A Thought-filled Day

Wine
The trip to the vineyard in Cairanne duly went ahead this evening with Marcel Richaud, the “vigneron”, proving very hospitable and his wine very good. The evening did raise a few issues, though, regarding good wine. His wines are not in fact denied the AOC Cairanne label because the vines are outside the designated area, as I had surmised, but because he chooses not to make them according to the AOC prescriptions. One thing we easily agreed on then is that the AOC labeling now serves no useful purpose. He has no problem selling his wines because enough hoteliers and restaurateurs appreciate them to buy them, at significant prices, even without the AOC certificate.

I think this raises a problem for people outside the area (e.g. in the UK) looking for some guarantee of quality. How do you know the wine is good unless you can taste it? Wine tastings in England are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they are here. I suspect that, in the future, we will (have to ) rely on critics, trusted merchants or word of mouth to sort this out. Since the ultimate test is one of personal taste, that is perhaps as it should be. Anyway, even in France, the AOC ticket is definitely dead. Formally killing it will, I assume, mean scrapping a significant number of entrenched jobs so that may take some time to happen.

La Réunion
Back at the ranch and over curry after the wine tasting, conversation between Daniel, his son Kevyn and I turned to La Réunion; I can't quite remember why. Anyway, it proved interesting on several counts. I enquired how people lived with the volcano (the island is essentially just a volcano cone rising out of the sea) and, as I suspected they must, the lava flows always descend down just one side of the island. The islanders and their habitat are on the other side. Daniel said, however, that there was a church in the line of the lava flows that was protected by a barrier that diverted the lava round the church. Most interesting was the church name: Saint Expédite. It, and various local chapels of the same allegiance that had been spawned off it, were all renounced by the Catholic church. Why? Well, it seems that in the dark past some relics had been sent to the island to be placed in the church. However, all that was decipherable on the box that contained them when they arrived was the word “expéditeur” (sender) or part of it. So the islanders naively but in good faith assumed these must be the relics of a Saint Expédite. Never has a saint been so simply cannonised and, what's more, it is a saint exclusive to the island. If you ever have a letter or parcel returned to you in the post, you can thank Saint Expédite.

A further reminiscence of Daniel was that his grandmother had said “l'argent blanchit” (money whitens). The phrase had stuck with him and I can easily understand why. It has almost a double meaning. It was uttered at a time when marriage between “natives” and their colonial masters was generally frowned upon. However, mixed marriages happened. In particular, they could, in the extreme at the time, be sanctioned between very rich locals and a white woman. Significant wealth in an indigenous person meant that he (and it was always a “he”) was partially accepted in the colonial community. So, in a sense, it made him whiter. Also, though, any offspring would presumably be likely to be of lighter skin than their father and so the phrase was true in that sense too. It turns out to be quite a profound statement.

The final reminiscence of Daniel's of note concerned vanilla. Apparently vanilla pods don't naturally carry the familiar vanilla flavour; they have to be tricked into doing so. The man who discovered the trick, in the early 18th century, was one Edmond Albius, a native of La Réunion, who became quite famous as a result and has streets in La Réunion named after him today. I didn't know that. And it seems apposite that the name Albius is not that far from the Latin for white, which is the colour we associate with vanilla.

Computers
Writing of reminiscences and given my computing background, I was reminded of a couple of prophecies by Professor Iann Barron, of various claims to fame. At the time (in 1970), he headed up a company that had designed the first British minicomputer, the Modula One. I was involved in organising a future-looking conference at which he was invited to speak. He had three (correct) prophecies to offer. Firstly, that IBM would rule the computer world for the foreseeable future, secondly that magnetic disks would remain the principal storage medium for the foreseeable future and, thirdly, that everyone would have to learn to use a keyboard. I was reminded of these predictions because I'm sitting at my PC keying and storing this post.

The second two forecasts are, in retrospect, truly remarkable. At the time, you could buy a very expensive (several thousand pounds) report from a renowned American soothsaying company, which shall remain nameless, that stated positively that bubble memory would replace disks before the 1970s were out. Can you even remember having heard of bubble memory now? At the time, keyboards were very much the preserve of predominantly female secretaries and typing pool operatives. Who could ever have imagined, then, the explosion of PCs, mobile phones and other hand-held keyboard devices that both sexes use routinely today? Everybody (virtually) has learned to use a keyboard.

Iann Barron went on to various professorial chairs and deserved acclamation in his field.