It starts out like one of Albert Camus’ sketches, only there’s a happy twist in it somewhere.
Here be a Frenchman, his Filipino friends, on a beach, staring at a wine-dark sea in Nasugbu, Batangas, probably at sundown. Somebody offers the said French national, Edouard Miailhe, a swig of gin bulag.
He winces. “It’s strong!”
The half-irony here is that Edouard is a wine connoisseur of the highest order: one who grew up in the Miailhe family’s very own wine estate in the Bordeaux region of France; one who inherited the reins of Chateau Siran from his parents, William Alain and Brigitte, when they retired in 2007; and one who considers both France and the Philippines as home.
“The first time I arrived in Manila, the real first time — I was three months old,” he says. Miailhe and I are at Wine Story in Rockwell and there are racks upon racks of gorgeous reds and whites in chilled bottles, and Edouard is sharing wine stories and life stories — which to wine-lovers or to literary writers are one and the same.
(Ernest Hemingway equated wine with food in A Moveable Feast, James Joyce philosophized in Ulysses that saying yes to wine is saying yes to life, and Roald Dahl wrote a story about a gourmet who described wine as if it were a living being.)
Edouard — who would agree with Messrs. Hemingway, Joyce and Dahl — explains, “My family has been in the Philippines for many generations — because of our British ancestors who were in real estate and trading. They’ve been here since 1820. So, I’m the seventh generation here. My grandmother used to live here. But I settled in the Philippines in 1999.”
If Sting relished being an Englishman in New York (Wo-woh, I’m an alien…), Miailhe takes great delight in being a Frenchman in Manila, his home and headquarters for his wine and other business ventures as well as the point of departure to postcard-pretty places in the archipelago. His favorites are the countryside and beaches of Palawan and Batanes.
“If you combined Greece and Scotland, you’d get Batanes,” he says with a smile, raving about the “home of the winds” and of gorgeous sceneries. “And the Palawan wilderness is simply incredible.”
Pray tell us, what does a Frenchman, who has been in the Philippines for 12 years and counting, think of adobo. And does it make ideal bedfellows with a glass of the finest red wine around?
“Ah, adobo is extremely nice! As long as the vinegar is not too strong. Lechon is absolutely delicious, so is the crispy pata. Not the fish because sometimes it comes with either bagoong or strong sauce that will oppose the (flavor of the) red wine. Wine doesn’t go well with spices, but Filipino food is (generally) not too spicy, so it’s not too much of an issue. If you’re eating a very flavorful dish, you can go with a younger wine with a more powerful flavor — young Bordeaux or fruity wines that are 2004 to 2008 vintages. The older the wine, the more subtle it gets.”
But what Edouard raves about most is the character of Filipinos.
“Filipinos are kind, tolerant, forgiving open-minded, hardworking, easygoing, non-confrontational. A ‘no’ doesn’t exist (laughs). The Philippines is in a different shape compared to what it was before; it is doing well. Everybody speaks English and each one is interested in sharing (his or her) thoughts on anything.”
Over a bottle of wine, Miailhe and his countrymen will talk about the two favorite topics of the French people: food and politics. We Filipinos like talking about food and politics also, but our third favorite topic is this: people who are not in that particular dinner or wine-drinking session.
Miailhe and I both laugh at this piece of cutesy Filipino peculiarity.
Red, red wine, you make me feel so fine
The wine connoisseur has noticed that Filipinos’ appreciation of wine has changed dramatically.
“When we first came here in 1999, there was just one or two distributors of wines,” he recalls. And now there are around 20 or 25, with choices that are a-plenty — Bordeaux, Burgundy, wines from the US, Spain, Australia, etc. Worth mentioning also is how the chain of transport has improved.
“For red wine the temperature is very important — from the time it leaves Bordeaux to the time it gets to Manila, and to the way it is stored here. Almost nobody had refrigerated warehouses 12 years ago, so the bottles became very warm, damaging the wine (in the process). Now, things are very different.”
The man extols the virtues of wine: great for one’s health, great for the palate as well. There is also a generosity of flavors.
“Refined, subtle, complex… You’ll discover flavors you’ve never tasted before.”
What are the characteristics of a good wine for it to be the apple (or, in this case, grape) of Miailhe’s tongue?
“Wine is a product that is alive. It evolves. A bottle of wine… two or three or five or 10 years later, will change in taste. A wine must not be excessive — in tannin, in fruit or in acidity. It’s all about balance among the three.”
The man doesn’t like too powerful, overly-extracted wines. He is all-praises for subtlety and refinement, but at the same time he likes wines that are powerful enough to stay in your mouth to give you an aftertaste that lasts.
“Bordeaux is just that. Sometimes it gets more difficult to drink at the beginning because it doesn’t have that easy, fruity taste. But then you’ll end up finishing an entire bottle because the wine is subtle, delicate.”
And oftentimes age is relative in the world of wines.
“Some wines come of age, while some age ‘less’ — so, it really depends on the weather that you had that year which gives you the quality of the vintage.” I repeat, the quality of the vintage is key. Miailhe rattles off the vintages that he quaffed which gave him the best wine experiences. Ever.
Such as a 1982 Pichon Lalande, 1989 Haut Brion and a 1986 Cos. “Those are great, great vintages from great, great chateaus,” he says. “I drink those in France and in the Philippines. It’s always with friends. In 2006 or 2007, I was with my Filipino friends, we were maybe six or seven, at the chateau in Bordeaux; it was summer, and we started pulling out bottles of wine. We started with a 2004 bottle followed by a vintage that got older and older as the night wore on. We finished with a 1947 bottle. That was a wonderful evening.”
But his favorite wine experience is whenever he shares a vintage with wife, Sevrine (she is a marketing executive at Rustan’s). He gushes, “A nice quiet evening with your wife — obviously that’s the best!”
Does the French wife enjoy living in the Philippines as much as Edouard?
“She likes the Filipino people as well,” he says. “And, besides, there are excellent Filipino schools for our kids. You know, they speak better Tagalog than I do.”
To think they sing the Philippine National Anthem at the school flag ceremony.
Lilac wine is sweet and heady
Miailhe’s very own labels — main label Chateau Siran and second wine S de Siran — are produced in the chateau that has been with the same family since 1859. A piece of trivia: Edouard’s ancestor Leo Barbier bought the estate for 100,000 francs from the Count and Countess de Toulouse Lautrec, the grandparents of the artist, Henri Toulouse Lautrec.
“Bordeaux wines are a blend of grapes; Burgundy is a single blend,” Miailhe explains. “Siran is a blend of three grapes — Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Petit-Verdot. Seventy percent of production goes to the first label, the remaining goes to the second one. The one that ages better is the Chateau Siran. It is fruity, complex. As it ages it becomes more delicate, more subtle… It develops this silky, velvety taste.”
Dark-meat chicken or soufflés are excellent for the Chateau Siran. Steaks are perfect. You could have a quaff of the Siran at Wine Story in Rockwell or Serendra, or Santis. Who knows? You might run into Edouard at the bar, entertaining friends or his colleagues in the association of Bordeaux lovers.
Being a wine-lover is all about taste, Miailhe explains. “If you’re sensitive to certain pleasures of taste and smell, certain flavors and aromas, you’d really, really enjoy wine.”
So, like all great gustatory adventures, it starts with the palate. And if another Frenchman wanted to live in the Philippines, what would Edouard tell him?
“Don’t be bothered by traffic. Going to the airport is relative — it could take 15 minutes from Makati or an-hour-and-15 minutes (laughs). Be prepared”
And, maybe, try to avoid gin bulag like Camus’ plague.