Ah, the Fench.
Despite everything, you’ve really got to hand it to a nation who’s most important national holiday celebrates a prison riot.
This Bastille Day, put aside the snooty waiters of popular legend, the recent flirtation with the far right, the terrible football, the 1999 and 2007 World Cups, the Rainbow Warrior and nuclear testing in the South Pacific, and celebrate the knee-jerk iconoclasm, the manure dumping farmers, the mind-boggling public intellectuals, Serge Gainsborgh, one of the world’s great food cultures, and the best wine in the galaxy.
In Auckland, do what you have to do, and it might not be pretty, to get into Maison Vauron’s annual Bastille Day celebration. The French wine importer’s legendary shindig has long been sold out and the likes of you and I probably missed out because we were wasting our time raising kids and working for a living instead of smoking countless Gauloises and drinking Marc de Bourgogne like a sensible person. Staying in Tāmaki Makaurau, Paname Social will be holding a Bastille Day lunch on Sunday afternoon and a Masquerade Ball on the Saturday. with DJs and all that stuff. I’m tired even thinking about it.
If you’re lucky enough to be in Hamilton then get along to Made Market for Amphora Wine Bar’s Bastille Day celebration. They have the city’s finest selection of French wine – expect cru Beaujolais, oodles of rare Burgundy, the finest Bandol Rosè, and everything in between. Oh and they’ll be serving raclette. Have you had raclette? Can you even claim to like cheese if you haven’t had this melty alpine goodness? No you can not. You may as well be lactose intolerant. You’ve wasted your life. Fix it
In Martinborough, the town that fancies iself as a little Burgundy of the south, get yourself along to Union Square‘s weekend long celebration of everything Gallic. There will be will be goats cheese and anchovy tarts, herb-encrusted racks of lamb, Mille Feuille, and cheese soufflé. There will be wine. Bring a jumper.
And finally, if you’re in Central Otago break out the long-johns and your possum fur socks for Domaine Thomson’s Bastille Day celebration featuring a three course Provençal syle meal and the latest, as yet unreleased Domaine Thomson wines.
