A Beer in the Loire

by Tommy Barnes

  The market didn’t finish till 2 p.m. and we couldn’t get the van in to pack up before then, so the only thing we could do was to celebrate at Bruno’s bar for the rest of the morning. People came and chatted to us. People made orders for beer. People wanted to visit the brewery. At some point the local newspaper reporter asked if he could come to the house and do an interview in the week. Friends passed by to to say hello. Nick and Claire, Fred the vigneron, Celia, Colleen and Zoe. Members of the Braslou football team stopped to see how we were doing – Charlus, Jonathan and many more. We had succeeded in a way that I never thought we could.

  In the excitement of the market (by which I mean I was drunk), I’d forgotten about the journalist’s visit altogether, so it took me by surprise when he turned up a few days later. He asked a few questions about the brewery and what my plans were, he tried a couple of the beers and took a couple of photos, which was slightly embarrassing because the day before I had managed to get incredibly sunburnt, so I had a big red tomato head. I didn’t think he really had enough to make an article, so I thought nothing of it.

  The following week I spotted my giant tomato head splashed across the pages of the local newspaper alongside an article full of quotes that I don’t remember saying but that made me sound clever and like I’d had a plan all along. It was fantastic publicity. People stopped me in the street to talk about beer and remark on my giant tomato head. The article included my phone number and on the back of it I began getting several people a day phoning me asking to buy beer. Unfortunately, we’d sold all the beer at the market, so I didn’t have any more to sell.

  Chinon is famous in our region for its red wine. I don’t know how well known the wine is in the rest of France though, and in England it was not well known at all until very recently. It’s an incredible wine. Lots of people don’t like it at first. It’s a difficult wine to get into. I often hear people describe it as ‘earthy’. I don’t think it tastes earthy. It can be thin, it can be acidic; it’s a complex, light-red wine that smells of pencil shavings and is made from Cabernet Franc grapes. It’s not obviously a nice wine, but the more you drink it, the more you get out of it. I’m not brilliant at describing wines – at a tasting at the cave des vins in the wonderfully named village of Panzoult, one of the best wine villages in the Chinon appellation, when asked to described the smell of a particular wine, I panicked at being put on the spot and went with ‘candyfloss and concrete flyover supports’ – but I would say this: there are much easier wines to drink, like Côtes du Rhone, the round, easy-drinking southern wines, cheap Bordeaux. These wines are like the popular kid at school who goes on to become a used-car salesman. Chinon is the nerdy kid at school who becomes a multimillionaire rock star, marries a transvestite and invents cancer-free cigarettes.

  I remember being taken around by an estate agent when we first came to the area and being amazed at the some of the houses we passed as we toured the countryside around Richelieu. Majestic buildings set back from the road behind imposing gates.

  ‘There are so many châteaux around here,’ I said.

  ‘Those aren’t châteaux,’ said the estate agent, ‘they are farmhouses. But there are lots of châteaux too. That, for instance, is a château.’ She indicated to the right. A stone wall ran along the road for what must have been a kilometre, split by a set of imposing gates and a magnificent gatehouse. As we passed the gates I saw a brief glimpse of a huge château in tuffeau set back half a kilometre up a drive lined with immaculately pollarded trees. The châteaux, the grand farmhouses, even the basic, long, single-storey houses you see have a delicacy that marks them out from other regions.

  This particular area of the Loire is famous for its châteaux. The more we explored the area, the more of these châteaux we discovered. There are the big ones, the ones that you will find advertised by the tourist board, normally with some kind of historic significance – the châteaux of Chenonceau, Blois, Amboise, châteaux that Joan of Arc visited, châteaux where various kings and queens resided, but then there are also lots and lots of great châteaux that you would never hear about. Everyday châteaux hidden away behind rows of pine trees, built by the local big cheese. There are two like this between us and Richelieu that you wouldn’t know existed unless you took a wrong turn or two.

