Not understanding all the words

I lived in Bordeaux for three years without coming close to mastering French. It got better over time, but I often struggled to comprehend the language being spoken around me. I lived beside the Marché des Capucins, a food market that brands itself “the belly of Bordeaux”. Sunday morning visits were a feast for the eyes, nose and ears: I’ve never seen tomatoes that big before; I’ve never quite smelled anything like that tagine; and I literally haven’t got a clue what any of you are saying.

This was a weird, alienating experience. Walking around and within the world but not totally being a part of it. Knowing full well that life goes on in any event; those big tomatoes still get sold and that tagine still gets eaten regardless of my level of involvement or comprehension. Several years later, I recognise that there was something freeing in that. It helps you put yourself into perspective.

It makes me think about wine. For most people, wine is just not a very big deal. You’re in a shop or a restaurant or a conversation when, suddenly, something wine-related pops up. It might be a binary: yes or no, red or white, good or bad. It might extend to talk of a country or a region or a famous producer. Or a half-remembered memory, or a feeling. For some of you, it’ll be more nuanced than that; for many, it’ll be less. And then it’s all over and wine is, once again, no longer of any great importance.

You can enjoy wine, even love wine, without knowing most things about it. You probably don’t need to know that soil can determine the style and quality of a wine. You surely don’t need to know the thought processes behind vine pruning, let alone the actual mechanics of it – or the consequences of getting it wrong. And that’s before there are even grapes on the vine. The entire growing season is an exercise in how nature can conspire to mess things up: hail, rain, diseases and viruses, animals big and small.

Harvest brings some reprieve, surely – though you probably don’t need to know about that, either. Or how the availability of labour, machinery or actual space in the winery can have a profound impact on the wine that comes out the other end. They say wine is made in the vineyard, anyway, so you needn’t worry about the various operations – big, small, optional, crucial – that go on in the winery. And don’t fret about packaging or storage or transport. Or whether the wine actually has somewhere to be: the small matter of sales is not a small matter at all, but you don’t need to know about it to enjoy wine.

The majority of people who drink wine don’t know that such considerations exist and may not give them a second thought if they did. That doesn’t mean that these are unimportant or trivial things. We’re not talking arms and legs, or life and death. But these things do matter – to the people that make and sell wine, at least. And to those that choose to engage with its wonderful, maddening complexity.

The subject of wine is, I believe, almost infinitely complex. I have worked with wine for 10 years and I know quite a bit about it. I know more than any reasonable wine-drinker would ever need to. And yet there are vast, innumerable, unknowable gaps in that knowledge. I’m aware of some of them. But there are a great many wine-things that I’ll just never know, never fully appreciate and never truly understand. And that’s quite alright. For me, wine is a journey, a process of compound learning, appreciating and understanding. I’ll never get to where I’m going, but the getting there is so utterly fascinating that I don’t think I really want to.

A place like the Marché des Capucins can be as simple or complex as you let it be. On a busy day, you can’t move for the complexity. On a quiet day, you’ll find most of the food-stalls shut but no shortage of inanimate bric-a-brac on offer instead. The mid-afternoon clean-up gives a sense of scale and effort. You get a different perspective at night-time, when the market is closed but the sign is lit up and it’s still lively in its way. And then it all starts again the next morning, the same but slightly different. You could get lost in it.

Or, you could just have a wander around, alone or with a friend, and engage with it to the extent you’d like to. Stuff your bag with big tomatoes or indulge in a rich tagine. Sit down to some oysters and Entre-Deux-Mers at Chez Jean-Mi (if you can get anywhere near a table). Ask a question in broken French. Or don’t. Just have a look and a listen, even if you don’t understand all the words. You could always come back tomorrow, or next year.

_{Featured image is of the Marché des Capucins, illustrated by my friend (and talented multi-disciplinary designer) Stephen Browne}