Chapter 15 Chapter fifteen

Warm weather, plenty of sunshine and the illusion of time standing still are a must to drink ouzo.For me, the only place that fits the occasion is Provence. a ouzo lesson (1) Under the shade of a huge sycamore tree, there are several white iron tables and old rattan chairs.At noon, an old gentleman wearing canvas shoes walked slowly across the square, the dust kicked up by his feet was suspended in the air, and it was more clear in the sunlight.The waiter looks up from the Lequipe newspaper and walks unhurriedly over to take the order. He came back with a shot glass, which he would fill a quarter full if he was generous enough, and a water bottle that was still dripping.When the water was poured into the wine glass, the color of the wine began to change, it was a color between yellow and gray, and then a pungent sweet smell of anise came out.

"Cheers!" You're drinking anisette, the essence of Provence. For me, the strongest part of fennel is not the anise or the alcohol, but the atmosphere, where and how you drink it.I can't imagine singing it in a hurry, or drinking it in a tavern in Fulham or a bar in New York, or anywhere else where you have to wear socks to get in, and it will taste stale.Warm weather, plenty of sunshine and the illusion of time standing still are a must to drink ouzo.For me, the only place that fits the occasion is Provence. Before I moved here, I always regarded ouzo as the daily drink of France, a national drink made by two large wineries in France-Pernod winery and Ricard winery, Only these two.

Later, I drank other brands of wine one after another, such as Casanis, Janot, and Granier, making it unclear how many brands there are.I counted 5 in one bar but 7 in another.Every Provence person I asked was an expert in it, and they all gave me different answers in a positive but not necessarily correct tone, and they all didn't forget to slander the brands they despised some. By chance, I met an ouzo expert who also happened to be a famous chef, so it was fun to take his ouzo class. Michel Poss was born near Avellon and moved to the village of Cabrieres, a few miles away.It has been 12 years since I opened a restaurant named after myself in the town.Every year, Michelle reinvests the profits back into the restaurant.He built a large terrace, extended the kitchen, and added four bedrooms for tired or frantic guests to rest.In this way, his restaurant became a comfortable place, and business naturally flourished.

Although the restaurant has been updated again and again, except for the occasional ingenious trick in the summer tourist wave, one thing has not changed, and that is that the bar in front of the restaurant is still a place where villagers gather.There are always a lot of blushing people in overalls who come here every night. They don't come to eat, but just to discuss the petanque game while drinking.And the wine they drank must have been anisette! One night, we spotted Michele behind the bar, hosting an informal tasting session.He put out seven or eight kinds of wine one by one to test the wine tasting ability of the old alcoholic, some of which I have never seen before.

Tasting ouzo is not the quiet sanctity of the tasting ceremony in the cellars of Bordeaux and Burgundy.Michelle had to raise her voice to speak to me over the clink of glasses and smacking of lips at the bar. "Try this," he said. "It's like the kind Mom made at home, from Forcajill." He filled his glass from a dripping metal jug with ice cubes in it and slid across the bar. I took a sip, and man, is this what moms make?Just two or three drinks, and I'm bound to lie down in the upstairs bedroom.I said, this wine tastes very strong!Michelle let me look at the wine bottle, 45 degrees, stronger than brandy, but not up to the alcohol standard of anisette, and much milder than the wine Michelle had drunk before.

Just two glasses of this wine, Michele said, and hey, guaranteed to make a big man go down straight and with a smile on his face!But the wine was special, and from Michele's wink I got the feeling that it wasn't entirely legitimate. Michele left the bar abruptly, as if suddenly remembering that there was still soufflé in the oven, and came back with something on the bar in front of me. "Do you know what these are?" On the bar stood a spiral glass with a stubby stem; a smaller glass, squat, but as wide as a thimble and as high as two thimbles; A flattened tin spoon, symmetrically perforated, with a U-shaped knot under the flat end.

