Author: lgsjr

Here’s a place to visit that you can’t visit anymore, and thank goodness for it.  But there is  some kind of nostalgia involved anyway.

In many US states and Canadian provinces, sales of alcoholic beverages are restricted to the government.  That’s all right because these stores are indistinguishable from the private wine and liquor stores in other states.  You walk down aisles with shelves stocked with wines, locally made and from around the world.  Just because it’s an SAQ store (Société des Alcools du Québec) or one run by the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board makes no difference.  Do you really care if the profits go to the government instead of a private owner?

But it wasn’t always this.  Just because Prohibition ended in the United States in 1933 and in 1920 in Canada (a wartime provision) didn’t mean that drinking alcoholic beverages was universally accepted.  In fact, in many places it was considered to be a sin.  Therefore, various jurisdictions reached the rather contradictory conclusion that if the state or province was opposed to sin it should nonetheless profit from the sinners.  But they needed to be well aware that they were sinning.  Hence, the state stores were born.

Photo courtesy of virginiaplaces.org

There were no aisles to wander.  There were no gaily decorated bottles to see.  There was no one to ask for a recommendation of what to serve with dinner that night.  What there was was a counter, some civil servants and racks of bottles behind the counter, “unauthorized entry prohibited”.  There was a price list of the products for sale in a plastic folder on the counter and you asked one of the civil servants to get you a bottle of whatever you intended to buy.  These individuals were there to serve you, but it definitely wasn’t service with a smile.

It became a rite of passage for a teenage boy to enter a state store with a driver’s license clenched in his fist and ask for…what?  Something.  Anything.  Just to prove that he could do it.  Drinking from that bottle was almost an afterthought and it was surely not going to be a fine wine from the vineyards of Bordeaux (he probably couldn’t pronounce it, much less spell it).  More likely he said, in a tremulous voice, “I’ll have a bottle of Gallo Hearty Burgundy, please”. Thus were the wages of sin paid.

Note that we refer to teenage boys.  Legally speaking, girls were allowed but that just wasn’t done in those times.  In fact, it was a brave grown woman who entered a state store.  Moms looked askance if Dads even took their little children into a state store with them.  Lucie’s Dad took her and she still remembers her Mom’s comments when they got home.

The whole point was that you were supposed to feel guilty.  Guilt was the cement that bound the drinker with society, and it was guilt that washed the sin away from the state or provincial coffers.  The underlying schizophrenia of such a system had to become unsupportable over time.  Eventually, the governments came to realize that they could make more money from sin if they made it seem attractive rather than reprehensible.  And so the stores became as they were and still are in their less restrictive neighboring states.

For those of us who enjoy tasting and drinking wine responsibly, it is hard to think back on these benighted times.  But it’s good to do so from time to time, if only to put our pleasant avocation in context of our times…and those gone by.

If you go wine tasting in Marsala (and you really should if you visit Sicily) less than two hours drive from Palermo, you will likely want to stop for lunch.  You can try to find a restaurant in the town of Marsala, but to be honest the town is rather dull.  The people in the wineries recommended a few places, but it seems they were only open for dinner.  But then the server at Cantine Pellegrino suggested we drive up the road a short way, “only 10 minutes away” to Mamma Caura’s.

Mamma Caura’s restaurant on the beach in Trapani

As is often the case when you get advice from the locals, they don’t have a true sense of distance on roads they know so well.  She then spoke the most dangerous words of advice: “You can’t miss it.”  As long as we hugged the coast and watched for signs for the ferry, we’d be fine.   And in fact, we were.

What she didn’t tell us is that the road itself was worth travelling.  It took us past the salt flats of the next town north, called Trapani, where they take salt from the sea.  (The most desirable salt in France is called fleur de sel and its Italian cousin is sale marino, which comes from Sicily’s western coast.)  Sea water is pumped out of the Mediterranean into shallow, squares  pools, or pans, set up on the shore where the water evaporates and leaves salt with mild flavor, moist texture, and tiny, irregular grain sizes.  The salt is harvested and piled up into small hills that remind us North Americans of snow after a blizzard.

