(Summer notes)
Two pieces of crucial information reached me on that glorious summer day.
It was a hot afternoon, but in a nice, warm way*. I was somewhere in Lower Silesia and the time was sixty odd years since the Soviets, with the Yanks nodding, switched it from Germans to Poles. I was browsing an old newspaper** and what was to turn out one of the most important books of my life.
It felt like Eden. And if I were a naked Eve and a snake egged me on to get up and pick something up from a tree, I couldn't be arsed: why the hell would I want to leave that paradise in the shade of the canopy put up between the lawn strewn with flowers and fir trees and the garden overflowing with fruit?
My father joined me and we started chatting. Soon we wanted to know more about each other. And, from one thing to another, I learnt that I belonged here even more than I thought: some of my dad's uncles had lived in Breslau before the war and his family, based in Toruń and some other parts of Pomerania, had been in fairly regular contact with them (Berger's the name). I must have heard this before - I often talk to my dad about the old times - but I completely forgot about it. I'd been doing a lot bonding with the region at that time and this was ground-breaking news.
But it proved just a little, inadequate warm-up before what lay in store for me in the old, obscure history book.
After my dad left, I opened it at random and found a chapter about the Burgundians. I started following the route of their march across Europe at the time when Germanic people set out on the original Grand Tour - the crude kind, before the English invented the more genteel version. Apparently, after the Burgundians left mainland Scandinavia, they lived for some time on Bornholm. After a while, they decided to continue southwards - my guess is because Gamay did not yield too impressively there. They hung out on the banks of the Vistula for a moment, and then...
I dropped the book. I just couldn't believe it! It was too bold, rich, pungent and smoky to be true! ... They settled in ... Lower Silesia! Now, I dropped - to my knees - "Oh, Burgundians!" - and then face down on the terroir - "my compatriots!"
I pressed my face to the soil and, I could swear, out of its depths something reached me: complex mushroom and animal notes, with cherry and raspberry nose, followed up by firm tannins and a slightly medicinal edge; a bit rustic perhaps, but still lovely, with a final touch of undergrowth:
Vosne-Romanée 1996, Jacques Cacheux et fils!
*no, I guess it doesn't work.
**I was posing in the local village as an academic (no one knew yet I hadn't even got a student's card, because of that photo that I'd never got round to bringing to Filip) - and to read old news is much more academic than to read fresh news, as you'll surely agree. If you don't, I'll explain later.
(Illustration: me welcoming the Burgundians in Obsendorf)
