Stephen Spencer writes I’m 40 and live in East London with my wife and Edith, our cat. I work for a Marketing consultancy but am most passionate about books and booze. I’ve written a few articles for Malt Review over the past 18 months and harbour secret ambitions to escape the 9 to 5 and open a sherry bar by the sea.
Ah, The Bordeaux!
Sandwiched shyly between the Salisbury Novichok attack and Harry & Meghan’s wedding is the wine moment I’ll never forget.
It’s a Friday afternoon in April 2018, and I am sitting on a train about to pull out of Geneva station. I'm en route to Paris to meet my girlfriend, who's also been away with work, and we are going for dinner before we take the Eurostar back to London.
I have just finished an utterly pointless and wonderfully bizarre meeting in which a Nestlé executive who, taking dog food marketing incredibly seriously, spent a full hour aggressively informing me that a smiling dog is a physiological impossibility.
As the train speeds through the Swiss splendour, I sit smiling—positively un-doglike—at the prospect of regaling my girlfriend with the story of what just happened.
Navigating my way across Paris—wary of interaction since I speak embarrassingly little French—I arrive at the restaurant without a hitch. My elaborate “Bonjour” is greeted with a broad smile by the handsome Maitre d', who shows me to the table where my girlfriend is already seated. She hands me the wine menu as I sit down and asks me to order something “good” as she gets up to go to the toilet.
At this exact moment, the waitress arrives and asks me something I don’t understand. I apologise for being English and ask for two minutes. Furiously scanning the list of mostly unfamiliar names and associated costs, I opt for a Bordeaux - a word I know and feel reasonably confident pronouncing.
Kicking out more disdain than on her first—already fairly frosty—visit, the waitress returns at the same moment as my girlfriend. She repeats her previous question in French, and I point sheepishly to the menu and say—flatly and without accent—“the Bordeaux, sivu play.”
Due to the strained silence that follows, I first assume she hasn’t heard me. But—as her brow furrows and her face grimaces—it becomes clear that I am to be toyed with.
“C'est quoi ce ‘bodo’ je ne le connais pas” she snarls.
“This Bordeaux” I reply—unsure of the question—pointing again at the menu.
“Mais quel est-il? Je ne connais pas ce mot”.
My tormentor is in her mid-twenties, has a nose piercing and looks a bit like a young Emmanuelle Béart. In other words, she’s utterly terrifying.
As she loudly calls over another waiter to assist in the developing spectacle I feel the eyes of nearby diners fixed on my rapidly reddening face. It suddenly occurs to me that my girlfriend—who seems very keen not to meet my eye—is the proud owner of a French GCSE grade A, but before I can get her attention the cavalry arrives.
Emmanuelle waves the wine menu in the direction of the support waiter and talks loudly at him whilst more surrounding diners stop eating and start staring. After a brief tete-a-tete, there’s a breakthrough. Emmanuelle slaps her forehead.
“Ah, Bordeaux”
She pronounces the word very slowly, almost as two separate words, and emphasises a deep, guttural G sound that splits the word in half.
As she spins on her heel to walk away I notice she shares a wry smile with the other waiter. Another blow to absorb but also a welcome reminder of the story I’d almost forgotten to share.
Just as I’m in full flow—loudly impersonating the ludicrous French client, complete with ‘Allo’Allo! accent—Emannuelle re-appears with the wine, which she opens and I try in total silence. It’s excellent, as is the rest of our evening.
Looking back, it was almost certainly the combination of “good” wine—although neither of us can now remember what we drank—and emotional scarring that indelibly marked the event in my memory. It was also the catalyst for my deciding it was time to learn more about wine.
After a couple of years of autodidacticism—wine and Wikipedia on a Friday night—I signed up for WSET2 and started learning French with the little green owl for good measure.
Whilst my French is still a bit bof, and the more I learn about wine the more I realise I don’t know, I now stride through Parisian Bistros without fear of would-be Emmanuelles. And, whenever I see the word Bordeaux on a menu I think of smiling dogs, acute embarrassment, a nameless bottle of delicious wine and my girlfriend, who is also now my wife.
Image by Constantine Johnny via Getty Images.