  Then there are these grand farmhouses, which I had mistaken for châteaux. La Ruche, our house, was a miniature example of one of these. One of the expats I gardened for, Roy, who had an absolutely beautiful house with a fountain and a maze, told me that a lot of the grand farmhouses like his were built in the nineteenth century when the railways arrived and allowed the farmers direct access to Paris. Suddenly everyone was incredibly wealthy and so they started building grander and grander houses, trying to outdo each other. The chimneys on the houses were a status symbol; the bigger the chimneys the wealthier you were. Never could there be a better example of the manifestation of one’s insecurities around the size of one’s johnson.

  You can pick up a genuine château for a little over €500,000 and a grand old farmhouse for less. Compare that to what that gets you in London – which illustrates the reason I needed to leave London, actually. We were slowly being squeezed to death. Services were being cut, rent was going up, the cost of living was getting higher and higher while our wages stalled. Some people were still getting disgustingly rich – expensive restaurants and designer shops continued to open and flourish, while the rest of us were gradually being fooled into thinking that living on the limit was OK.

  Old houses were divided into as many flats as the developers could squeeze in. New flats were built with the minimum possible space that the regulations allowed – kitchens combined with living rooms combined with bathrooms, so you could cook your bacon in the morning while simultaneously watching Eamonn Holmes and taking a poo. Unfortunately not on Eamonn Holmes. And yet still no one could afford to buy these flats. They say people in London don’t know their neighbours, but thanks to the build quality of the walls in my block, I knew more about my neighbours than they’d tell their therapist.

  Local pubs were shutting down every day because of the cost of rents in the capital and short-sighted, money-grabbing breweries. The only way pubs could survive any more was if they were caked in widescreen TVs and so full that there wasn’t a seat in sight and every journey to the bar was like hacking your way through a medieval battleground. Drinks were just on the limit of what you could afford, so that you couldn’t get nearly as drunk as you wanted. Not a café without a queue outside the door in the entire city.

  It was impossible to drive anywhere without being stuck in traffic, no matter what time of day or night you travelled and then, if you were lucky enough to find a parking space, it would cost you more than your battered old car was worth. Everything was monetised. Everything was designed for profit first and the minimum possible service next. Nothing was done with the primary intention to make us happy any more and we’d been fooled into thinking this was OK. Some kind of sleight of hand had taken place whereby money was no longer a means to an end – it was the end.

  Here was different. Here, you needed enough to live and that was it. Once you had enough to live, just being in a nice place with nice food and nice wine was enough. The problem I had was that I couldn’t even get us enough to live.

  I was having a breakdown on a ride-on lawnmower over at Andrew and Sarah’s house when Aunty Maggs rang. I don’t mean the lawnmower had broken down, I mean I was crying uncontrollably while riding round and round in circles without even engaging the blades, listening to ‘Fernando’ by Abba on repeat while Burt smirked at me from under a bush. You see, I was wondering what the hell I was going to do. The market had been brilliant, but once the dust settled I realised I hadn’t made any money from it; indeed, once everything had been taken into account, I had lost money. All it had done was shown me a tantalising glimpse of what might have been. I felt sure the demand for a microbrewery was there – I mean, 300 bottles sold in one and a half hours! T
hat was extraordinary. But it had taken me a month to make 300 beers, so there was no way I could meet the demand or make any money while I was still brewing with the GrainFather. Now I was back mowing lawns and further away from affording a brewery than ever. It was heartbreaking.

  ‘You still interested in some investment for your brewery?’

  ‘Oh, what? Um. Hi, Aunty Maggs.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, I suppose so. I mean yes. Definitely.’

  ‘Brilliant. I’ll give you three grand. The only thing I ask is you name one of your beers after my dog.’

  ‘OK, um, sure.’ I couldn’t believe it. I switched off the engine. ‘Are you sure about this, Maggs?’

  ‘Of course I’m sure. Just name a beer after my dog.’

  ‘Right. No problem. What’s your dog called?’

  ‘Mussolini.’

