Le Nord, 18 Rue Neuve, Lyon

I love France, I love French food and I've eaten a reasonable amount of it, both in France and elsewhere.

I also worked for several years at Le Bouchon Breton, so finding out that I was to have a free evening in Lyon meant that there wasn't much dithering over what to do.

Having asked the lovely Sophie Senty for a recommendation we made our way to Le Nord, 18 Rue Neuve. My initial impressions were that this was exactly what I'd been looking for, crisp white table cloths, though with the white paper square the French are so keen on. Well so far, so French.

We arrived at about ten past six, and obviously they weren't open until seven, so far, so French.

Still a couple of demi pressions later (Meteor) we returned to dine.

Now up till this point we'd only spoken to the maitre d' in French, however a charming waitress who spoke perfect English was dispatched to our table with two English menus.

Now, there's a poetry to food names, terrine de foie gras sounds much better than duck liver pate, but this is a minor gripe, preferring escargots to snails? Pretentious? Moi?

@Grape_Escape suggested a couple of Kirs to whet the palette and a excellent suggestion it was indeed.

I plumped for seven escargots a la bourgogne followed by foie de veaux with pomme puree while @Grape_Escape took the terrine de foie gras then the poulet de bresse with sauce forestier.

The wine list frustratingly didn't list any vintages, so despite our previous decision to go for a Northern Rhone there was still a degree of to and froing as we tried to find something we wanted. Eventually we decided on Jann Chave's Crozes Hermitage 09 (it might have had a lieu dit name too) and I grabbed a glass of pleasantly non descript Macon Village to accompany the snails.

We'd already been given a small bowl of the hard green olives I'm seeing around a lot at the moment, but I had to ask for bread, which then arrived feeling suspiciously pre cut, odder still was that it arrived with no butter or oil. On prompting we were given a lovely little plate of Beurre Grand Cru, and excellent butter it was, with that slight sourness I like in French butter, and a pleasingly inconsistent texture that spoke of small scale or hand churning.

@Grape_Escape's terrine de foie gras was a touch on the cold side (fridge temperature) and arrived with an edge of diced muscat jelly and some strawberry confiture. However, he declared the texture excellent, and indeed when I had a small piece it had the palette coating lustre that I would expect. I found the strawberry confiture a bit laboured and though that it dominated the palette a little.

My snails came in dinkly little individual white porcelain pots in a melted butter filled flat bottomed bowl. The little pots were topped with mini circular crouton lids and the dish slunk to the table in a languid fug of garlic, butter and parsley. Checking under the little breaded lids found some gloriously plump and flavoursome snails, being a little bit picky I wasn't overwhelmed by the amount of bread crumbs that came in the pots, but this was a tiny little gripe.

@Grape_Escape's main was pronounced wonderful, the chicken having oodles of flavour and the creamy mushroom sauce being a treat of sweet dense flavour that cosseted the chicken and was enjoyed all the way to end of the meal with bread dunking and wiping to finish with.

My calves liver was less successful, on ordering I was asked how I wanted it cooked, medium-rare? I asked if they were happy to go rarer, at which the waitress cheerily assured me that they'd cook it 'rose' as that was far and away the best.

It wasn't, the liver ended up being really quite chewy, it was nicely charred at the thin edge and the mash and sauce were good, but this restaurant carries the name of Paul Bocuse, and really ought to be able to do better.

A couple of coffees rounded off the meal and we set off to try and find the airport, however that's another story.

I will come back to Lyon, in fact I'm tentatively planning a weekend jaunt to fully immerse myself in dead flesh and animal fat, however I don't think Le Nord will be on the itinerary, it felt like the out post of a chefs empire that was coasting on old regard.

Vine age in marginal climates and it’s relation to hydric stress, carbohydrate retention and overall quality:

Last autumn I found myself discussing the benefits of vine age in marginal climates with the esteemed Bill Pannell, founder of Moss Wood and Picardy. It was his contention that vine age made much more of a difference in more marginal climates.