"This place was a coffee shop before I took over," Michelle said. "We found these things when we hit the wall, have you seen these things before?" I can't see what those are. "Back in the day, all the cafés had these. They were for drinking absinthe." He curled his index finger up and dug near his nostrils, a standard drunk action.He picked up the two smaller wine glasses, "these are the old-fashioned measuring cups used to measure absinthe." I took it, heavy and solid, like a block of lead.He took the other glass and laid the flat-tipped spoon on top of it so that the knot on the handle just snapped around the rim of the glass.

He tapped his spoon. "Put some sugar on top of this, and pour water over it, and the water flows over the sugar, through the hole and into the absinthe. It was a very fashionable way to drink it at the end of the 19th century." Absinthe, Michele told me, is a green liquid distilled from spirits and absinthe.Bitter, stimulant, hallucinogenic, addictive, dangerous.Because it contains nearly 70% alcohol, it can cause blindness, seizures and confusion.It is said that Van Gogh cut off one of his ears under the influence of this wine, and the French poet Verlaine also shot and killed another poet Rimbaud because of this wine.There is also a disease named after it, "absinthe poisoning", because addicted people can easily die.Absinthe was banned in 1915.

There was a man named Jules Pannot who owned an absinthe distillery at Montfavet, near Avellon.Not wanting to see absinthe disappear, he switched to the legal ingredient star anise, which was a huge success.And the biggest advantage of this kind of wine is that the guests can always come back alive to buy more wine. "So you know now! The anisettes on the market were born in Avillon, just like me. Come on, try this one." He took a bottle of Garnier from the shelf, and I dare say I have a bottle of the same brand at home, with the label "Garnier, my anisette, made in Cavillon."It's a little softer in color than the emerald green of Pennault, and it doesn't taste as strong.And for local wine that tastes good, I'm definitely in favor of it.

The Garnier bottle was nearly empty, and I was still standing.In order to continue teaching me the first lesson, Michele suggested that I try another brand-name wine so that I could compete with other wines with similar taste and color.He poured me a glass of Rica. After drinking glass after glass of different brands of ouzo, it is difficult for me to maintain an objective and academic eye to compare these different brands of ouzo.I like all these wines, the taste is refreshing and comfortable, and it is fascinating.Some brands have a drop of licorice added to the other, but after drinking so much flavor and so much alcohol, the tongue is starting to go numb.However, this feeling is so good that people want to have a second after drinking one drink.After two or three glasses of wine, all the critical words used to judge the wine disappeared.To be an ouzo taster, I'm probably hopeless, happy, hungry, but hopeless.

