"A brandy maker's cellar burns down - accidental or not?"
Reviewed by Clare O'Beara
Posted September 18, 2015
Mystery
Anyone following the Winemakers Detective series like me
will be waiting for another sip from the glass of quality
wines and troubles. In the past these short mysteries have
encountered murders both personal and impersonal. Now we
try FLAMBÉ IN ARMAGNAC. Virgile and his vintner boss Benjamin Cooker head off to
Chateau Blanzac as winter arrives. Cooker is an expert
witness and an insurance firm wants an estimate of their
client's loss in a fire at the chateau. In France, of
course, a wine cellar is taken seriously and stocked well.
Not only that but the chateau was home to a producer of
Armagnac brandies. A nearby friend of Cooker's provides
them with a feast and some juicy gossip. The cellar master
was killed in the fire. And brandies are not selling well
anymore so every producer has a cellar tightly filled with
barrels. We see that the ancient chateau in Gascony is stone-built
and enormous, cold and damp. The books are going musty and
no fire can heat the rooms. The elderly owner, a Baron,
seems dispirited and takes offence at a teasing speculation
that he needs an alibi for the night the fire started.
Cooker and Virgile don't know of anything wrong, but they
would be remiss if they didn't ask questions of the staff.
Poking about amid the ashes, counting barrel hoops and
demijohn necks, they start to hear more than they'd
expected, including tales of family rivalries. Wonderful-sounding foods include locally shot pigeon,
rabbit and boar pate, truffle omelette, guinea fowl with
wild mushrooms, foie gras ravioli. Not to mention, tasting
wines and brandies. There's even a home-made walnut
liqueur. The French certainly enjoy their food and drink.
Any gourmets will thoroughly enjoy this instalment which
includes showing us the method of brandy distillation. We
also stroll through a town of half-timbered houses and
cobbled streets, and the national enthusiasm for rugby gets
an airing. As always, I recommend this latest by Jean-Pierre Alaux and
Noël Balen, ably translated by Sally Pane to flow like
smooth rich brandy. FLAMBÉ IN ARMAGNAC would make a great
Christmas gift for food and wine lovers who enjoy a classic
mystery, and it may appeal to men more than other amateur
sleuth stories.
SUMMARY
A small town holds fiercely onto its secrets. In the heart
of Gascony, a fire ravages the warehouse of one of
Armagnac’s top estates, killing the master distiller. Wine
expert Benjamin Cooker is called in to estimate the value
of
the losses. But Cooker and his assistant Virgile want to know more. How
did the old alembic explode? Was it really an accident? Why
is the estate owner Baron de Castayrac penniless? How legal
are his dealings? The deeper the Winemaker Detective digs,
the more suspicious characters he uncovers. There is more
than one disgruntled inhabitant in this small town. As we
witness the time-honored process of Armagnac distillation
and the day-to-day activities of the hunt, the market
place,
and the struggle for power and duck confit, we get a
glimpse
of the traditions of southwestern France where this mystery
of possible arson and murder lies below the surface.
ExcerptExcerpt from Flambé
in Armagnac by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen,
translated by Sally Pane,
published by Le French Book (www.lefrenchbook.com)
(©Librairie Arthème Fayard,
2004; English translation copyright ©2015 Sally Pane)
1 A hot-air balloon
was slipping into the clouds above a herd of wild horses. A
village of rustic
chalets hewn from rough logs stood silently on a ridge
against a blue sky.
Naiads in Brazilian bikinis frolicked beneath a blue
waterfall. Swans in a
Japanese-style pond navigated around pastel water lilies
and gleaming orange
koi. “Which calendar
would you like, Mr. Cooker?” Angèle was standing on the
doorstep, stamping her
feet and wrapped in a blue and yellow coat bearing the
postal service insignia.
Benjamin Cooker studied the images, where eternal peace
reigned on earth and
life was so simple and innocent. He pretended to hesitate
between one filled
with sandy beaches and rolling surf and another featuring
nostalgic side
streets in Caribbean locales. He finally chose the dog
calendar, with an Irish
setter that looked like a younger version of his canine
companion Bacchus. Once a year, Angèle
rang the doorbells on her delivery route, not for the mail,
but to sell
calendars. It was a holiday ritual postal service workers
in France shared with
street cleaners and firefighters. Benjamin always bought
one from each group,
occasionally wondering what the money went for. Perhaps it
was for an end-of-year
bonus or for widows and orphans. Of course he never asked.
That wouldn’t do,
not with a tradition nearly as old as the postal service
itself. Benjamin offered the
woman a cup of tea, but quickly added, “Or a cup of
coffee?” “Frankly, I’d prefer
that!” “One sugar?” “Two, if you please.
And how is Mrs. Cooker?” “Well. Very well,
indeed! She’s preparing for our daughter Margaux’s
impending arrival—out
shopping in Bordeaux. This visit is a real treat for us.
It’s not often that
Margaux tears herself away from New York these days. At any
rate, I do hope
Mrs. Cooker doesn’t go overboard, or I may not want to open
our next
credit-card statement!” “How you do go on,
Mr. Cooker. You of all people know that wine is made to be
drunk. It’s the same
with money; it’s made to be spent. Don’t you agree?”
