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Sunday, June 4, 2000 Oakville Beaver Weekend 19 What a blessing, winemakers all around the world are re-discovering grapes to make wine. Actually, they knew all along, but many had the notion that wine should taste like oak rather than the fruit of the grape. As we Canadians still do, a few winemakers of the Napa and Sonoma Regions thought that if a first heard the name Maurice Chardonnay tastes like an old two Richard when I was in the younger by four, it would be a nice wine. grades of elementary school. The librarian was reading to us from a book Besides, if you age your Chardonnay in new barrels, you can called "The Hockey Sweater," by Roch call it a Reserve and charge twice Carrier. It was about a boy who i ir tn played hockey lilZ Y l every day with his , friends, and they S te p h a n ie all wore Montreal MacLellail Canadiens jerseys -------------------------to be like somebody named Maurice Richard. All of them even combed their hair and taped their sticks like him. I think this was where the story got lost on me. I remember thinking that someone must have made M aurice Richard up, since no one could be that idolized. I mean, some of the boys in my class liked hockey, but they didn't go out every day dressed like Wayne Gretzky or M ario Lemieux. Why would one hockey player be so impor tant? I saw the story again years later, when I was in Grade 11. By this time, I realized that "The Hockey Sweater" was a well-known Canadian short story, and that C arrier was an important French-Canadian writer. I had also learned about Rocket Richard, that he was an exceptionally great hockey play er and that he did, in fact, exist. W hat made "The Hockey Sweater" so significant was its portrayal of French-Canadian life in the post-war period. If hockey was a religion, Maurice Richard was a god. Upon hearing o f Richard's death this past week, the first thing I thought of was "The Hockey Sweater." There aren't that many athletes who have sto rybooks written about them, and read to schoolchildren across the country in two languages. But as stories and images have piled up over the week, as over 100,000 peo ple filed past his coffin in the Molson Centre, it finally became apparent. Maurice Richard was not just an athlete. He was a cultural icon. The Richard Riots, when M ontrealers revolted against the Rocket's suspension, has been called the beginning of the Quiet Revolution, the m ovem ent by which the FrenchCanadians o f Quebec reclaimed their own voice. In a time when Quebeckers were, in the words o f playw right Michel Tremblay, a "fringe society" in English Canada, Richard was one of theirs. One o f theirs was the greatest. In recent years, we have seen the United States bury "national heroes" like Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, athletes as well. Neither of them was laid out in Yankee Stadium. Neither had a state funeral, or drew hundreds of thousands to pay their respects. The difference is that M aurice Richard was more important to hfs peo ple than any athlete has ever been to the Americans. Not as an athlete alone, but as an icon of hope and representation. Richard the man is being buried as I write this, but Richard the symbol will never die. What he stood for is too great to ever be forgotten. A legend that will last forever HEY! Wooden taste and white wine do not mix ^3erspaec*ier ^" meCellar the money for it The rest of the world followed suit, trying their damdest to cash in on California's success and soon there were woody white wines found from Chile to Italy. But sanity prevails, after all, and most coun tries have now gone back to clean and crisp white wines that taste like grapes. Even California is follow ing suit now and some of the white wines have become quite good again. Mind you, I just opened a bottle of well-known and mid-priced Cabernet Sauvignon from California that was so oaky and tan nic that I could taste absolutely no fruit in the wine. It was simplyimpossible to drink it with a meal. As one Californian winemaker told me recently, there are two rea sons why you would put white wine in oak. The first one is that you have a "nothing" wine and try to make something better out of it, and the second reason would be that you have a wine that has a fault, and oak is used as a cover-up. A well-known wine maker from Sonoma recently said, "It is so sim ple to make good wine. Start off with good grapes and don't screw it up." I All regular, clearance and sale-priced items throughout the store and all Salon Services at Magicuts locations** PLUS! FREE COFFEE AND M UFFINS from store opening to 11:00 a.m . *Some exceptions apply. Please see the Customer Service Desk for details. **At participating Zellers locations.