From The Times: March 18, 1922
The poets and writers who have been celebrating the glories of French wine this week have had science come to their aid at today’s meeting of the National Congress. Dr Louis Mathieu, Professor of the Faculty of Science at Bordeaux, has explained scientifically the subtle art of testing good wine — the “psycho-physiology”. There are three factors to be considered — the wine, the taster, and the circumstances around him. For the wine there are colour, clearness, bouquet. The taster’s capacity of appreciation depends upon his ancestry, age, sex, health, education and mood. The variation of sensation produced by a particular wine upon all these factors in the tester is, declares Dr Mathieu, a mere matter of mathematics to be reduced to a table of formulae. But his science changes to lyricism when he considers scientifically how wines should be drunk at dinner. The principle is to have a crescendo of effect upon one’s sensory apparatus. The stronger wines should be kept till the last — first, because weaker wines seem even weaker after strong ones and, secondly, because as the dinner progresses one’s sensibility diminishes. It would, therefore, be heresy to drink port after soup, as that would kill all the wines that followed. It would also be an error to end a meal with dry champagne. But, Dr Mathieu complains, no one any longer knows how to drink or to eat. According to him, the proper order of wines at dinner should be Chablis or Pouilly with oysters and fish; with the entree, Beaujolais, light Burgundy, or Bordeaux; with the roast, and above all with game, the grands crus, a chateau wine, a Vougeot or a Chambertin. With roast veal Beaune or Pommard should be drunk, or, perhaps, dry champagne. Champagne, sweet or demi-sec, should be taken with dessert, and before coffee a glass of port in the English fashion. Afterwards cognac or Armagnac. And, of course, you cannot appreciate the savours of these wines unless you are deliberate and elegant in your tasting. The room the table, the company, the shape and quality of glasses, make a difference and also, though Dr Mathieu does not mention it, the sound of the names. Could any liquid named Margaux, Latour, Chambertin, or Clos du Roi taste wholly ill?
FROM THE ARCHIVE