Collector and Caviste

George dos Santos of Antic Wine, in Vieux Lyon

A set of skeleton keys on a ring hangs by the door, and we take them to go downstairs. A series of doors are unlocked. Footsteps sound gently down a steep stairwell made of old chiseled stone. It is time to get a bottle. Loic keeps a list with details on when any bottle might be best to open. Our cave is rather rudimentary. We have to bring out an extension chord and plug it in outside in the pathway (I hesitate to call it a hallway), just to get light in there. We can't store anything but wine either, since the humidity level is too high. Cardboard boxes disintegrate in that kind of environment, furniture would be ruined. Ikea shelves line with bottle racks and crates that age rather quickly, along with some styrofoam bottle nooks line the walls. We keep other things, like that big ladder we use a couple of times a year, and some other junk. The wine in our cave is really nothing special when you think about what a wine can promise, however. For about 9 years we've been building up our little collection of wines we taste at the vineyards and buy by the case, but we have never really had the means to build a real discriminating collection.

For all of the wonderful ways to get good wine in this country, sometimes going to a caviste is the best way to go. For one thing, visiting the vineyards takes a lot of time. When we went to the Bordeaux region and only had 10 days, we had a hard time choosing what vineyards to visit, and scheduling took some finesse. When you take the time to visit a producer, you are pretty much locked into at least an hour of listening, learning, touring, tasting. You really have to budget your time, plan very carefully, and be very choosy about which doors to knock on. There's no way to fit your hopes and dreams into into one visit, or into the trunk of your car. You get tied up in the stories. It's very hard to cover a whole lot of ground in these circumstances. For this reason, when we go to specific regions, one thing we always do in addition to visiting the vineyards is to find a reputable caviste there, and see what he might have for tasting.

This is not my cave - it is the 16th century cellar at Antic Wine, Vieux Lyon

A caviste is a person with a passion for collecting wine that has translated into a life calling. Every caviste has his way of filling out his cave, and his way of relating to his clients. In St. Emilion, we visited one who specialized in wines local to the region. Each day he had a different set of a dozen bottles open to taste, compare, discuss and buy. He did very good business there. The main benefit of going to a caviste is that you are profiting from this person's expertise when you enter the shop. The price stays reasonable, on the whole, for the product. Being a caviste is an honest business. You're paying them for the research they have already done - their education, their experience, knowledge of their collection, and their ability to obtain certain vintages that the average vinyard tour customer on a road trip would never have. An independent caviste's collection can be truly exceptional, so keep your eye out for them, wherever you go in France.



One truly exceptional independent caviste I know in Lyon is George dos Santos, working out of Vieux Lyon, from his shop called Antic Wine. He is a collector. He has nurtured and grown, in his way, and on his terms, traveling the world, a simply amazing collection of those rare wines you might find at auction, in addition to just plain hard to find French and international bottles and vintages. At the same time, wine is in the end for drinking, n'est-ce pas? While collecting the wine is fine, we also like to taste and understand what makes these wines fun to seek out and such a thrill to share.

George regularly holds tastings at his wine bar two doors down, Le George Five. Featuring 2800 bottles on the menu and 120 bottles open for drinking by the glass per week, you've got a great opportunity to taste and learn. They serve small plates of the best kind of finger food - Buffalo Mozzarella, Sardines, truffles in Brie and Saint Felicien cheese, dried sausage from Ardeche, Corsican pâtés, Parma ham, Pata Negra cut from the bone from it's throne of honor on the bar. Le George Five has quickly become a wine bar of choice for enthusiasts and gourmandes alike.

George dos Santos' regular organized wine tasting soirees have proven so popular that they now have to turn a lot of people away. They are always booked well in advance. He also holds private tastings of special bottles by invitation only. George regularly teams up with Lyon's top chefs to prepare accompanying dishes at these private soirées. If you are visiting Lyon it's through your concierge that you are most likely to get access to these types of events, although purchasing from his shop during the day might allow you to broach the subject with him or a member of his staff.

For a wine enthusiast, going into George dos Santos' shop is a cathartic experience. This year there has been quite a buzz about his imports in the international press. I was there a couple of weeks ago to take his portrait for a wine magazine recently. I got the sense that for George, there is a certain spirituality in his activity as collector and caviste that I feel privileged to be near. Perhaps it is the collector in me. He hits the right note. I certainly can trust him with my wine selections. When I have a very special bottle to buy, George dos Santos is the man.

