Wine Pairing Story (18)

Lone apple hangingThe simplest ingredients make the most elegant dessert.
The fruit on the pic above is not a kaki, these bright-colored fruits that dot the Japanese winter landscape. This is an unpicked apple which was nicely waving at us from this side-road orchard. We were driving through Northern Burgundy last november and we saw this partly-fenced orchard along the road in the Yonne with all these apples hanging on leaf-less branches. We stopped to take a few pictures and as the gate was half open, we walked in. This fenced lot was actually an orchard conservatory and had probably been set up by the Département of the Yonne, or by a group of villages with the help of passionate people devoted to protect little-known ancient varieties. That's a paradox in France : On one side, the French judges, the Administration and the major seeds companies regroup to limit biodiversity and impose heavy fines on the non-profit group Kokopelli for distributing seeds of ancient varieties [read about the lawsuit on this page in French and this one in English], and on the other side you have people who here and there (and oddly, with the funding of local administrations) devote their time & energy to plant and manage appletree orchards so that little-known apple varieties survive. This proves that the local people feel compelled to defend their biodiversity heritage, and that it may only take a few more rebels like these to successfully counter the French Bureaucracy's enmity to the survival of ancient vegetable varieties.

Nice load of red applesThis wine-pairing story is as you have understood apple related, and the issue of this post is also the thousands of apple trees across France whose apples don't seem to have many takers. If you have wandered in autumn on the side roads of the French countryside, you must have noticed that the apples often lay on the ground unpicked while in the same orchard ealier in the year the cherries or the cherry plums had their own harvest. Blame it on the cheap price of apples in supermarkets, the appeal of standardized fruits or the preference for high-sugar fruits, grand-pa's apple tree is a bit neglected these days. Yet, apples happen to be among the rare fruits having a Yin-Yang balance, thus being very important for a good diet. In this regard by the way, the French have taken measures to ban the sale of candy bars in schools to fight obesity and consider putting vending machines with apples instead in school precincts. Good move.
Other good news is that thousands of volunteers across France give their time to preserve our deep fruit heritage, often with a particular focus on apples, and vergers conservatoires (orchard conservatories) now dot the country even though it's not clear if there are centralized data about their exact number. They are managed by non-profit local organizations and relayed by "apple activist groups" like Les Croqueurs de Pommes (apple crunchers) who do a lot to put the spotlight on the subject. See on their website the page listing the apple varieties. Yellow dots in autumnThe setting up of the orchard conservatories is of course followed by the French administrative bodies which through the Conseil Général and the AFCEV issued all kind of rules like this amusing vergers-conservatoires how-to requirements [Pdf]. I love for example on chapter 3.5 the "Les collections doivent faire l'objet d'un suivi par des personnes compétentes" ("the plant collections must be followed by competent people" - I guess, of the sort who thought out this sentence...). In spite of the cold shower of such administrative hurdles, many passionate apple lovers made the step to have these orchard planted. There's no exhaustive list of these orchards but they're there and they add their genetic weight to the privately owned old-time orchards where even more treasures lie unchecked.
The disregarded old-time orchards are why the back roads of the French countryside in autumn are so tempting for daring apple lovers. If you ever travelled through France on your bicycle as I did myself you could almost live for free in mid-october hopping from orchard to orchard and preying on the fallen apples as birds seem to be the only ones to eye them.
There's an ancient expression in French to mean petty thief, it's precisely voleur de pommes (apple thief), it is used for small larceny, the underlying meaning being that stealing apples is an almost pardonable crime. Now, this expression appeared very long time ago, when apples were still picked and eaten by villagers. Since then, blame it on people getting richer, spoiled or too busy, the apple trees have often been left alone. I suspect that the owners still eat apples but prefer to buy clean, square apples from the nearest supermarket. The bright side is that you have all these help-yourself displays all along your route. And anyway, there's no trespassing law in France and it's tolerated to pick fallen fruits on the ground when they're obviously left by themselves. A bird's royal dishThese apples lying on the ground aren't entirely lost though : birds are taking advantage of this (temporary I hope) neglect and use their clever instinct to choose the best-matured fruit and peck them to the core. Blackbirds in particular are keen amateurs of ripe apples as I observed in the Loire. This beautifully-hollowed apple made me want to eat some on the spot which I did all the while shooting pictures. This bird feast looked like the best approval stamp a fruit could have, even better than an organic certification.... And my apple was good indeed, perfectly ripe and crispy, protected from the morning cold by the grass and the leaves.
