On the occasion of the last issue of the literary magazine “Apostrophes” before Christmas 1985, Bernard Pivot dealt with the pleasures of the palate, which are, as we know, as dear to him as those of the printed page. We had three memories: a fight over mashed potatoes; a story of “wine that does not exist”; a succession of bottles and the ruddy faces of some…

Since the Madelen site – the general public platform on subscription to archives of the National Audiovisual Institute – offers it, we wanted to see it again. And we were not disappointed. But memory is misleading: the exchange between Martine Jolly, who had just published Merci M. Parmentier (Robert Laffont, 1985), and Richard Olney, the American wine and cuisine specialist, author of Yquem (Flammarion, 1985), is not so sharp, and the weapons of the duel are the vegetable mill versus the sieve.

We thought we remembered an offended remark from the American who spoke of crushing the tuber with a fork… Was the show “skimmed” for its posting? Richard Olney loses a point by confusing a ratte and a belle de Fontenay but wins the game by recommending – to everyone’s astonishment – ??adding a little potato cooking water to the mash.

The story of the “wine that does not exist” is told by the philosopher Michel Serres, “guest of reference” (as Pivot liked to say), with the greedy faces of a prelate with jovial obsequiousness: we will not deflower it, because , true or not, it is succulent. It is also narrated in his book The Five Senses. Philosophy of mixed bodies (Grasset, 1985).

Sensory images

Fifteen minutes into the show, Bernard Pivot opened and served a first bottle, a 1981 Saumur-Champigny. Richard Olney finished his glass first, fourteen minutes later. The great specialist in French wines and gastronomy, based in France (where he died in 1999), lost his thirst for the two Château d’Yquems that were to follow and competed in erudition, in a progressively foggy French. But we are far from the alcoholic accident during the famous “Apostrophes” of 1978 with Charles Bukowski…

André Vedel, publisher of the 1986 Guide Hachette des Vins de France, multiplies the sensory images about the two Yquems (1967 and 1969) served at the table of “Apostrophes”, in which he spots “citrus skin”, “English marmalade” or “kumquat”. Pivot, very lively, launches: “It’s more wines, it’s souks! »

Virtue of the already old archives: we see Pierre Escoffier, grandson of the great chef de cuisine Auguste Escoffier, recount how the guests of yesteryear could eat as much as we saw written on the menus of endless banquets: “They tasted, we didn’t eat everything,” he reveals; quite simply. And to remember that, more than tradition, it is adaptation to the customs of the times that his august ancestor preferred.

The program ends with a comparison between the birth years of the guests and the corresponding vintages. After a round table, Bernard Pivot, even more in spirit, evoking his own (1935), launches: “I was born in a bad vintage, but was conceived in a good one. »