Salt has been made here this way for many centuries, even before the Romans.   The pumps were driven by windmills (evidently a recurring theme in this issue of Power Tasting) and a few are still there, more for show than for practicality.  Motorized pumps do the work these days.

Which brings us back to Mamma Caura’s.  Yes, it was easy to find and it is on the beach near the ferry jetty that takes people to the nature preserve on San Pantaleo island.  The food is simple but enjoyable. Indeed, what’s not to like on a very hot day when you enjoy a fresh and crispy tuna salad with a bottle of white wine (Donnafugata Anthelia, from the winery where we had just visited).  And the view is wonderful!  In front of you are the salt pans, the mounds of salt, and a magnificent windmill.  A few boats round out the vista.

After lunch you can walk out to the windmill, learn more about the history and the process and buy some salt at the shop.  It comes in small or large packages and in a variety of colors.

One word of caution, though.  It can be very hot on the beach.  We were there in mid-September, not the middle of the summer and we broiled, even under Mamma Caura’s outdoor pavilion.  You should still go; just have a nice cold bottle of white wine with your lunch and enjoy.

This article is the latest in Power Tasting’s irregular series on interesting wine bars around the world.  Previous issues have taken readers to locations in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Lisbon.

There is a street in Québec City called rue Cartier that is only five blocks long, but is the commercial heart of a sector that is very much Québecois.  Not the Québec of monumental hotels and 18^th century architecture, but rather a reflection of the way the people of this French-speaking Canadian province live and think of themselves.  For example, there are five boulangeries, where you can buy the best baguettes in North America, and as many pastry shops that dazzle the eye as well as the palate.  There are trendy clothes shops, a French bookstore, two family-owned butchers, two pubs where you can watch all the hockey games and at least a dozen restaurants all spilling out into the street during the warm summer months.

And there is one wine bar, a “bar à vin”, called Petits Creux & Grands Crus (https://www.petitscreux.corsica), which translates roughly as “little snacks and great wines”.  While it is open year round, its indoor space is rather small.  PC&GC comes into its own after the last snows melt and before all the leaves fall, May through October.

Now, Québec City is a very French town as opposed to Montreal, which is more evenly split between francophones and English speakers.  In the not so distant past, no one knew about rue Cartier except the locals.  Québec City has always had plenty of tourists but they generally stayed in Vieux Québec, the Old Town, and were not seen in the residential and commercial areas.  Today, you will hear English, Chinese, Italian and Spanish as you walk along rue Cartier (which doesn’t please Lucie, who is from Québec).  The wait staff at PC&GC are adept at both French and English and we have heard conversations in other languages as well.

With Québec’s French heritage, you might expect this wine bar’s list to be heavy in Bordeaux, Burgundies and Rhônes and indeed there are plenty of those on its rather extensive list.  But Marie-Pierre Colonna, the owner, is Corsican-American.  So the spécialités de la maison are wines from Corsica, that island department of France floating in the Mediterranean.  Its wines reflect its geography, with the sun producing big, flavorful, fruity wines in both red and white.  The Corsican rosé served at PC&GC looks more like a light red than a slightly colored white, as found in Provence.

Many of the grapes in the Corsican wines are barely known this side of the Mediterranean.  There are reds like Neullucciu from the north of Corsica, Sciacarellu from the south and a white grape used there called Biancu Gentile. (Sometimes these grapes are spelled with an “o” instead of a “u” but M. Collona speaks in the Corsican dialect.)

The “little snacks” as advertised in the wine bar’s name aren’t really that small.  You can get boards with meats, cheeses, veggies or seafood but there is nothing much that you would call a nibble. They used to make their own potato chips that were served warm and very crusty but unfortunately they removed them from the menu.   There are also a few main courses, some of which echo the Corsican theme of the bar.

Despite the influx of tourists, rue Cartier is still a focal point for the people of the surrounding neighborhood.  One of the great pleasures of spending some time at Petits Creux & Grands Crus is watching the parade of the local people passing by.  Sure, in one way it’s the same mix of young and old, men and women you’ll see anywhere.  But these are the folks of Québec, with their distinctive history, beautiful language and joie de vivre.  So take a glass or two of wines that you’ve never heard of, much less tasted, and pretend for an hour or so that you’re a part of this wonderful Québecois culture.