Antic Wine
18 rue de Boeuf
69005 LYON
04.78.37.08.96

Le George Five
32 rue de Boeuf
69005 LYON
04.72.40.23.30

Brigitte's Poires Martin Sec au Vin, Poached Winter Pears

Christmas made easy: Winter pears simmered in wine, served after a simple meal with gathered family. While we still have a few days 'till Christmas, we want to rev up the holiday now! This is an easy dessert to put together one afternoon and put aside to chill, soaking in their syrup. Choose pears that mature in the winter for this recipe, like Bosc. This recipe fills the house with the perfume of the holiday, so now is the perfect time. They cost pennies a person. No special shopping for this recipe. The hardest thing is washing the pears. With poached pears, simple is best. Adding long lists of ingredients may add a strange je ne sais quoi, but that's not what we look for in our poached pears. These are a kind of gift from heaven, so simple, delicious, and satisfying.

Poires au Vin

6 pears, Martin Sec or Bosc
1 1/2 cups red wine, any kind you have
3 tablespoons sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon

About the pears: Right now in France we have the winter pear called Martin Sec, which is a wonderful cooking pear, because their texture and flavor when cooked stays firm, smooth and sweet. They retain their body when simmered in anything from caramel to wine. If you don't have Martin Sec, a Bosc is perfect.

Wash the pears thoroughly. Nestle them into a pot that has a cover. Add the wine, and bring it to a boil. Mix the sugar and cinnamon together, and sprinkle it over the pears in their bubbling wine. Let that roll at a full boil for 4 minutes, then top off with water to cover the pears by 2/3. Bring to a boil again and reduce the heat to low and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat, let cool to room temperature, then refrigerate, in their liquid, for as long as 3 days. Serve cold, with their syrup. You can make a batch of these and have them on hand as a dessert choice at family gatherings.

This is going to be a very cheesy Christmas! Everybody thought the same thing and brought cheeses this year! I gathered some from the Alps and the Lyonnais region, and presented them to Brigitte. This was when I heard that Aude and Seb had done the same thing with cheeses from the Auvergne! This means the cheese plate is going to be the best it has ever been, I think.

Seville Oranges: Vin d'Orange

One of the first home infused aperetifs I experienced in France was Vin d'Orange. My mother-in-law Brigitte does it every year, as did her mother. Where they live, Seville oranges, otherwise known as bitter oranges, grow in a whole lot of people's gardens and the fruit gets passed from hand to hand, distributed out from one person to another throughout the month of January and February. Certain towns in the Var have them growing in the streets. A lot of grocery stores in the cities have them when they come into season, and they turn up at the market as well.

You can ask just about any French person you know if someone in their family does Vin d'Orange, and almost invariably the answer comes back yes. You won't normally find this apéro for sale, people just give bottles of it to each other. The apérétif is strained into bottles after only one month of maceration time. It lasts a really long time, but we usually use up our bottle within a few months after Brigitte gives it to us.

I had been married to Loic for about 2 1/2 years when Brigitte opened up her kitchen notebook to me. She was cooking dinner and I was looking for something to do. I settled in at the kitchen table and began translating my favorites from her own handwritten book. We had a glass of wine together and talked, and I asked questions about this or that recipe. I have since passed this particular recipe on and continue to get letters and notes of thanks from as far away as San Fransisco for it. It originates from Mireille Durandeau of Toulon in the Var, with a few notes from her daughter Brigitte.



My notes on this recipe:
- A kilo of Seville oranges is about 6 or 7 oranges.
- If you don't have eau de vie, you can use any good vodka or anything with 40% alcohol or 80 proof. 1/2 liter is about 2 cups. Remember that this is a simple recipe so try and use something neutral.
- If you don't want to break out the grinder or cringe at the thought of cleaning it, give it a few pulses in the food processor. That's what I do.
- Since Brigitte gets her wine from the co-op at St. Cecile de Vignes, she measures out 2 liters exactly, but for those of us who buy our wine in bottles, you have to use 3 bottles of wine, minus 2 glasses. That means open 3 bottles, pour one glass for yourself and someone else, and use the rest of the wine.
- Use granulated sugar. 750 grams is equal to about 3 1/3 cups.

I post this recipe as an idea for this talented card designer and blogger who shares with us the story of her quest for the Seville orange (her holy grail of the moment) in Vancouver, wherein she finally finds some.

Diligent Patience

The Vin de Noix you can prepare at home takes a few months and sometimes as long as a whole year to come into its own, but the payoff is much better than any of that watered down industrial stuff on the market. Stamped with its “seal of approval”, the factory-made corner cut version is eons behind in quality what you can produce by carefully choosing the right ingredients and doing things with quality in mind over quantity or profit. The key is being able to identify what will withstand the test of time, and doing your best to shoot for your end result, even if it won’t fall fully into place for a while. The beauty of this nut wine is that Mother Nature works it, step by step, day by day. Your only work is the often difficult task of choosing quality, then the practice of patience.

