A Beer in the Loire

3.5. I am in the Loire valley for a few months and mostly drinking wine and not beer but I still had hopes that it might reveal something about the hipster farming culture that I kept running into at the local marchés and buvettes. Imagine 20-80 year old remote Hudson Valley types who speak a bizarre French that is remotely Parisian but heavily coated with tongue thickening tannins. All of the other signatures are mostly present: unmanaged everywhere hair, imbecilic tattoos, malevolent village dentist, limbs colonized by yeastdirtfungi and thru-hiker BO, particularly strong from the younger woman. Generally, I didn't learn too much about that group but there were a few spot on observations about the French which I won't recount as I am still fragile cargo here among them.

I will say that I do think that French seem to be the last to know that the rest of the world's food, beer and coffee scenes have lapped them in many areas in recent times and Mr Barnes mentions this in one passage, and it's why he's here, to make them a ‘real beer'. Many of the French are sharp and enterprising and my hope is that the young will help modernize the French menu from the bottom up as happened in the US, PDX etc. The alternate protein scenes in the UK and Israel come to mind and I don't have a hard time imagining them revolutionizing the US and UK cheese scene way before this happens in France. I'm only aware of one vegan cheese producer in Paris at the moment. Even de Gaulle would have to agree that the French should lead in this effort no matter how alien or improbable it might seem to him. All that said the French, in Paris, anyway have developed a taste for expensive craft beer cans and some are not bad. These cans are mostly drank on the street, not in cafes where blondes and bruns still reign, and none that I've tasted is as good as say a simple Kane sneakbox whose flavors would be like liquid citrus Chernobyl to the French palate. The coffee in France is still mostly shit with the Australians providing the best roasted beans and preparations. I swear I had a freshly thawed noisette at a cafe in Nantes yesterday. How is this done? Oh and below my current apartment is a line around the block for a restaurant that serves just one dish, the infamously boring L'Entrecôte for lunch and dinner.

The book, surprisingly laugh out loud funny in several spots, which is absolutely never the case for these new immigrant tales. Mr Barnes appears to be legitimately funny and probably unendorsed by his family which contravenes most of the writers in this genre.

I leave you with this recent scandalous article: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/why-food-in-britain-is-so-much-better-than-in-france