Wine Tasting in Brest

Must have been the end ’78 when John Morris and I were holed up in Brest, France aboard the Dutch fishing boat De Toekomst, waiting for a break in the weather to allow us to cross the dreaded Bay of Biscay. We were headed for Gibraltar where we planned to give the vessel a lick of paint prior to crossing the Atlantic. Haiti—where John had some sort of fishing business—was our final destination.

Low tide in Brest

We’d entered Brest at the height of a gale—with waves crashing over the bow, sweeping the deck and slamming into the wheelhouse. Before gaining the relative calm of the port, we passed a number of fishing vessels being hammered by the storm yet with crews still working their nets.

To this day I have a mental picture one of those fishermen’s faces—a young man of perhaps twenty with long blond hair thrashing wildly off to the side of his face in the shrieking wind. He was clinging to a rope staring at us—mouth agape as he sucked air through the flying spume.

“Those bastards are mad,” I remarked to John as we struggled toward the port entrance. He nodded agreement. We later learned that five of the boats had gone down with all hands. I wondered if the young man had been among the drowned sailors.

We’d been stuck in Brest for over a month as storm after storm pounded its way through. One morning a battered freighter limped into port, its bow bent to one side by huge waves out in the Biscay. ‘The Bay’ is reputed to be second only to Cape Horn in its ability to send both ships and men to the sea floor.

In Brest we met Ronald, a Scotsman living there. On a number of occasions he acted as translator for us. Just after Christmas he invited us to a New Year’s Eve party at a farmhouse owned by one of his friends. It turned out to be a place out of history with thick fieldstone walls, slate roof and a hard-packed earthen floor inside. When we arrived, a pig was roasting on a spit in the huge fire-place.

Around twenty people were there—none of whom possessed more than a smattering of English—but they made us instantly welcome. We sat at trestle tables in front of the fire and began tucking into the delicacies heaped before us—truffles, oysters, shrimp, mussels and a variety of cheeses.

Me and John--local celebrities

At one point, as I attempted to take a swig of wine after downing an oyster, the man seated next to me, lightly grabbed my wrist. “No Monsieur,” he chided me. “You must ‘ave zis wine with the oystair!” He then proceeded to pour me a glass of the correct grape.

At this early stage of the event, I learned much of French etiquette from my table companion—which wines were suited to the various foods; which foods should precede or follow other foods.

But by the time we got to the pig, all protocol had gone by the board—wine was being haphazardly gulped from bottles; raucous singing filled the air, and the unfortunate pig’s head was flying around the room. A couple cleared a space on one of the tables and danced until a trestle gave out and the table—along with its burden of food and wine—crashed to the floor. It was becoming my kind of party.

The moral of the story is this: If you drink enough of the right wine with the right food, in short order you won’t give a rat’s rear end what you’re drinking or what you’re eating—or for that matter, what day it is.

Edited by Davina