Location, Location, Location. After provenance, even if your hands-on work is minimal, the wait and see is very good practice in itself. Do what comes naturally. Set a place aside for your nut wine. Go ahead and actively leave it alone. Set yourself a schedule for other pressing, more important things and practice faith in the choices you have made. Don’t judge a nut wine too early in the process. Don't shake it or stir it. Give it what it needs. Keep it sheltered from the heat, give it a little bit of air but protect it from dust. Eventually, your diligent patience will pay off. In my opinion if you aspire to make great nut wine, and your efforts are rewarded with good cheer even a year later, it is enough motivation in itself to continue on.

Imagine my surprise when we received a family guest from Loïc’s father’s side. She took a look at the jars I had set on a tray that I had removed from the safe, ready to strain and bottle. She told me that Loïc’s father used to do a Vin de Noix, it was something that he did before he and Brigitte had married and before Brigitte brought her mother’s family recipe for Vin d’Orange. It surprised me that he never mentioned this, not once, over the years, when presented with our version. My first reflex was one of puzzled exasperation. Why anyone would fail to mention such a thing? The subject of Vin de Noix is a wonderful topic of discussion as far as we are concerned. But perhaps there is more to the story than meets the eye. Perhaps in his mind it represents something he does not want to remember or reminisce about. Something dark. Sometimes you can tell more about a person by what they don’t say. His lengthy soliloquies are often about much less meaningful subjects. Therein lies a mystery that is worth setting aside to contemplate. It is rich enough to write down to think about later.

This year, I threw some roasted cocoa beans into the mix. It turned out to be a good decision. After a few months with the nuts, their flavor infused into but did not overpower the brew, which was what I was hoping for. It was like adding vanilla, which adds a certain depth of flavor, but does not play a deciding role in the overall theme. I will continue to use the cocoa beans in years to come, at least for a part of the batch.

The flavor of the wine has taken on its full natural nut flavor, with a hint of chocolate kicking in on the palate, like a lingering memory. It is pleasant to sip, even now. Very nice added to coffee. Months from now, when Mother Nature has done her work at mellowing the flavor, I think we’ll have a real winner on our hands. When Loic’s uncle’s family prepares their Genepi, they sweeten after the infusion. This summer, while the green nuts were steeping in their juice, I went to New York for a visit and came back with some real maple syrup. I added a tablespoon or two, just to give it that je ne sais quoi.

I found a Lumocolor permanent glasochrom 108 20-0. This is a permanent, non smear grease pencil that comes in different colors. I can write on my Vin de Noix bottles and it won’t smear off. A couple of experiments later, I had this year’s packaging.

A Gift for the Green Walnut Lady

Before we went to the market this morning

Every weekend for months now I have been meaning to drop off a bottle of vin de noix with the lady who supplied me with the nuts last year. Throughout the year she sells a variety of things from her farm in Grenoble, but her principle specialty is walnuts, they must have a large orchard of walnut trees. Mushrooms in the fall, dried nuts offered throughout the winter, various veggies coming from her garden, always asparagus in the spring.

I inquired once in the past with a man who sometimes used to work her stand about getting some green ones, and he gruffly turned me away, but it was because he didn't get it. Last year in passing I noticed that this woman had a bunch of green walnuts back behind the table in a bucket, and she was a bit taken aback when I asked oh please could I buy some. She was a bit surprised that I make vin de noix, maybe because of my accent.

I was very glad to have found them without any effort whatsoever. In years past I have gone to great effort to get the green nuts and people always made a big deal about making me meet them at some particular place or come and pick up the order under constraining circumstances. Last year's vin de noix was made with this lady's walnuts, the ones that serendipitously fell into my lap.

Next Sunday is the festival of St. Jean, which is also the day that traditionally people pick the green walnuts in Grenoble. I have been told this by several producers over the years, and I am not exactly sure why they always choose this particular weekend, except that it's always around the beginning of summer. The Festival of St. Jean always falls on the third Sunday of June. The vin de noix is an extra that comes from these green nuts.

The festival itself has its roots in the pagan celebrations surrounding the summer solstice, but in the time of Clovis, our dear Burgundian newly converted king, the pagan festivals became the festival of St. Jean the Baptist. Many a festivity takes place on this day, especially in this region, where Clovis followed his bride the Burgundian princess Clothilde into Roman Catholicism. From a more local perspective, there is also the neighborhood in the 5th arrondissement of Lyon called St. Jean, named after the cathedral there, and they always have big parties involving lots of merrymaking the third weekend of June.

This morning I put my name, address and phone number on a card and tied it to the bottle with some red string that Callan gave me before she moved to New York. I thought it would be better than just giving the lady the unmarked bottle. That's fine for friends and family, but since I am merely a a familiar face to her, I thought it might be better to idenitfy myself with the gift and let her rest assured I wasn't some kind of crazy. Loic of course thought I was being silly even for giving her a bottle to begin with, since she is not someone we socialize with. But I had been meaning to do this since winter and every time I always forgot to take a bottle with me on the way out the door to market.

