The pleasures of little wines 9 August 2007

Inspector Maigret would have enjoyed some of the modest Cape whites,
as does Tim James

Are policemen allowed to drink on duty? Even French ones? Some responsible journalistic investigation would give an answer, but laziness reminds me just in time that this is not really the point. Which is that the great fictional French detective Commissaire Maigret drank like a fish, both off duty and on: wine and beer mostly, but also cognac, calvados, plum brandy and more. (Do fish really drink, even French ones? The need for investigation never ends.)

In one of my occasional half-hearted attempts to improve my language skills I have been reading Maigret stories, and have been struck anew by how often he pops into some or other bistro in the course of his working day  – quite apart from a lunchtime tipple either at home with the good Madame Maigret, or with colleagues, or alone with his grumpiness at the Brasserie Dauphine.

What is interesting and marvellous to me is the pervading unself-consciousness and naturalness of the wine-culture Maigret lives and drinks in. Simenon wrote the Maigret novels over some forty years up till the early 1970s, but the Paris he so intimately describes is essentially always of the 1930s, when people like Maigret helped give France the magnificent average wine consumption figures she enjoyed in those good old days.

Surprisingly, perhaps, when Maigret asks for wine in a bistro it is almost invariably vin blanc, usually anonymous, but sometimes of sufficient interest and quality for him to wonder about its origin – though he is far from being either connoisseur or snob. It occurred to me recently, after asking for a glass of the house white at a modest Cape Town trattoria, just how well served we are with that kind of white wine in South Africa.

What they brought me was youthful Boland Chenin Blanc, and it was delicious – full of straightforward flavour (but not overly fruity), fresh (but not too acidic) and, well, delicious. And cheap. I don’t wax patriotic about wine, but I wonder if anywhere else produces the range of decent, characterful but inexpensive white wines that the Cape does – although it must be said that reds are another story, and there are also some pretty awful whites around (especially lurking behind big-brand labels; my last experience of Graça doesn’t fill me with nostalgic longing).

Maigret would have approvingly referred to wines of this kind as ‘petits vins’. ‘Small wines’ would be the straight translation, but that doesn’t quite work, and it’s easy to sound patronising or contemptuous, which is wrong. ‘Minor’ is perhaps closer. If the French grand means both big and claiming of profundity and importance (grand in English covers this aspect), then petit conveys a corresponding diffidence at another level.

What the phrase conveys to me is what the category offers at its best: decent, modestly characterful unpretentiousness. So, for example, start adding woodchips to give the impression that our ‘little’ chenin is an expensively matured chardonnary, and you risk entering an area of unbalanced inappropriateness, where the wine is less convincing, and the drinker is cheated (to no good purpose) of  the easy-going but not contemptible pleasure of a modest wine.

Someone who also seems to find the concept as appealing as the wines themselves can be is Ken Forrester, who makes an always delightful Petit Chenin and a Petit Pinotage. Pinotage, in fact, can fit beautifully into this category – I’d say it was more innately suited to it than to ‘grander’ categories if I didn’t fear violence from those who think pinotage should be freighted with oak and self-importance. But Beyerskloof’s standard Pinotage, for example, is a petit rouge that’s hard to beat. Furthermore, given that rosé is often a petit vin par excellence, it’s worth mentioning a few rosés from pinotage that are delightful and undemanding, without being too trivial or self-abasing: Beyerskloof again, for example, and Delheim and Blauwklippen Landau.

Another winery that likes the ‘little’ idea is Armajaro in Voor-Paardeberg (on the Paarl-Swartland  border), which is adding to their Vondeling range a Petit Blanc 2007, a happy blend of chenin, chardonnay and viognier. Not far distant across vineyards and wheatlands is Perdeberg Co-op, a veritable fountain of petit vin blanc – especially their Chenin Blanc, a famous bargain. In the Swartland proper, Riebeek’s ordinary little Chenin is also excellent value – and I prefer it to their more ambitious Reserve.

All good detectives should like such wines. Even South African ones. Though I have a sinking feeling most would choose beer or even (the more depraved of them) brandy and coke.

• This article first appeared in Noseweek, 'South Africa's unique investigative magazine'