His rationale for this was that in very marginal climates the grapes are left on the vine as long as is possible, this means that we are forcing the vine to carry on working all the way until the very end of the potential growing season. Where as in warmer climates the grapes are harvested earlier, leaving the vine to spend the rest of the growing season replenishing its stores of carbohydrates.

Older vines, with a greater stem surface area (the phloem only runs around the edge of the wood, so volume is less important) and crucially greater root volume are much better placed to ride out any difficulties that might arise early on in the next growing season.

I was reminded of this whilst reading John Atkinson MW’s marvelous study of the terroir of the Cote de Nuits and its effect on wine quality.

He references Franck Wittendal’s principal component analysis that highlighted the soil structure as being the only factor of difference between GC and 1ere etc vineyards that was statistically different.

He goes on to highlight that this provides a buffer for water retention, with the limestone sub soils providing large amounts of calcium carbonate (opens up the soil) and the stony flocculated clay soils allowing for both good drainage and good water retention.

This along with the facility for high root density that is provided by the soil structure and low water density (without reaching stressful levels) means that the vines in the GC vineyards are predisposed to having larger carbohydrate stores, which in  turn allows for better floraison (flower set), which commonly occurs during periods of inclement weather in Burgundy.

Mr Atkinson then goes on to point out that a lot of the GC vineyards have slight easterly exposures that succeed in shielding the vines from excess heat or sun during the final period of the grapes maturation. Essential for the retention of the very delicate floral aromatics that characterizes the best Burgundian wines.

Firstly I can’t recommend John Atkinson MW’s article enough, it was published in the Journal of Wine research,  though was offered to Purple Pages readers free for a while. Secondly it was great to see the Esteemed Bill Pannell’s idea get some extra weight added to it, as he’s one of the most interesting and outspoken wine makers that I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with.

Is there a more repulsive phrase in the English vernacular than 'decaf spice chai latte'?

I was sitting in a coffee shop in Brighton when I over heard the order being called out. 'One decaf, spiced, chai latte'.
It upset me, I've had the pleasure of drinking quite a lot of chai over the years. From the Bangladeshi kitchen porters at Ashdown who used to brew up strong breakfast tea with black pepper, cardamon and milk in the afternoon, to the chai wallahs who stalk the streets and trains of Northern India doling out thick milky spiced shots of caffeinated goodness. Waxed paper cups scrunched up and dropped into the nearest bin (well gutter), hot days, hotter tea. Marsala chai. I'd go so far as to suggest that there's an entire society founded upon it.
And then we have 'decaf spiced chai lattes', I can think of no better example of the misappropriation of other cultures customs and then the whole sale raping them of any integrity and truthfulness.
Actually this touches on something a little deeper. The disrespect or otherwise of different cultures food traditions upon importation. Obviously there is a necessary degree of evolution that takes place when a recipe is exported. The basic ingredients may no longer be exactly the same, a little like Chinese whispers, but with food.
However, when a recipe is treated more as a signifier of the degree of cultural broadness of your marketing department, and thus is redesigned to fit into the schema of your mass reproduced coffee shop empire I stop accepting it.
It's not fucking masala chai, it's a shitty spiced and artificially sweetened tea concentrate that you add to foamed milk. Please in future refer to it as such.

Very fucking angry

Sainsbury's;
 I'm on my way to see some friends, I've got a couple of half empty sample bottles of wine in my bag, but it's Friday night. So obviously I've dropped into the Sainsburys at the station on the way. Whatever's cheap, £10 for 12 of something in a can, and two bottles of cheap wine. That absolves me the sin of only drinking the decent stuff hidden in my bag.
Except, on arrival, I pull the bottles out and look at the labels. First Cape - South African, no? Well, no actually. They're Australian and......... reduced alcohol - 5.5% fucking alcohol. The bottle looks exactly like a normal bottle of wine. The label is white and there's a little silver medal like symbol on the bottom left with 5.5% written in it.
Reduced alcohol wine ought to have it's bastard status properly advertised on the label, a large red, crossed circle might just about do it. Maybe thick red and yellow warning stripes. Certainly not this subtle, I'll just blend into the others fake of a label.