Today at the market, we went to her stand where she had some cherries out, and I presented her with the wine. I told her that last year the batch had turned out particularly well, and I wanted her to have a taste of the product of her own nuts. It was such a nice moment between us, and she promised to bring me more nuts next Sunday. Loic was amazed and mused aloud on our way home, wondering why she seemed so incredibly happy to have received the bottle of vin de noix from me, in fact more incredibly happy than anyone he had ever seen at receiving a bottle of one of our home made fortified wines, ever.

I explained to him that when you show to a producer that they mean something in your life, that their product is a part of your family tradition, and show to them that you appreciate their product and come to know them through connections like this, it warms their heart. A lot.

So you know what we'll be doing next Sunday. If you want to make Vin de Noix this year, here are two recipes from my kitchen notebook, one for a liqueur, and one for a lighter aperitif drink.

The Best Bordeaux I've had in a long while

When we went to grill some merguez at the chateau, Seb went rooting in the cave and brought out a bottle of the wine from his stock that they served at the wedding. I was swept away on a magic velvet carpet tasting this wine. I almost cried when they lamented only having 60 bottles of this lovely Bordeaux left. It was good at the wedding and amazing now. Maybe the company had something to do with it. Maybe the weather on that balmy spring day, the dappled sunlight under the arches along the arcade where we had lunch. Maybe it was the lawn chairs which we set up in a circle in a sunny spot near where the forest begins and where we all fell asleep, listening to the towering elms. Having the right cave has a whole lot to do with how a wine ages. I understand why some people invest so much in ensuring that the conditions for aging their wines are just right. Aude and Seb received various greats from historic millésimes from elder uncles on Seb's side as wedding gifts. I can only imagine what they have in store for the special occasions that they'll celebrate in the years to come.

Salon des Vignerons Independents - Lyon

Every year we go to the Salon des Vignerons Independents when it comes through town, and every year we attack it from a different angle. With over 500 wineries offering their up their wines for tastes, you have to have some kind of method. The question about whether to drink our tastes or spit them out is really a question about the reasons for being there. Do you want to just enjoy the camraderie and drink some wine, or are you hoping to take this opportunity for a good comparison between wines and invest in something really good for the cave?

Six years ago we didn't approach this question from a particularly sage point of view, being our first time and all, and we ended up drinking a few tastes, and then getting all romantic and gushy and buying whatever wine we happened to come across, which was not very smart. The second year, we were a bit more structured in our approach, breaking up our tasting to give a comparative vision to what we were doing, only tasting one or two kinds of wine in a day, and doing our best to spit. The fourth year, I got serious and made a database and read up about what the experts had to say in their tasting notes of the wines we'd chosen to seek out, and we completely gave up on all swallowing.

From then on out, we have prepared each year's fair itinerary in advance. It gives us latitude to invest all remaining grey matter into considerations of age, and soil, nose and body, sucking bubbles through the wine through our puckered lips and letting it settle near our jaws as we reflect carefully about the past and future. Most of all, we compare. We listen about the weather and the land, and also take the opportunity to see how some of the wines we've already got tucked away are developing without actually opening them at home. We always reluctantly spit out every single mouthful. In these past few years we've been able to get some really nice wines for the cave. Some of the ones that have just come to open out this year have really exceeded our expectations, and they'll only be getting better. I am only now beginning to understand a little about what makes people so excited about keeping wine.

Last year I was laid up with some kind of illness and could not go, and found that Loic did quite well without me. This year, since I am engaged on a big translation project that I find fulfilling and beautiful, I was able to send Loic off to do some tasting without much thought to what I was missing. I waited until last night's last open hour or two to go, just for a very short time, with a couple of friends, after a long day of slogging through culinary translation.

Loic had made the rounds on the previous three days, and I tasted a few of his favorites before we made a decision about some of our final purchases. The 1976 Muscat being poured above went straight down - forget the bucket! I would never have had a chance to try had it not been for the fair. We now have hundreds of bottles of wine in the cellar. Loic of course remains our house sommelier. My trust in his judgement is implicit, although I do appreciate that he asks me to taste and involves me in the decisions.

One thing I have learned is that you can get lucky with French wine by chance here and there, but with a little effort into research and some simple patience, that cool dirt floored vaulted underground stone room can transform into a veritable gold mine. It is very exciting. There's something of ourselves in the wines we choose for the cave. Opening and serving them to our guests when they're ready is a real pleasure.


They were selling stuffed duck necks at the wine fair. Serious markup!

Vin de Noix update

The house smells like nuts this afternoon. We've bottled the vin de noix. If I were a mouse, I'd have already waddled up to the little hole in the neighbors' kitchen fireplace upstairs and stuck my nose out far enough to get a good whiff and then plunged headlong down into the darkness to land in our fireplace. This happened one year, and luckily, Sister captured the mouse that fell. She does not have any teeth, being an old cat. She's not a predator, in fact she's afraid of anything that moves, but she knows when another animal does not belong in our house. She tries very hard to do what is expected of her. She caught him, he was just a baby mouse, gave him enough of a scare to keep him from running away, and called for us to come and take care of the situation. Good kitty.