Newbees-in-apples like me thought that apples had already been around for ever (at least since the Bible story) but reading this Wikipedia apple page (in French) I learn that the development of apple varieties has also a lot to do with ancient France : If 6 varieties were described by Theophrast in 287 B.C, and 17 varieties by Pline in 80 A.C., the renaissance of Apple growing and selection went through a high point in Normandy, France, and particularly between the 8th and the 15th century. And guess what ? the clergy played a central role here, like it did for grape growing and winemaking in other regions... A carpet of applesNow, when I saw this carpet of apples under one of the trees, I knew I wouldn't just take pictures here and yelled about it to B. who was also shooting pictures of her own. I took out the plastic bag that I always carry with me (primarily in case of unplanned encounter with mushrooms...) and began picking apples. I was a bit nervous I must admit because there was the road in view and passing-by locals might object that people with Paris licence plates pick apples here...That's something you must know in France : even though you may be a native of a faraway province or country, the 75 at the end of your licence plate puts every of your moves under scrutiny when you leave the Paris region, and you become the de-facto ambassador of the arrogant Paris, so it's wise to be courteous and low-key on the road...and avoid as much as possible being caught red-handed picking the apples of locals...
And anyway, what the heck with this voleur de pommes tag, these apples are lost anyway and I'll buy back my crime by writing this story and by encouraging people to get back the control of their orchards (although I'm not sure they read wineterroirs...)... Pink dots on a bare treeThere were maybe two dozen apple-trees in this orchard conservatory but each one followed its own rhythm, sometimes there were still all the apples hanging with also a few leaves, sometimes everything was on the ground except for a few latecomers. These ones on the picture above are obviously taking their time to land of the ground. Don't ask me which variety is it, I'm not fluent in apples, but there is a mysterious alchemy involving ripeness, maturity, the sap signals coming from the roots, the moon maybe, and when all the pieces of the puzzle are in place, there we go... Peeling the applesWhile these apples picked in Northern Burgundy were all delicious, the ones I used for this wine pairing story were picked in the Loire. They are indeed very special apples and they come from an old-time orchard. This is undoubtly a rare variety that you can't find on the markets : You can't really eat them raw, I tried but they are so acidic that it's not bearable. I've been wondering what use they had in the past and I ended up thinking they were either put to ferment for alcohol or cider, or they were given to the pigs. As I brought back quite a large quantity of these, I decided to cook some in the microwave for a try. The result was beyond expectations. In just 5 minutes these apples cut in several pieces were indeed very tasty and with a tamed acidity. Following B.'s advice, I cooked the following batch with two soup spoons of sugar over it and that was it, these otherwise austere apples expressed themselves best, really a rare delicacy, with a remaining acidity tamed enough to make a perfect balance and give character to the dish. The cooked applesFor the information, these apples are easy to keep through winter (the unusual acidity helps) and we still have some at the end of december. They are of course organic and have probably been so for ever. I can't tell you the name of the variety, the only thing that I can tell you is that they come from the Loire, they're small, yellow and extremely acidic, on the verge of bitterness. I chose to peel them and to cut them into pieces, the center and the seeds going with the peel in the trash bin, which makes really small volumes at the end. I add a bit of water (maybe half a glass) in the bottom of the glass container, cover with the glass lid and put the whole thing into the microwave for 5 to 7 minutes (setting at 800 W). Cooked apples have their wineI'd lie if I said that I found this wine by myself. I knew that a sweet wine would be the right choice but with the acidity that still surfaced in these cooked apples, there was another challenge to overcome. B. had the answer, she told me that she had a Bonnezeaux that would be great to open with these apples. The two went along well indeed. The 37,5 bottle of Bonnezeaux 2005 comes from the Chateau de Fesles in Thouarcé (Anjou, Loire), owned by Bernard Germain. This is 100% Chenin Blanc with vineyards on schists and phtanites. The grapes were harvested late on 5 to 7 picks, there is then a 10-to-12-hours maceration and a must-settling at low temperature. The fermentation takes place in 400-liter demi-muids for one to two months, followed by an elevage in casls for 10 to 15 months. This Chateau de Fesles Bonnezeaux was really the right wine here : The cooked apples were delicious with still a light bitterness or rawness in the mouth, largely tamed by the couple of tea spoons of sprinkled sugar. The wine brought its aromas of orange peel, dry raisins, figs maybe. B. finds also notes of bergamot and butterscotch. The structure of the wine is refined and onctuous and the probably-high acidity of this wine makes the sugar very light in the mouth.
Other sweet wines would probably have made a good match with these cooked acidic apples, all it takes is to try... ............Sites of interest : All About Apples
All About Apples : the Forum
A few dates in the apple History (though it ignores the central role of Normandy, France for apple growing).
History of apple-trees and cider (in French - Léon Ferret - 1855) ............Additional info about the Kokopelli lawsuit : The seed giant Baumaux who is fighting Kokopelli's drive to protect and distribute ancient varieties not listed in the Official Seed Catalog has issued its own catalog where it used the name of Kokopelli for one of its products, that's quite ironic, maybe some kind of provocation... See their e-catalog on the left column, you'll be surprised on page 490 (go there directly by typing in the window at the top) to find the product/tomato # 75615 labelled Tomate Kokopelli... Click on the pic on left to visualize that oddity.

Comments

[Chris Kissack]

Thanks Bertrand, a great write-up. I enjoyed reading this.

One point concerning Fesles (which sounds like a great match for the apples); although the vintage in question was made during Bernard Germain's tenure, the property has since been sold (in 2008) to Grands Chais de France.

Thanks again, keep it up, a great blog!

[Bertrand]

Thanks Chris for your info. I wonder if this change of owner had some impact on the winemaking, seems that a heavy weight wanted to buy itself a nice Chateau...

[Wells]

Thanks, for this write up. Living in Texas, USA this has given me some great ideals regarding apples.