There is nothing better for a weekend getaway of the mind – a holiday from the safety of one’s own garden – than the belle époque vision of Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami (1885). The syphilitic author’s elegy for Paris at the height of its decadence positively overflows with references to wine, and wine for Maupassant is always linked to desire.

One of the best scenes in the book is when the social climbing dandy Georges Duroy (or "Du Roy" as he grandly refers to himself), accompanied by his lover Clotilde and another couple, all go out for a sensuous meal in a private room. They dine in high style: there are Ostend oysters, "melting between the tongue and the palate," and "trout as pink-fleshed as a young girl" (105). Under the influence of champagne, the conversation moves swiftly from "noble theories of courtly love" to "elegant smut"; words begin to have physical effects, "like a hand lifting up a skirt" (108). Clotilde grasps the waiter’s arm, declaring: "We want some ice-cold champagne, the best you’ve got, sweet champagne I mean, and nothing else" (105).

Two kinds of intoxication intermingle in this scene, as they do throughout the book: "And slowly the idea of love permeated their thoughts and little by little filled them with intoxication, just as the pale sparkling wine trickling down their throats made their blood run faster and confused their minds" (107). Things soon get pleasantly out of hand. At the end of the meal, "The liqueurs brought an extra flush to their cheeks and befuddled their excited minds still more" (109).

sweet champagne

Champagne used to be much sweeter than it is today. In the nineteenth century, there were two trends: *le goût anglais* and *le goût russe*. The Russians liked their champagne extremely sweet, while the English preferred a drier style called Brut. After the Russian Revolution, the champagne market there collapsed and now Brut is the internationally popular style.

Elsewhere in the book wine is both a cause for celebration and class anxiety. Duroy has to make a difficult choice between Corton and Château Larose. Johannisberger is served in a dazzling sapphire blue glass, as a toast is raised to la vie française. Rum and absinthe are procured in a wine shop for a late-night party; another time madeira is bought from a grocer’s on the way to a secret assignation. By the midpoint of the novel, Duroy's Parisian experiences are piling up so quickly that he likens himself "to a man who was drinking samples of so many different sorts of wine that he soon becomes unable to distinguish Château Margaux from red biddy" (96). He and his mistress enjoy frequent excursions to dubious haunts and dive bars, to drink cherries-in-brandy as the regular patrons gawk at their fashionable attire. When Duroy gets married and takes his wife to visit the countryside where he grew up near Rouen, they leave the fine champagne of Paris behind – and instead get merrily drunk on humble cider.

illustrations for Bel-Ami drawn by Wilhelm M. Busch in 1962. Find out more about the German illustrator and cartoonist on one1more2time3. — *illustrations for Bel-Ami drawn by Wilhelm M. Busch in 1962. Find out more about the German illustrator and cartoonist on* one1more2time3.