze mon-ay? Feefty-feefty, you and me, non? Or I keel you!”

Eugene and François were well used to building work, but because of their various commitments, they were not always available to Joel. It was Jean Marie, the brother of a former girlfriend of Joel’s, who put me in touch with this builder he knew in nearby Verdelais, by the name of Joel …

TO BE CONTINUED …