  ‘Mussolini? Like the—’

  ‘Mussolini.’

  ‘The guy that—’

  ‘Mussolini.’

  ‘Oh, right. I see.’

  It was a crossroads moment. Just when all had seemed lost, I now had a chance to haul myself back from the precipice; my life wasn’t over after all, but to save myself and my family I would have to dispense with any morality and name my beer after a fascist dictator. Would I stand by my morals and do the right thing, or would I sell out?

  ‘Right. Of course. Mussolini … I’d be happy to.’

  ‘I’m joking, you idiot. She’s called Biscuit. You didn’t really think I would call my dog Mussolini?’

  ‘No, of course—’

  ‘Don’t tell me you were actually going to name your beer after a fascist dictator.’

  ‘Well, I mean, technically I would be naming it after your dog, you see, and anyway, I believe there’s still a market for that sort of thing in some areas of central Europe …’

  ‘Look, never mind. Name a beer after Biscuit and consider it a deal. Send me your bank details and I’ll transfer the money. You’re very brave, you know, giving up your life and moving over there — what you’ve done and everything. We all think so.’

  ‘Thanks, Aunty Maggs. I really don’t know what to say. Has your house fallen off the cliff yet?’

  ‘Not yet. I’ll need that three grand back when it does, so you better get moving.’

  She hung up. I was in a state of disbelief. Three grand could just about buy me the brewery I needed. Everything had switched around with one phone call. If there were clouds in the sky they would have parted.

  I texted Rose: The hawk is in the pantry. I repeat, the hawk is in the pantry.

  Rose’s reply: Have you been drinking again? I told you not to drink near spinning blades.

  I was puzzled for a moment until I realised I had only just made up the code for ‘everything is going to be OK because Aunty Maggs has just invested three grand in the brewery’.

  I texted back: It’s code for everything is going to be OK because Aunty Maggs has just invested three grand in the brewery! The hawk is in the fucking pantry!

  Well, you’d better bloody well buy a brewery quickly, before you piss it up the wall. Start looking! she replied. And so I finished my mowing, chased Burt back into the car and started looking.

  I’ve never thought of myself as brave, so I was pleased Aunty Maggs thought I was, but after a while I began to think that maybe in my case ‘brave’ was the wrong word. There are two sorts of people who give up perfectly acceptable lives and risk it all on a completely new start. There are brave people who think it through, see all the risks, and do it anyway. Rose was brave. Then there are people who don’t give it any thought at all. People who just assume it will work out fine. Those people are idiots. As far as I could see, it seemed to be working out fine.

  BEER NO. 8:

  Mussolini Ale

  RECIPE

  4.2 kg Pale malt

  500 g Munich malt

  200 g Biscuit malt

  200 g Melanoidin malt

  25g Syrian Goldings hops at 60 minutes

  20 g Saaz hops at 10 minutes

  25 g Huell Melon dry hops in the fermenter

  500g local honey

  MISTAKES

  Not adding crystal malt

  Not pushing Burt out of a moving vehicle

  Failing to defend myself against the Gallic shrug

  Burt had rolled in fox shit. This became apparent several minutes into a three-hour drive to the Charente-Maritime region of France. I was running half an hour late, so turning back was out of the question. I believe Burt knew this. He was in an unusually upbeat mood.

  I was on my way to look at a microbrewery that had been advertised for sale on leboncoin, a website that is the French version of eBay, although they also have eBay. The whole situation was typically French. I had been searching every website that had advertisements for second-hand breweries from the moment Maggs called. These were exciting times. Up until now each brewery I had enquired about had already been sold. This was the first one still available.

  I resolved to push on despite the wretched stench emanating from Burt, slouched on the passenger seat next to me. I wound down all the windows I could reach and put the pedal to the floor of the 1999 Renault Mégane estate, which had almost zero effect.

