J'aime pas les ascenseurs, says the chap with the shades in the movie classic Diva. Well, I have the same problem with Bergerac. I don't like it and there is not much to do about that. Tonight we had a Bergerac. The chap that sold it to me also sold me the Carignan last week. And he defended Bergerac with a passion, saying it would be finer, nicer. The label "Les sens du fruit 2009" seemed convincing enough. And I read that this wine and year won “Discovery of the Year” award from Gault Millau foods.

"In a 'terroir' cut like a suit, Carignan has changed its clothes: fruit and grape, rather than veg and grape." Interesting remark, by the growers of this wine: Jean-Louis Poudou. But he's got a point: with Marie-Claude Poudou, Jean-Louis has pulled off a cracker: a fruit-filled oak-free powerful mouthful of superlative wine. Superlative: now there's a word. But anyone who drinks wine, thinks they understand it, and fine powerful wines that, within a couple of glasses, become oak, or leather, or sugar, superlative is a hard word to find.

It's always nice to serve tall elegant Alsatian wine bottles, but so often what is in them doesn't live up to the billing: too sweet in many cases, too thin in the case of red Pinot Noir. That said, I was intrigued that Robert Parker, the nosey American, rates them higher than Burgundies, if he rates Burgundy wines at all. That's another story. But did you know some Alsatian wines originate in Burgundy?