Suffice to say I'm not particularly happy.

Also I've not yet mustered the courage to taste it - I'll post a tasting note as soon as I've calmed down enough....

The power of metaphors

Now some time ago, I posited that something I had written might have been a metaphor for something else, only for the wonderful Gergely to rudely remind me that metaphors came in jars and were usually pickled... something that may well be very close to the truth.

Any way, I spent today in the esteemed company of Johan Reyneke, philosophy graduate and biodynamic winemaker extraordinaire. After a longish day of traipsing around wine shops and restaurants flogging our respective wares, we retired to Bar Battu in the city. After having a couple of revivifying beers and a small tasting with the staff I ordered a bottle of Jean Foillards Morgon Cote du Py 2008.

This put the cat amongst the pigeons. The initial nose (as so often) was all awkwardness, hints of faults, fist full's of grit and dirt, berries crushed under leather boots being ground into the well matured manure. Then on the palette there was that lick of acidity, the refreshing chime of bitter cherry, the underlay of granite and mineral.

Some wines demand food, some wines demand good company..

Earlier in the day we had discussed the rational explanations that can underlie some of the procedures that comprise the biodynamic method. We then reappraised the subject and I mentioned that while I had always struggled with biodynamics, I had come to accept that there were genuinely effective methods at the heart of its teaching. However I still had issues with Steiner.

Johan replied that he too had issues with Steiner, in that he felt Steiner had lifted a lot of the peasant wisdom and recast it into his Theosophical world view, and created a set of post hoc mystical justifications for the actions of the methodology.

We then moved on to talking about the limits of reductive learning systems and how they are doomed to fail when confronted by complex systems. That a reductive approach if used in a non Popperian empirical falsificationary approach leads to misguided courses of action that prove to be ultimately painful.

In agriculture it was the reduction of the hugely complex web of interactions that is the vineyard/farm ecosystem into a series of flow diagrams that merely comprise key nutritional requirements and pest vector threats. Which in turn leads to a successive unbalancing of the natural cycles, picture knocking a spinning top out of balance and watching as it careens off the table.

This we compared with the essentially holistic approach that Goethe pioneered to observation of phenomena, and his view of each element of a system is to some degree representative of the system as a whole, and how, whilst not as immediately useful as the empirical reductive approach it is, none the less, a better way of avoiding making poor decisions as there is, implicit in it's approach a respect of the system being studied and an appreciation of the inherent incomprehensible quality of the complexity to be found therein.

So how does one reconcile people to successful, non reductionary approaches to complex systems? Well therein lies where Steiners post hoc mystical gobbledigook comes into the picture, for he tied up the accumulated trial and error wisdom of a pheasant populace who had to try and cope with an unpredictable and frankly capricious world into a meaninful and justifiable philosophy of bbiodynamic gardening. For this he turned to the metaphor (see by this time, nicely pickled). An excellent way of bridging the gap between the actuality of the mechanics of a complex system and a suitably comprehensible reduction of said mechanics.

We finished on the decision that what we needed was a new metaphor for the actions of biodynamic preparations on the vineyard ecosystem, one that stripped the story of its mystical bent, one that would make sense to a 21th century lay person, and one that would place the biodynamic method in a comprehensible context.

