1930 The Savoy Cocktail Book

of a nocturnal adventure, of the Unknown whose face she does not see, and who reveals himself only in his kisses. Gastronomic snobbishness has given rise to a collection of Inns, such as never used to be seen. It reverences Wine. Will wisdom be reborn of an ill- enlightened faith, confessed by mouths armour-plated by a hundred cocktails, poisonous aperitifs, withering spirits ? Let us hope so. With the dawn of old age I can offer, for my small part, the example of a stomach that has no remorse or damage, a friendly liver and a sensitive palate, preserved by honest wine. Fill then. Nectar, this glass which I hold out to you. A fine and simple wine as you yourself love it, you who know, giving a light bubble in which play the ruddy fires of a great Burgundian ancestor, the topaz of Yquem, the balas ruby, sometimes tinged with mauve, of violet-perfumed Bordeaux. . . . And may your slim chef of a bronzed cellarer understand me when I clink your dainty glass against a thick-sided goblet ; you know well—there comes a time in life when one worships youth—that on a southern shore there is -being kept for me a chapelet of wickered demi-johns. One vintage fills them, the next finds them empty and fills them in its turn. Do not disdain, you who lay down fine bottles, these short-lived wines ; they are clear, dry, varied, they flow evenly from the throat to the paunch and do not tarry on their way. So long as the temperament of the wine be warm, we do not care, down there, if the day be sultry, but drink great draughts of that wine which refreshes us and leaves behind it a double taste of muscat and of cedar-wood. [For permission to reprint the above article in English we are indebted to the courtesy of Madame Colette^ who wrote it, and of the Maison Nicolas, to whom its copyright belongs!]

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