Weeks of bottle watching are over. They had good bottles cheap at the olive oil store. I finally settled on those. They'll do very well as gifts once I spruce them up with a label and maybe some raffia. The shape reminds me of those old time elixer bottles we used to find at the fleamarket back home. For the vin de noix, my first choice would have been pots lyonnais. But they were just too expensive. What's the use of making your own holiday gifts if you're not going to save any money?

The vin de noix has turned as black as tar in the two months it's been resting. In an attempt to remove as much sediment as possible from the final jars, I strained it through a French press lined with a coffee filter to even further filter it.

The French press was further lined with coffee filter to bottle the vin de noix. The result was still completely opaque and black. It smells and tastes wonderful, with a slight bitterness that will mellow within a month. An amazing legendary home aperetif enthusiast named Foodman in the eGullet Vin de Noix thread managed to get his vin de noix to take on a deep amber color that catches the light. Maybe his nut ratio was different, I'll have to ask him.


Even though I used wine in the mix this year, it is just as dark as it was last year. The flavor, however, is lighter. Still excellent, and in many ways I'll say a much better aperetif wine. What will I do for the packaging? So many possibilities. A cloth pouch with a graphic? Some kind of special paper? A booklet with recipes for drinks? Maybe even recipes for use in cooking and for aperetif treats that go well with the vin de noix? Just a plain white label with calligraphy? A box? Maybe a trio of three different apero drinks for the small bottles. I think the olive oil store has wooden cases that hold 3 bottles. Maybe.

I will try and think of just the thing to bring out the special beauty of these bottles with the packaging.

Punch Mirabelle façon Ile de la Réunion

My friends from l'Ile de la Réunion gave me the formula for making what they call punch, but which is also called le rhum arrangé. It's a very simple but very delicious secret: fruit macerated for 2-3 months in rum, sweetened with sugar. 2 of our 10 kilos of mirabelles went into rum today, and we'll have nice punch maison to serve or give by the time sweater weather comes around again. I will never forget the one time we sampled one each of four different flavors of punch with Sonia and Olivier. We were bumping into lamp posts all the way home that night. Well not really, but we were simply glowing after sampling that punch. It's a miracle I remembered what Olivier said about burning the sugar to make the syrup.

Punch Mirabelle

special equipment: You'll need to crush some pits for this, so get a hammer or a nutcracker that will crack them.

2 kilos or 4 pounds mirabelles or small golden plums
4 bottles (.7 liters each bottle) of white rum
2 vanilla beans
1 kilo sugar
1 cup water
*four 1.5 litre/quart mason jars

Note on the jars: You don't need any specific sized jar, but the bigger the jar, the better. The total volume that your jars should hold for this recipes is 6 liters or a gallon and a half. Once you've strained them, this recipe yields about 4 liters of Punch. The jars must have an airtight seal.

Pit the mirabelles, keeping the pits aside, and distribute the fruit evenly between your jars. For each pound or 500 grams or pound of mirabelles, crush 20 mirabelle pits and sprinkle them into the jars over the fruit. The pits contain a little nut that smells like almond, but it is not almond so don't be tempted to eat it. Add 10 more unbroken pits for each pound of fruit. Cut the vanilla beans into pieces and distribute the pieces between the jars you are using.

Make the syrup: Put about 1/4 of your kilo of sugar into a heavy bottomed saucepan. Turn the heat to high, and watch carefully and stir as the sugar begins to turn brown and melt. Once the sugar has melted, (it will be brown and liquid, and very hot, watch out!) turn down the heat to low and pour in 1.5 cups or 250ml of water all at once, being careful to step back from the pan which will steam, because the sugar is incredibly hot! The sugar will crack and solidify instantly and be stuck to the bottom of the pan, but just be patient for a minute or two and stir and swish the water around with a wooden spoon to melt the sugar. The caramelized sugar will melt readily enough into the water. Stir it over the low heat until it finally all melts. It will take a few minutes, and the result will be a dark brown color with a deep red hue. Add the rest of the kilo of sugar and turn the heat up again, stirring to dissolve the rest of the white sugar in the dark fluid. Bring the syrup to a rolling boil and then remove it from heat. Pour it into a heat resistant large measuring cup, you should have about a quart of caramel syrup. If you don't have a liter or quart, add water to make it a liter/quart, and put it back on the heat, bring it to a full boil, then remove and let it cool a bit, about 5 minutes.

