In this entry to our 2024 wine writing competition, wine writer and marketer Charlotte Adams Alsaadi writes about a memorable bottle of Grüner Veltliner drank during the COVID lockdowns in Bordeaux. See the guide to our competition for more.
Charlotte Adams Alsaadi writes Charlotte Adams Alsaadi is a wine marketer and writer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She holds a master’s degree in Wine & Vineyard Sciences from the University of Bordeaux’s Institut des sciences de la vigne et du vin (ISVV) and is a WSET Level 3 sommelier. Her experience with Grüner Veltliner in this piece inspired a first-of-its-kind master’s thesis research study on the effects of leaf removal and harvest date on Grüner Veltliner berry chemistry, yield components, and economic cost in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley AVA. Charlotte currently works for Vine Street Imports.
A Lockdown Grüner in Bordeaux
The streets of Bordeaux were empty. The once-bustling squares were quiet, and the windows were sealed, giving the city of stone an alien countenance. The second semester of my master’s degree in wine and vineyard sciences had shifted to online classes, and my life quickly became confined to four thick walls. In between screen sessions, I would stick my head out our front casement windows over Rue des Bahutiers and shift my gaze to the sun like a withered heliotrope. My eyes prickled and my skin felt paper thin.
Long, lonely walks along the Garonne River were the only temporary antidote to the humdrum of France’s first, 75-day lockdown. At the time, there was no ending in sight, and this ambiguity stole my sleep and shackled my focus. We were allowed outside for one hour per day within a one-kilometer radius from home, and after the wettest winter I had ever experienced, the lockdown sun shone with cruel temptation. Without a porch or a patio or even a hint of natural sunlight in my downtown apartment, I was a caged bird. Craving the familiarity of walking, the steady rhythm of my breath, I used every allotted hour of outdoor time each day – and, admittedly, I took liberties with an extra thirty minutes here, a circle of the block there. My restless demeanor was, I knew, a privilege compared to illness, and an ember of guilt burned inside of me.
At first, I wasn’t alone on my walks, as the quai riverpath became a veritable outdoor gym. But before long, angry rule-followers hung hand-painted banners on their balconies that read “Faux joggers, rentrez-chez vous !” After a few weeks, the fake joggers dwindled, and the only other people I passed were the gendarmes carrying rifles that bobbed up and down to the pace of their slow, uniform patrol. When I saw them from afar, unnerving in their stoicism, I would cling to my attestation, the hand-written document justifying my outing, and turn the corner.
The gendarmes were to me what life had become: a dull march toward nowhere in particular. The France I met upon arrival was a distant memory, every day now heavy with new unknowns. Silhouettes of the outdoor market shimmered like a mirage in my mind, and the boulangeries never seemed to hold the same hours each day, making once-quotidian baguettes a luxury. Like the rest of the internet, I started to make my own sourdough bread, succeeding after about a month of hockey puck loaves that refused to rise. The routine of new habits felt holy; at eight o’clock every night, we opened our heavy windows to clap for the soignants, filling the streets with a pitter-patter echo that joined the jingle of the tram as the only signs of life.
Thankfully, the French government had deemed wine shops essential businesses, and my local purveyor, Cousin et Compagnie, offered free deliveries for nearby residents. With my paltry student budget, I ordered as many wines as I could. On delivery day, the bobo man with his wire-rimmed glasses and cuffed jeans would bike down my street pulling a trailer stacked to the brim with cases of wine. When the doorbell rang, I’d fly down the cold, dimly lit staircase of my building, trudging the case back up so I could admire my treasures like a kid on Christmas.
The wines that I ordered were nothing more than table wines, chosen without rhyme or reason – except they were never from Bordeaux. My longing for this city was too fervent, too raw, to drink its wines without the din of its bistros or the smoke plumes of its night owls.
When the apéro hour arrived again, I would allow myself to open a bottle, which I shared with my partner who had accompanied me on my journey to France. His stage as a line cook at Bordeaux’s most exciting Asian-Middle Eastern-French fusion restaurant came to a heartbreaking close on March 17, 2020, and we were both feeling a foreign kind of pain, one that reverberated with a low and steady ache. We missed the life that we had built, measuredly, assuredly, with a pair of job notices and one-way tickets. These were Champagne Problems, and it was untenable to feel robbed when we still had the luxury of life – but it hurt.
I was grateful for wine, the only alleviation from the pain of what-ifs. It became a comforting balm; tasting a new grape or region provided a much-needed thrill in a world gone motionless. Like the tender firsts of love and travel, the first new wine stood out with bittersweet clarity.
It was a Grüner Veltliner, an entry-level, organic Sepp Moser with an old-school, single-speed bike on the label. It cost me ten euros, and it had a screw top. It was ordinary, unassuming in its simplicity. And yet – this is my forever wine. It is the one I will remember when I’m old, the one that bandaged my badgered heart. We paired it with a salade niçoise and a homemade Dijon vinaigrette and sat in silence as waves of lemony brine stirred our spirits. As light waned, our moods lifted. Our best laid plans had splintered, and all we could do was laugh. Where riverside apéros once filled our Friday evenings, we now had this, a night of firsts we never thought we’d have. An Austrian Grüner Veltliner in Bordeaux. A salad as a salve. A covert outing to Place Saint-Pierre, sitting under the bordelais night sky, cradling an entire, empty city in our arms. The low April moon swaddled the stone in a silver afterglow, and a normal wine became rare in an irreplicable scene. I stayed there for hours, slowly sipping newfound wine, embalming into sacred memory the stillness and the quiet and the once-in-a-lifetime-ness of it all.
The photo is the author's own. Caption: 'A woman bikes near Bordeaux's deserted Place de la Bourse during France’s first Covid-19 lockdown'.