"What do you think of Rica?" Michelle asked.The Rica was not bad, it's just that I seem to have taken too many tasting lessons tonight! Over the next few days, I wrote down many questions to ask Michelle.Why, for example, is the origin of such a famous anisette as confusing as its color?Who Invented Anisette Before Pannoy?Why is it so closely associated with Provence and not with Burgundy or the Loire Valley?I went back to my teacher again. Whenever I ask a Provençalist about Provence, the weather, the food, the history, the habits of animals, or the eccentricities of people, I am sure to get an answer.Provencals love to instruct others and to express their opinions, especially when they are gathered around a table.So, on the day that the Chinese restaurant was closed for a week, Michelle specially arranged a lunch meeting and invited a few what he called "responsible people" to eat.They would be more than happy to help me find answers. A total of 18 people gathered under a large white canvas parasol in Michelle's yard.I was introduced to a large group of people, a jumble of names, faces, and personal information.Among them were a civil servant from Avillon, a wine grower from Carpentras, two managers of the Rica winery, and two partisans from the village of Cabrel.One of them was even wearing a tie, but five minutes later he was loosening it and putting it on the wine cart. A ouzo lesson (2) This is what is called the hasty beginning and even more hasty end of formality. Most people were as fond of boules as Michelle was, and the winegrower from Carpentras had brought a few cases of his special wine with a picture of a boules game in progress on the label. The rose wine was chilled, and the bottle of red wine was opened. Everyone began to politely pour the bouillon wine and the favorites of the bouquet lovers—real Marseille ouzo and Rica into their glasses. According to a manager of Rica, his boss, Mr. Paul Rica, was born in 1909 and is a classic case of giving full play to acquired hard work and innate wisdom.Until now, he is still asking for "trouble".His father was a wine merchant, and the young Mr. Paul often dealt with bars and restaurants in Marseille because of work needs.At that time, winemaking laws were not too strict, and many bars made their own pastis.Monsieur Rica also decided to make his own ouzo, but he added an ingredient that no other brand had, but just that little bit of difference worked wonders in sales.In fact, the so-called "real Marseille ouzo" is not much different from other wines, but first, the wine itself is very good, and second, with the help of Mr. Rica's sales talent, Rica has become even more extraordinary.It didn't take long for his wine to become the most popular, at least in the Marseille region. Mr. Rica's decision to expand his business allowed him to pre-empt his success by many years.The area around Marseille is a very competitive market, and ouzo is everywhere, and it's a very common drink.At that time Marseille was not the most famous compared with other neighboring regions.Even today, the Maasai have a reputation for being braggarts, big talkers, calling sardines whales, and not being trustworthy. Farther north, anisette was marketed as an out-of-town drink, and distance improved Marseille's bad reputation, while at the same time drawing on the charm of the south—a little looseness, ease, and sunshine—anisette appealed to those accustomed to the cold and the cold. Northerners of gray skies.As a result, Rica wine headed north, first to Lyon, then to Paris, and the new formula became a hit.Today, it is highly unusual not to find "genuine Marseille ouzo, Rica" in a bar anywhere in France. When the people from the Rika winery talked about his boss, they revealed a kind of heartfelt liking.Mr. Paul is very bright, very special and seeks a challenge every day.I asked him if he was as interested in politics as the biggest names in business, and there was a chuckle from the seat. "Politicians? He despises them!" I appreciate his point of view, but on the other hand, it's also a pity.The idea of ​​an anisette baron as president of France appealed to me.If he had added "Nothing but Rica" to his election slogan, he might have been elected. However, Mr. Rica did not invent ouzo, like Mr. Panno, he just bottled what already existed.So, where did ouzo come from?Who was the first to combine anise, licorice, sugar and alcohol?Or which monk accidentally discovered it in the kitchen of the monastery one day-monks have always had a hobby of inventing wine, from champagne to liqueur, they are all related to monks who live in seclusion. None of the people around the table really knew how the first ouzo came into this hungry world.However, a lack of accurate information has never prevented Provencals from presenting personal opinions as facts, or legends and myths as reliable history. The least reliable, but favorite explanation is the "hermitism".Of course, hermits are almost on a par with monks when it comes to inventing outlandish aperitifs. This particular hermit lived in a hut deep in the forest on the slopes of the Luberon.He gathered herbs and boiled them in a cauldron—a bubbling cauldron favored by witches, elves, and alchemists.The juice left in the pot has special functions, not only to quench thirst, but also to keep Luberon alive in a plague that killed most of Luberon's population.The hermit was so generous that he gave the juice to those who had the plague, and they were all healed immediately.Perhaps he, like Paul Ricard later, saw great business opportunities in his magic drink, left the hut, and, like other business-minded hermits, moved to Marseilles and opened a bar. So, why is Provence so rich in pastis?There is a more unsightly but more likely theory-Provence is the hometown of fennel, and it is easy to find the raw materials for winemaking.These herbs are so cheap that they don't even cost money to buy, and most farmers make their own wine, some of the head-scratching spirits.For a long time, the right to distill alcohol has been regarded as family wealth, passed down from father to son, and from generation to generation.Until recently, this right was taken away, but there are still some surviving distillers who retain the right to legally make moonshine until their death.But their ouzo cellar survived. Michelle's wife, Mrs. Persia, was from near Carpentras.She remembered her grandfather once brewing a double-strength ouzo so far over the limit that a glass was enough to knock a statue to the ground.One day the town police came to visit her home, an official visit on a motorbike and in full armor was never a good thing.Her grandfather convinced the police to down a glass of homemade super-spirit, then a second, and a third.The police never mentioned the purpose of his visit again, but my grandfather made two trips to the police station in his van: the first to bring back the unconscious policeman and his motorcycle; the second to deliver his boots and pistol , which were found under the table afterwards. This is an old story, but perhaps in a corner of Provence, there are still such legends.