The renowned wine
consultant and author of the bestselling Cooker Guide
wasn’t sure he
wanted to engage in a discussion that he knew he couldn’t
win. So he walked
over to the mantel to pick up the envelope he had prepared.
Angèle was all
smiles. “Happy New Year, Mr.
Cooker!” Angèle said, leaning in for good-bye cheek kisses.
Two pecks, one on
each side, was standard in the Bordeaux region. It was
three in southeastern
France and four farther north. The winemaker was
hardly a fan of such effusion. Angèle’s kisses, however,
were something no
healthy man could refuse. The young woman’s cheeks were
pink from a morning
spent in the cold, and her chestnut hair smelled of coffee.
Benjamin watched
from the warmth of Grangebelle as the mail carrier’s van
disappeared down the
drive. The weather was cold enough to chill Champagne, and
some of the elderly
residents of Saint-Julien were fearfully recalling the
winter of 1954,
although, on average, temperatures this winter had been
warmer than usual.
Benjamin had decided against going to his office on the
Allées de Tourny. It
felt good to be at Grangebelle, quietly watching the flames
in the fireplace.
The scent of the burning wood mingled with the slightly
bitter smell of cigar. The winemaker poured
himself another cup of tea before perusing his mail a bit
wearily. Bacchus was
dozing on the old Persian rug in front of the fire. This
was the dog’s favorite
pastime in the winter. When the temperature dropped,
Benjamin had a hard time
rousing him for the long walks they usually loved to take.
The old dog would
not budge. In the bundle of
mail, one envelope caught his attention. In black and red
letters, it bore the
name Protection Insurance. Cooker & Co. occasionally
did work for this
company, and Benjamin always wound up chastising himself
for not charging more,
considering the time the cases took. Judging from the
impersonal form letters
they always sent, they clearly didn’t know him from Adam.
In all of southwest
France, he was the sole wine expert whose testimony was
accepted without
question by the courts in Toulouse and Bordeaux. He drew
deeply on his Havana
and put on his reading glasses. Protection Insurance
Building Pierre-Paul-de-Riquet, C3 Quartier Compans-
Caffarelli 31026 Toulouse
Cedex Dear Sir, Pursuant to claim No. 455/JV/40, we are
pleased to appoint you to estimate the damages suffered by
our client, Mr.
Jean-Charles de Castayrac, as a result of an accidental
fire that destroyed the
wine cellar on his property, Château Blanzac in Labastide-
d’Armagnac, on
December 24. Your assignment is to provide a precise
determination of the Armagnac reserves stored in the
claimant’s cellar
preceding the fire, to assess the quality of his eau-de-vie
products up until
that time, to estimate Mr. Castayrac’s loss, based on the
market value of the
Armagnac, and to examine Mr. Castayrac’s records.
Your expert report must be sent to our
company headquarters within thirty days. It is your
responsibility to
investigate this matter with the diligence and skill you
have always exercised
and for which our company is grateful. Sincerely,
Étienne Valéry
Manager, Claims Investigation Benjamin considered
turning down the assignment. But then he realized that the
job would be an
excellent excuse to pay a visit to his old friend Philippe
de Bouglon. The fact
that they had not been in touch for months did not diminish
their friendship.
And besides, his reserves of Armagnac were running low, and
it was high time to
replenish the liquor cabinet at Grangebelle. Just a month
earlier, in fact, Elisabeth and he had taken a drive
through Labastide, hoping
to visit the Bouglons and buy some Armagnac. Unfortunately,
Philippe and his
wife, Beatrice, had been away on vacation, but in town they
had come across
Francisco, the cellar master at Château Blanzac. He
apologized for not being
able to accommodate them immediately, but had promised to
personally deliver
some of the highly regarded eau-de-vie that he planned to
distill be- fore the
holidays. Elisabeth had assured Francisco that they could
wait. “I didn’t know the
Blanzac cellar master was so charming,” Elisabeth had
remarked, a smile on her
face as she watched the man hurry off. “Oh yes, as
appealing as his Armagnac,” Benjamin had said with a bit of
a grumble. Had any of Château
Blanzac’s fine Armagnac survived the fire? He’d find out.
At any rate, Benjamin
would catch the Bouglons at home. He decided not to call
ahead. He would simply
show up unannounced. After all, the Bouglons were two of
the most hospitable
people he knew. So the New Year was getting off to a good
start. The winemaker
threw another log on the fire. Bacchus just yawned and
closed his eyes again.
Benjamin savored another puff of his morning cigar. It was
beginning to taste
exquisite. What a pity the teapot was empty. Benjamin opened the
door to feel the chill on his face. The outdoor thermometer
read six degrees
below zero. The Gironde River and the fields of the Médoc,
all speckled in
white, seemed to be reaching toward the patches of pale
sunshine from heaven.
He did prefer the cold to the rain, but driving on ice was
not his favorite
sport. At any rate, Virgile, his assistant, would take the
wheel. Benjamin closed the
door and headed to the phone. “Hello, Virgile?
Cooker here. Happy New Year, my boy! Let’s celebrate with a
glass of Armagnac.
What do you say? Meet me at Grangebelle. And bring along
some warm clothes and
your toothbrush.” Benjamin quickly
scribbled a note for Elisabeth telling her where he’d be
and went into his
bedroom to fetch his own toothbrush and an overnight bag.
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