It's Masters season again. Last year, Hideki Matsuyama achieved the feat of being the first Japanese and the first Asian to win the tournament. I never thought a Japanese person would win in my lifetime, so I was very excited. My university was remote due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so I was glued to the TV for a few days, and before I knew it, it was morning. On the final day, Matsuyama was in the last group, so I watched the TV from the first hole to the final hole, where he made his final putt to win. This year's results were a bit disappointing, but I still found myself glued to the TV until the early hours of the morning.
To be honest, I'm not very good at sports, or rather, I don't really like them. I especially didn't like team sports, and school physical education was a painful experience for me. But the only sport I was passionate about was golf. I started playing golf when I was in the fifth grade of elementary school. It was just when my father was transferred to work and we moved from Suwa in Nagano Prefecture to Kobe. Looking back, that was half a century ago. After we moved to Kobe, my father started going to a golf driving range every weekend.
At first, I tagged along out of curiosity, but after hitting the ball myself, I really wanted to try it out, so I started practicing with my father every week. There were two driving ranges within walking distance of the company housing, and the newer one was quite a distance away, but the Hanshin Electric Railway streetcar still ran along the national highway, so it was a quick ride. The company housing was a single-family home, so I would practice swinging in the small garden every day with a hand-me-down club my father had given me, and I would bury empty cans in the ground to use as cups to practice putting and approaches. I learned basic manners and techniques from a beginner's book written by professional golfer Torakichi Nakamura that my father had given me.
Although I was self-taught, I improved rapidly, and soon I was able to play on the short course. By the time I was in sixth grade, my father was taking me to the courses. My father was a banker, so he had a membership card that the bank had, and I borrowed it to play at the prestigious Ashiya Country Club. As I have already written, gifts are popular in the Kansai region, and we receive gifts not only for year-end and mid-year gifts, but also for Valentine's Day and other special occasions, and we were also invited to go on trips with our families during the holidays.
There is an artificial lake called Tojo Lake, with amusement parks and golf courses set up on its shores, and I have been to a certain company's resort several times. I went with my neighbors in company housing, and while my family went to the amusement park, I played golf with my father and the neighbor's husband. I liked Tojo Lake Country the best. Golf courses in Kansai are different from forest courses in Kanto, and are called hilly courses, with steep ups and downs, and no trees surrounding the holes. It feels like a seaside English golf course moved inland. However, since Tojo Lake is an artificial lake, the surroundings are flat, making it a rare forest course in Kansai. Even in midsummer, there are trees, so it was somehow cool and I could play in a very pleasant atmosphere.
Fifty years ago, playing golf as an elementary school student may have seemed like something very special, but it wasn't that unusual. At the time, all company employees played golf for clients and mahjong, so there was a boy in my class who was in a similar situation to me. His name was Uchida, and his father worked for Kanebo. He was the son of a family that moved around a lot. When school resumed after the summer vacation, we would talk about which courses we had played during the vacation.
My younger friends often ask me if I ever thought about going professional if I had been playing golf since I was a child, but I never even considered it. Because it was common knowledge that golf was merely a hobby or a pastime. When I was a child, making a living from golf was just a craftsman's training, working at a golf course after graduating from junior high school and working your way up from a caddy.
Originally, golf was not a professional sport, but rather gained popularity as a "gentleman's pastime." In fact, when I was a child, there was a famous player in the amateur golf world named Ginjiro Chubu ( 1942-2001 ) who was said to be "an amateur stronger than a professional." Nowadays, the amateur golf world seems to be for college students before they become professionals, but at that time, even as a child, I thought that professional golf and amateur golf were different worlds. Mr. Chubu is the son of the president of Taiyo Fisheries. He started playing golf in elementary school, and after graduating from Konan University, he got a job at a related company of Taiyo Fisheries. He was an active amateur throughout his life while working as a salaryman. Therefore, I never even thought about becoming a professional golfer. And my father probably never thought about making him a professional golfer either. In fact, when I was transferred to the Tokyo branch in the summer of my second year of junior high school and started living in company housing in Funabashi, he took me to the golf course, but I no longer had the same enthusiasm as before. Even so, my father didn't say anything. A colleague at the bank wanted to buy a membership, so I bought one out of kindness, but I didn't use it much and would only go around with my father occasionally.
