THE DAY I HAD LUNCH with JULIA & THE COUNT
And When I had the Greatest Wine I Ever Tasted
BY ALAN GOLDFARB
July 28, 2023
This post has nothing to do with media relations nor does it have to do much with a man I once sat next to at lunch. But it’s more about one of the most wonderful experiences of my career. The way I see it, it’s human relations.
The Count Marquis Alexandre de Lur Saluces died recently. Which put me in mind of the time I tasted the greatest wine I’ve ever tasted; and the day I met him; and had lunch with him and Julie Child, together – the three of us.
This happened – serendipitously really – in the year 2000. It was the occasion of the Masters of Food & Wine, in Carmel Highlands. The Masters – with some of the greatest vintners, wines, chefs and food gathering each year for a weeklong hedonistic debauchery -- was always the best annual wine & food event I’d ever had the pleasure of attending and writing about.
On the morning of this day, the Count – the longtime manager of the world’s greatest Sauternes producer, Château d'Yquem – presented a vertical tasting of the estates’ wines.
What I remember vividly, 23 years on, is the d’Yquem 1950 as the best wine I’d ever tasted. The 50-year-old elixir was just that. It was the color of cola, a natural result of oxidation and oxygenation of a white wine a half-century into its lifetime. It had the viscosity of Jello just before gelling. And the taste – oh the taste – was like crème brûlée; creamy vanilla with overtones of nuttiness and pronounced smokiness as though some genius chef had taken a tiny blowtorch to it, scorching it ever so slightly. Magnificent!
When the tasting concluded, the 30 of us in the room that day – including the Count – went into the dining room in anticipation of a great lunch. I found myself walking toward the front of the room, and as I was sitting down, there they were. Julia Child took the seat to my left. The Count de Lur Saluces sat to my right.
And the photographers swarmed. Taking picture after picture. Somewhere, someplace in the world, there’s likely a shot of the three of us: Julia, me, and The Count.
It was quite my accident, luck and my food fortune, that two of the most known and admired personages in food and wine in the world, came to have me in the middle of their delicious sandwich.
I admit I barely remember saying much to the Count, nor he to me. What I do recall is that Julia and I had the grandest ole time. Or I had. I don’t know what Julia Child was thinking that day but I do know she was so gracious and kind – that she asked me, about me! What I did. For whom did I write? Etc.
I recollect that I kept gazing at her hands. She was tall, probably over 6-feet. And her hands? Wow! They were twice as big as my less-than-average sized appendages.
But what I remember mostly, and what I’ll always treasure, is her response to when I asked if she’d ever seen the Saturday Night Live bit in which Dan Akroyd, playing Julia preparing a chicken, play-acting slicing his hand open. The next five minutes was a black comedy of a bloodbath, Akroyd trying to stanch the bleeding; while resolutely preparing that whole chicken for its final demise. The poultry at one point, began slip sliding out of his (her) bloody talons and onto the floor. But there was Danny/Julia determinedly picking up the darned thing and trussing its legs.
So, I took that moment, -- with the subject of Akroyd’s hilarious comedy sitting right there, next to me -- to ask if she’d ever seen that scene.
This is what she exclaimed in that inimitable high-pitched gravelly voice: “Oh yes, we saw it,” she began, referencing her husband.
What did you think? I probed.
“We fell on the floor,” said Julia Child to me, letting me know that she loved it. She loved being made fun of – in the most reverential way, by SNL.
It told me, in addition to the kindness and attention she showed me in the previous hour-and-a half, she was one of the most magnanimous people I’d ever met. That, along with that ’50 d’ Yquem and the Count de Lur Saluces, made for a perfectly memorable day to which I can relate here, almost a quarter-century later.