So
my wife and I are
back after weeks of technically enjoying ourselves - tired,
aching, much poorer than when we set out, and with the car splattered
with dead insects as if hit by small arms fire, about the only
souvenirs we have of a long, long journey from the Netherlands to the
South of France and back again, making extensive use of the
now-threatened Schengen Agreement. No, I didn't bring back any wine,
even though I could have drowned in it, both French and German (but
not Swiss, although they clearly make the stuff). In fact, I didn't
even drink that
much wine of any sort. Wine, heat and exhaustion (worst heatwave in
Germany for a generation, as it happened) are a terrible combination.
No. I drank beer: so much beer that I blew up like a balloon and my
grimy suntan started to take on a greenish hoppy tinge.
And
what I hadn't pieced together, up to now, was that there are of
course three
kinds of beer to chose from in northern Europe, not just two: blonde,
blanche
and brune,
to use the French terms. This became clear to me while we were
visiting some long-suffering German friends near Münster,
where our host forced me to contemplate the first two-thirds of this
set of options by proposing a choice of Weißbier
or Pilsener
Bier on
an absolutely smeltingly hot day. So I said yes to both - intrigued
and slightly troubled by the funky cloudiness of the Weißbier,
as if someone had used it for washing-up, and subsequently intrigued
and troubled by its aroma of rotten apples and carbolic soap.
It
was, yes, a moment of stress: not least because I'd forgotten that
I'd ever drunk such a drink, even though I now know I have, back here
in London, in the form of Hoegaarden - a beer which, at the time, I must have categorised as a
novelty import which only dumb, jaundiced, Londoners would bother
with. Was this moody Weißbier
peculiar to Münster, I fretted, consoling myself with the easy-going
Pilsener
to take away the taste? Evidently not. The moment we headed
south, it appeared all over the place, Weiß
and
blanche
and wit,
like a cloud on the horizon, so that I started to grow apprehensive
about ordering anything much, using my recycle-bin French or my
Letraset German, in case a blanche
turned up on the table, flocculent and vaguely menacing. Even now I
can't really be sure whether I like it or hate it.
Brune
or dunkles
Bier, the
third part of the triumvirate, was a lot easier to cope with -
usually nutty, firm, a consommé
with
a head on it - but not always appropriate for the middle part of the
day on account of its tendency to send me to sleep with a hundred and
twenty kilometres still to drive. It's an evening beer really, a beer
that puts it arm across your shoulders and explains how
Ginger Baker will always be a better drummer than Charlie Watts. It
also, on account of its relative unfamiliarity, tended to point up
another great thing about Continental beers, a thing which has
nothing to do with taste or composition: the name. Erdinger
is fine, I don't bat an eyelid, or Jupiler,
or
Duvel
-
but Kwak;
or
Ritterguts
Gose;
or Slaapmutske;
or
Mahrs
Bräu Kellerbier Ungespundet Hefetrüb - these
are something else, these are beers with names that keep on
entertaining long after the last drop has been swallowed. Even the
silliest German wines will have difficulty making headway against a
perfectly day-to-day, but preposterously-named, beer. It's a bonus.
My
personal pick? A pleasant blonde
I had in Luxembourg City - one of the most soporific places you'll
ever visit - called Bofferding
(see
illustration). Apparently that was the founder's name -
Luxembourgeois
Jean-Baptiste Bofferding, who started the brewery in 1842 - but
still, to see it peering up from a beermat after a long day just
added to my sense of levity and general relief. Naturally, we're not
making any comparisons with comedy names like Fursty
Ferret
or Bitter
& Twisted
or any of those crappy marketing-strategy confections, designed to
confirm your own loveable whimsicality to yourself: the sincerity,
the lack of an ulterior motive, is what makes Bofferding
so
right. To be honest, it's not the greatest-tasting drink I have ever
had. I mean, it's okay. But then, how many other beers are an
anagram of F.
F. Bedgroin?
CJ
Did you get to try the wines of Luxembourg? Great Euro-secret, I think especially their champagnes.
ReplyDeleteWell the Euro was fairly weak while we were there, but even allowing for that everything in Luxembourg seemed to cost twice as much as I really wanted to pay, so tragically, no, although the wine would have been an interesting thought...
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