When I entered university and started to become passionate about French cuisine, my father invited two female employees from the bank to go on a monthly French food tour with me and the other four people. He left it up to me to decide which restaurants to visit, and although he paid for it, he didn't say anything. It was just like when we went golfing. I am truly grateful to my late father.
My maternal grandfather was an amateur baseball umpire and was devoted to amateur baseball, including serving as the head umpire for the Shizuoka Prefectural Tournament finals leading up to the Koshien high school baseball tournament. Through this connection, my mother's sister married the coach of Shizuoka Prefectural Commercial High School, my father's alma mater, when the school finished second at Koshien, and my uncle was a top amateur golfer in Shizuoka Prefecture and runs a golf shop. However, I have never played golf with my uncle, although we do talk about golf.
In other words, golf is merely a form of "socializing," and playing together in one's own territory can help smooth relationships and enrich one's life. When I was a child, I would talk excitedly about golf with Uchida at school, but I never thought about playing with him. I think this was because, even as a child, I understood that Uchida had his own family territory, and that even though we were both transfer students and in the same situation, it was different from my family's.
When I see families where the whole family is trying to make their children golfers, I am truly glad that my father is just an ordinary salaryman.
This month's recommended wine
"Vallee du Rhone, the third largest wine producing region in France"
"Côtes du Rhône Rouge Petit Roi 2018 AC Côtes du Rhône Domaine Val des Rois" 2,200 yen (excluding tax)
This time, we will introduce some representative French red wines other than Burgundy and Bordeaux. As we have already mentioned repeatedly, Burgundy is blessed with a truly blessed geography that allows it to produce both red and white wines due to its latitude. Therefore, it is clear that red wine is best produced further south. And the wines of the "Rhone" are found directly south of Burgundy.
Syrah is undoubtedly the grape variety that represents the red wines of the Rhone. Along with Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot in Bordeaux and Pinot Noir in Burgundy, it is one of the varieties that are made as varietal wines around the world. As a southern grape, it is spicy, wild, and has a high alcohol content. In the Northern Rhone, many wines are made from Syrah alone, and the northernmost Cote Rotie produces some of the most expensive wines. Condrieu, located just south of it, is a producer of high-quality white wines that can be drunk early, and is made from the rare grape variety Viognier.
However, many Rhone wines are blends of Syrah and Grenache, and are closer in style to Bordeaux. Among them, the rarest is the red wine "Châteauneuf-du-Pape," which represents the southern Rhone, and can be made using 13 different grape varieties. Some winemakers make wine using only a single variety, allowing you to enjoy a wide variety of flavors.
This time we will introduce the most popular red wine from the Cotes du Rhone. In Burgundy, this wine is equivalent to AC Burgundy. As mentioned above, it is a blend of Syrah, Grenache, etc., and since Grenache is often used in southern French wines, we chose a wine with a high proportion of Syrah. This "Petit Roi" is 60 % Syrah and 40 % Grenache.
The winemaker is Emmanuel Bouchard. Domaine Val des Rois was founded in 1965 when his father, Roman Bouchard, a member of the Bouchard family, a representative Burgundy wine family, bought a vineyard in Valreas in the Southern Rhone. Emmanuel took over the domaine in 1997. He produces natural wines, which received Ecocert certification in 2013. His motto is to ferment with natural yeast, not use barrels, and to make wines that allow you to taste the grapes themselves.
This Rhone wine is full of fruit and can be enjoyed even when young. Its powerful, rustic flavor contrasts with the sophistication of Burgundy wines, making it perfect for outdoor barbecues and other events in the coming season. Please give it a try.
For inquiries about the wines featured,
To AVICO Co., Ltd.
Biography
Osamu Seki Born in Tokyo in 1961. Currently a part-time lecturer at Meiji University and other institutions.
He specializes in contemporary French thought and cultural theory, and is a director of the Reefer Wine Association.
His books include "An Introduction to Beautiful Men" (Natsume Shobo) and "My Neighbor is Arashi-kun" (Cyzo), and his translations include "How Should We Read Foucault?" by Oksara (Shinsensha) and "Mr. Pydrow, What Use Is a Gastronomic Critic?" by Pydrowski (Shinsensha).
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Seki Osamu Official Website