Once it is cool, you can taste it. But don't eat too much. Keep in mind that if you add some cream or butter to this sauce while it's warm, you have rich thick caramel sauce for ice cream stuffed profiteroles or any other dessert that can be served with caramel sauce. Keep in mind also that this sauce, if indulged in too heavily, will take an extra 20 minutes on the bike every day for as long as a week to work off. So keep your wits about you. And don't let your husband see you sampling the sauce, because inevitably he'll want some too and you might not have enough for the punch.

You have already added the fruit, the crushed and uncrushed pits, and the vanilla into the jars. Add rum to each jar until it is filled to about the halfway mark, and then divide your syrup accordingly for the jars you are using. For the four 1.5 liter jars I used, I put 1 cup of syrup into each one. (If you use three 2 quart jars, for instance, divide the syrup and put 1 1/3 cup syrup into each jar.) Top the jars off with rum, filling to the top, and close them with a hermetic seal. Gently agitate the jars to dissolve the caramel syrup. Put the macerating fruits away for two months, strain carefully through a coffee filter in the chinois, removing the fruits and crushed pits, and then seal the Punch into bottles for serving or giving.

If you are interested in maintaining the fruit for serving in desserts, when you crack the pits and remove the nut inside in tact, and don't let the shell get smashed. Once the fruit has been seperated from the pits after straining and bottling the punch, the fruit can be returned to a jar, covered with sugar syrup again, and saved for later use.

Vin de Noix

Last year I made a liqueur de noix with green walnuts that came out at the end of June. It was a wild ride into the unknown, and by September we were enjoying the fruits of that effort. I served it to the group at Thanksgiving and by the time mother came to visit in May we'd celebrated enough special occasions with friends that we tapped the last drop of our own vin maison from the decanter. My one big regret last year with the vin de noix was that I did not prepare a much bigger batch. The batch only yielded a bit more than a bottle, but certainly the quality of the elixer was magic. We put what we had into a fancy decanter and served it to enthusiastic friends little by little, using the small glasses, and I always sipped my share with a sad and guilty kind of bittersweet regret. Why oh why did we not make more?

My recipe was a kind of montage last year, with my knowledge of my mother-in-law Brigitte's Vin d'Orange and how she likes it strong, and some Italian recipes for nocino. Brigitte puts the Vin d'Orange away in bulk to macerate for several months every late winter. Images of her bottling activities, which take place in the summer, come to mind. Brigitte, wearing nothing but a bikini, in the kitchen with a couple of funnels rotating around into bottles which have been placed on every surface that will take one, and summoning Yves to come and add some muscle while they filter and decant it. For a long time afterward, the diligent sound of pounding comes from the kitchen as she inserts the corks and pounds them in one by one with a rubber mallet. She hands the bottles over to us with a kiss and a pat every time we need a new one, the elixer of her good cheer, reminding us of her sunny disposition (and her hair color as it was for a few years) to be taken whenever we need or even desire a little bit of Brigitte to fill our hearts with joy.

The idea to make the vin de noix actually came from Brigitte. I called her, asking her what I could do as a gift wine - she had given me the recipe for her Vin d'Orange once I had been married to Loic for a couple of years and although I definitely loved it and desired to make some of my own I didn't want to reproduce her family gift. She mused that I should be using something local - she gets her bitter oranges from the tree, they grow locally everywhere where she lives. 'Why not Vin de Noix? You are very close to Grenoble and they are famous for the walnuts.' So the idea was born, and I sat on it for awhile. I inquired when I might get some nuts for the vin de noix, and it was explained that they are ready to pick on the 3rd Sunday of June, the Fete de St. Jean, St. John the Baptist day.

The first year we missed the window, mainly because we didn't approach the right man. As everyone knows, sometimes the vendors at the market are not actually producers and don't understand their product. I approached a vendor who was selling nothing but walnuts from a very minimal operation and who looked somewhat like a walnut himself, in fact his entire being exuded the idea of walnut from the faded ash brown color of his hair to the suede boots he was wearing. You look at the fellow and are drawn into a long epic tale about the hardship and joys of walnuts. But it was just an act, one of those theatrical costumes that he had taken as far as living it out like one of those medieval actors you find at a theme park. We unfortunately find this at the markets here more and more often these days, and back then I was tricked. He quite knowlingly told me that green walnuts weren't ready yet. Those who are not in the know about their own product and what it's good for stubbornly deny the availability of such things as green walnuts. We glissed in perilous dismay through the window that year.

Then around mid-June during the next year, I identified and befriended an actual nut producer at the market on a Thursday and he confirmed and enthusiastically agreed to my plan. This one looked like a normal guy and after a bit of questioning it was clear he was the real deal. The nuts have to be used quickly after they're picked, and they have to be picked at just the right time. During the time when we had arranged for the pickup, I was in Paris with my niece, our last hurrah at the end of her stay with us before I deposited her on a plane at CDG bound for her home. We were just near the Sacre Coeur and overlooking the glorious city, I called and confirmed by portable phone that my authentic nut friend had the goods and then made another call to Loic to ensure that he hadn't forgotten his appointment to get them.