Biodynamics a short clarification of my views

This is a short response to a short twitter conversation that I had this morning:
Having posted several links to websites that openly question Biodynamic methodology and rationale that underpins it. I felt that it would be helpful to state where I stand.
If you break Biodynamics down it does indeed include all of the best things about organic viticulture. Increasing soil organic matter, dealing proactively with pest control issues, paying extra care and attention to the vineyard, increasing biodiversity in the vineyard and its surrounds. However there is a whole extra level of detail that biodynamics carries with it. It is here that I struggle. Rudolph Steiner was an interesting man who for all his many talents was not a farmer. Hence when he prepared his speeches on agriculture he shoehorned his existing belief structure into a methodology that was based around a traditional self contained organically famed small holdings routine.
As Caroline Gilby so neatly pointed out, it is possible that the position of the moon may have a microscopic affect on water in plants, it is not so reasonable to posit that the phases of the moon which relate more to shadow and light effects do so. Furthermore the biodynamic calendar is based on an astrological calendar. Many other people have denounced Astrology as a pseudoscience far more effectively than I'm able.

With regards to how biodynamics is presented to the public, I feel that the standard line of 'like organics but better' is misleading. However as with all things pertaining to the general understanding of the complexities of wine production the full story is far too complex to be written up as a short precis on a wine label.

There are elements of the philosophy that inspired Steiner that I believe are quite helpful. He based a lot of his work on the Goethean concept of non-reductive consideration of the system as a whole, wherein all elements of the system in a sense represent the greater whole. And that comprehension ad reductio merely seeks to promote a false sense of certainty as to the processes at play. There is no doubt that the advances made in understanding the principles of plant nutrition were taken and run with in the production and excessive use of fertilisers, and that this caused untold damage and to many a fragile ecosystem. However this is no excuse to run back to mysticism and spiritualism.

I'm quite happy for growers to explain to me that they're preparing some cow manure compost, indeed the actual finished compost is a thing of beauty, however to then try to explain that it has taken up astral forces by being buried in a cow horn over the winter. Well quite.

Then if you delve further into the founding texts you start to see references to the Etheric Jesus and his journey through the 7 layers of the earth to the core, and how the Astral forces need to be channelled into said Jesus so he can combat demons. It gets incredibly silly. That there is a core of wine producers who engage with this to various degrees is something I find a bit worrying.

But, and a largish but this is, there is almost certainly nothing harmful about BD (excepting the use of Bordeaux mixture which accumulates in the soil and is a broad spectrum anti insecticide/herbicide) and it does, mostly, promote good soil management, and other practices.

I jut get a bit annoyed hearing it referred to in such non-critical glowing terms.

Comfort Zones

Comfort zones are funny things, both cosseting and suffocating at the same time. I'd been working in restaurants for nearly six years when I left Le Bouchon Breton in the middle of last year, which being honest was about five and a half years more than I expected when I first agreed to work as a part time sommelier at Ashdown Park.
Don't get me wrong there have been some wonderful highs as well as some grindingly difficult moments.
I've been very lucky in that it turned out I was quite good at what I did, I made a lot of friends and was lucky enough to be taken on quite a few trip.
However this is all over. I have changed sides. For five years as a head sommelier I've been courted by suppliers, I could be difficult, arrogant, rude, coquettish, playful, helpful, irreverent, forgetful, it didn't really matter. The simple truth was that if a supplier wanted my money, then he had to work for it. I am now that person, I'll be smiling when people are rude to me, I'll be gently trying to suggest that maybe, just maybe the wines I need to sell might be better placed on their lists.
For years I had the pick of all the suppliers wines in London, if I wanted a wine, I could pretty much have it to work with. This is a wonderful privilege, all the more fun when you're spending someone else's money.
Now I have a much smaller pool of wines to work with, I'll have to be creative when people tell me that what they really want is a Sauvignon de Touraine, this is good. I'll be a much better placed to meet the winemakers and really discuss what they're doing around the world as I take them round the restaurants that list their wines, but along with this will come the trouble of persuading busy sommeliers and buyers to take half an hour out of their day to sit with me, taste some wines and hopefully offer up the requisite platitudes to the winemakers in question that will make them feel content about their trip over.
To add to the impending displacement I'm moving back to London in a day, admittedly I'm moving in with some friends, but it's still a case of two big changes coming back to back.
So with crossed fingers and a sense of adventure I'm starting to pack again..