  The brewery was just outside of Angoulême in the Charente region, which runs along the west coast down to the Dordogne. It was a glorious day of sunshine. I had not visited Angoulême before, but it was a pretty region of steep, green hills like jelly moulds, similar to the Yorkshire Dales (I’ve never been, but I’ve watched Last of the Summer Wine), except these hills were striped with vineyards growing grapes for Cognac, and scattered with tumbledown farmhouses with terracotta roofs.

  Three men in their sixties greeted me when I arrived in their little village. Bruno was the owner of the brewery. His two mates helped him out with it. It was a small brewery, capable of making about 300 litres of beer per brew, which was just what I was looking for. I presumed he’d show me round, but when he invited me into the kitchen it was clear there was no question of going to see the brewery straight away. First, we had to try the beers. This is how it is done in France. It is never purely just a transaction. It’s an opportunity to talk, to drink and to eat. We’ve forgotten to do that in the UK and we are the worse for it. We drank Bruno’s beers, a blonde beer, an amber beer and a brown beer. Whereas in the UK we classify our beers as bitters, milds, ales, IPAs, lagers, porters, stouts, imperial stouts and several other classifications that I’ve no doubt forgotten, the French have always traditionally defined beer by its colour. This is changing as the craft beer movement gradually makes its way across Europe, but it’s still the norm in much of France.

  It turned out Bruno’s two mates were retired, and with them, Bruno, previously a fishmonger, had spent the previous ten years making beer and selling it at the markets in the seaside towns on the south-west coast. They’d had a fantastic adventure, but now he wanted to retire. I liked the three of them. They sat around the table taking the piss out of each other relentlessly.

  Once we’d sampled all his beers, Bruno showed me the brewery. It was situated in a converted garage that had been tiled, and it was absolutely batshit. An ancient riveted metal water heater that looked like a deep-sea diver’s helmet from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea and used to be part of a Cognac still was bricked into the corner. He’d converted a large rectangular metal trough that he used to keep eels in into the mash tun. Various other old bits of fishmongery paraphernalia had been recycled into brewery equipment. It was innovative, it was marvellous, but it was completely insane. He performed the sparge, the washing of the grains once they’ve soaked, with an old shower nozzle. I couldn’t buy it. I wanted to, but I didn’t have the courage. He made very good beer from it because he had built it and he understood all the quirks of it, but it was way too crazy for me, so I had to decline. I could see he was disappointed when I told him I couldn’t buy it and you would think that would be the end of the trans
action, but instead – and this was the measure of the man – he insisted I stay for lunch, so I did. It was an hour of good food and outrageous slurs directed at everyone they knew.

  For the next two weeks, searching for breweries for sale became an obsession. Several times I was close, but even when I phoned up a few minutes after a listing for a brewery had appeared online, I still seemed to miss out.

  After two weeks an advert for a brewery that was just what I was looking for came up. I phoned up immediately and, unbelievably, it was still available.

  ‘I’ll take it!’ I said before the man on the other end of the line had even finished his sentence.

  ‘Don’t you want to see it?’ said the very reasonable man, called Antoni.

  ‘Maybe. Where is it?’

  ‘It’s in North Wales.’

  ‘It’s where? What the hell is it doing there? It’s supposed to be in France.’

  ‘It was on the advert. It’s where I live,’ said Antoni, slightly taken aback. In my frenzy to find a brewery, I had forgotten that I had widened my internet search to the UK as well as France.

  ‘Oh. OK. No, just send it over. It will be fine. Do you think it will be fine? It will be fine.’

  ‘Well, it’s not the sort of thing you can send by post. These are four-hundred-litre vats we are talking about.’

  ‘Right. Got you. OK, I’ll phone a delivery company. I know one that delivers to this part of France regularly.’

  Within minutes of the phone call I sent a bank transfer through for the deposit, despite not having done any research on the brewery or finding out how much it would cost to be delivered. You see, with a big life decision such as this, I always say it’s best not to think about things too much, because you’ll probably talk yourself out of it. I have lived my life by that philosophy and on the whole it’s delivered below-par results. But I find it’s best not to think about this too much.