The first advice you'll see in any vin de noix recipe worth its weight is that you must wear gloves and not use a wooden cutting board when you make your vin de noix. This advice is not to be taken lightly. The immature nut pods exude a fluid that turns yellow, then brown, and then into an indelible black stain that is not unlike the semi-permanent henna tattoo. This staining liquid can seep into the tiniest crevices and take weeks to go away. Use gloves. Don't slice your walnuts on wood. Scrub your plastic cutting board with hot soapy water and a brush the moment you're finished cutting the nuts.

Last year's recipe did not use wine and experimented with spices, a liqueur. I had tasted the vin de noix and aperetif drinks on offer in the various tourist trap shops and wanted to shoot much higher. I knew that the taste of the nuts has a lot of character. The other thing was that I really wanted to avoid the sugar syrup flavor that grabs you like barba papa from the commercial versions. So my idea was to use another sweetening agent, something that harmonizes gracefully with nuts and won't just seem cheap and sweet. Grade B Maple syrup was my choice.

Liqueur de Noix

38 green walnuts, quartered
1 vanilla bean
2 star anise
2 long peppercorns
2 thick slices of lemon
1 cinnamon stick
1 cup grade B maple syrup
500ml or 2 cups Noilly Pratt Original Dry
1 bottle of vodka


I mixed this up in a large bowl, covered it, and let it sit for a few months. At 2 weeks I became afraid that the star anise was going to take over, so I removed it. The result at the 2 month mark was slightly bitter and maybe a bit medicinal, due to the high alcohol content. I bottled it and put it away for some more time, and at month 4, it had mellowed and rounded out, and something happened to the flavors that was extraordinary - it was clearly something special. Very special. I mean this stuff was so incredibly delicious it became kind of like a precious nectar we had to guard and treat with kid gloves. We began serving it to friends and also using it to prepare a special sauce for magret de canard and drop by drop it dissapeared.

This year I wanted to multiply my output by at least 10, but realized we could not afford all of the vodka that would take. I did some more research into what went into various traditional French vin de noix recipes, and settled on some changes to my recipe this time. This is for a less alcoholic drink but still something with some serious punch following in the family tradition. It will produce 12 gift bottles plus a little stash on the side for sipping and cooking here at home. This year I omitted the star anise, and introduced szchuan peppercorn, due to the pleasant things I've discovered during cooking about the light floral flavors it imparts. I replaced the lemon with orange, and used a bit more per volume because I enjoyed a nice warmed up glass of last year's wine on a cold late autumn day with an orange slice and it was a great compliment. I replaced the cinnamon with the traditional cloves. And last but not least, instead of dry vermouth, my vin de noix is topped with a hearty full bodied white Burgundy wine. Noted below, the ratios per 1.5 liter jar.

Vin de Noix

Per 1.5 liter jar:

About 8 nuts each jar
500ml vodka
1/2 cup grade B maple syrup
1/3 vanilla bean
2 cloves
1 t. szchuan peppercorns
2 slices of an orange
top off with a full bodied white burgundy (Bourgogne) wine (used 5 bottles to fill all 6 of the jars to the top).

Vin de noix, in order to turn it's beautiful deep dark color, needs contact with some air. This is why mason jars are perfect for this - because you can close them without using the rubber gasket and they'll have enough air circulating to allow the liquid to turn black. Once 2 months have gone by, filter and bottle your vin de noix. Seal the bottles tightly then, and allow it to mature for another month or two before giving it away. By all means, taste it at every step, to understand how it develops and what to expect. You'll be suprised at the many different stages it goes through. I'll report back when this is ready to bottle.

Family Secrets: Vin Maison

In France, a vin maison is an aperetif or digestif consisting of either a wine, an eau de vie, or a mixture of both that has been infused over a period of several months with a special home mix of flavorings. Bitter oranges from the garden, green walnuts, local herbs, and wildflowers all find their way into home recipes. There is always a bit of anticipation when people bring out the unmarked bottle containing their vin maison.

Under normal circumstances, if you drink enough vin maison together with its maker, you’re bound to be offered a bottle. If you bring the empty bottle back for a refill and grease the works with adoring compliments, you might then ask for some enlightenment on the proportions and secret additions. This of course includes the few tips that always never seem to make it into a written recipe.

We’d been celebrating an aunt’s birthday all day, the horseplay by the pool was over, the children were sedated and staring into the candle flames, dessert dishes cleared. Mamie had already been delivered home, and out came the Genepi Maison.

I have had Genepi a hundred and one times. For some reason we’re always being offered commercially produced bottles of the stuff as gifts every time a friend goes up to the mountains. The times I tasted Genepi, I was less than impressed with its cloying sweetness that accosted my jaw and coated my throat, and that bitter aftertaste. It was the Genepi Maison that brought me to a catharsis of taste.

“Now,” I proclaimed to the table, “I understand Genepi.” It had been a long day. It had begun before noon with a huge glass bowl of what Genevieve calls "sangria" and cousin Seb's anchoiade to start us out nice and thirsty. Although my proclamation could have been considered to be exaggerated by anyone looking in from the outside, it was taken seriously by my after dinner companions, as it should have. I was serious.

The flavor was clear and complex, it had a life, it spelled out the mountains, air, soil, and flowers. I had never had real genepi before, I realized, the moment this elixer touched my lips.

It was the brother of the husband of the sister of the mother in law that warned – “Attention, these family secrets are closely guarded.” The table went silent, and I sat mesmerized as the candles burned down and I was drawn through the spiraling path into the tale of this family’s Genepi Maison.

Every year, the papi of the tired children at the table takes their fathers up to the secret places he knows in the Alps where the genepi flower grows. Mind you, picking genepi will get you thrown into prison, it’s illegal to gather because it is endangered. At one time, the tourists began to rip up and destroy all of the delicate flowers, which grows only at very high altitudes, above the clouds, in very shallow crevices in the rocks, with only a little bit of rocky soil and nothing for their roots to hold on to.

People would try and pull the blossoms and their stems off and rip out the whole plant, killing it. Today only a few plants are left, and they are protected. Papi, as he has all his life, knows how to gather the flowers in such a way that the plant is never damaged and it always grows back, and for that reason, he knows the secret places where they grow year after year, and this secret is never divulged to anyone except his sons.

The path is steep and treacherous, and far off the beaten hiking trails in the mountains, even a trained guide would find the way to be difficult. But each year Papi continues his tradition to take his sons up for a few days in the mountains, and they gather about 400 flowers with their stems over the course of about 3 days, leaving the plants to push forth again the next year where they can bloom again.

They don’t get their stems from one particular place, there is a whole list written in Papi’s mind, and according to the weather and the way the earth and vegetation has moved by landslides and the deep winter snow and so forth, he makes the decision to gather the stems in any particular area.

There are two types of Genepi plant: genepi jaune, and the genepi bleu; the bleu is more rare and flavorful than the jaune, and is not identifid by the color of the blossom, because the blossom for both types is still the color yellow. The genepi bleu has an argentine / silver tint to the stem and leaves. Bleu is the best and most flavorful kind, and is the kind Papi gathers.

They bring the cuttings home and dry them on paper outside, and when they are sufficiently dry, the blossoms with their stems are inserted whole one by one into the bottles, 40 blossoms with their stems to a bottle. The stems, once they are in the bottles, are covered with alcohol which has been diluted to 45 percent, and then the bottles are stopped up and the blossoms steep for 40 days. At the end of the 40 days, the Genepi is filtered and put back into the bottles. Sugar is added after filtering, to taste, and every year the batch requires a different amount of sugar.

You use just plain sugar from the sack, and begin the sugaring with 12 teaspoons of sugar in the bottle. Papi covers the mouth of the bottle with his thumb, shakes it well, and then takes a sip. If there’s enough sugar according to his taste, the bottle is re-corked and it is ready for storage. It will keep for years and years, although this family normally drinks their stock every year.

At that point I considered asking for another serving of this delicious Genepi, since hearing the story made the drink seem even more delectable than before, but I thought better of it. It was truly precious indeed.

I did ask a question – “If Genepi is a protected plant, how come we see the drink for sale everywhere in the Alpes?” Ah, very good question. “That Genepi is made from extracts of cultivated plants. They add lots of sugar to try and hide the taste.” It's terrible stuff.

The storyteller went on to tell the story of the year that they were caught by a terrible landslide when out gathering genepi, and their path back home was completely blocked. Luckily they were able to make their way down to a different town in two days and call his wife to pick them up there. It was a harrowing tale.

He finished with some sage advice: “Don’t even think about hunting genepi yourself. It’s dangerous. We go with Papi because he needs someone to accompany him in the mountain.”

Starry eyed, that evening I went home as if in a dream, and thoughts of home made Genepi filled me with hope and joy as I imagined myself adorned in an alpine traditional gown and carrying a hand woven basket from genepi patch to genepi patch. However the next day, when I was thinking about all of this, I realized that it was the Genepi that got to my head!

The tradition belongs to that family, and since they have done it for generations at home and in small quantities, with respect to the plant, they have a something very special. Please don’t try this one at home or on vacation, folks.

There are so many other wonderful recipes for home steeped vin maison, we can be happy with plants, fruits and nuts that grow locally which can become steadfast traditions linked to the land that nourishes us and that which we can pass to our children. Why not get some local nuts, fruits, or flowers and make your own tradition?