Choosiest and most bedizened of attire and ceremonial of all eating and guzzling posses in the United States is probably a learned gathering of tosspots and mousse-munchers known as the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin which regularly meets in ceremonial robe in one of New York's or Washington's tonier taverns to toast itself in the best Burgundies and vilify lesser vintages.
The Chevaliers du Tastevin lay claim to a noble lineage and are, in fact, a semiofficial French order of knighthood whose membership and guest lists are resonant with the names of French officialdom, ministers, ambassadors, and other functionaries, but which in the United States embraces the merest handful of super snooty members, most of whom are professionally involved in the wine or allied trades. As a vintner's guild there is nothing on earth so eclectic in its tastes, so formidable in the prestige carried by its endorsements, or so terrible in denunciation of dubious bottlings.
Two or three times a year the Chevaliers hoist themselves into white ties and tailcoats, since dinner jackets are not tolerated at their chapter meetings, adjust their military and foreign decoration ribbons, hang a silver wine-taster's cup around their necks on a crimson sash, and sit down to eight or ten courses prepared by chefs at the Waldorf, St. Regis, or Ritz Carlton, who fumble at their beads and cross themselves piously before undertaking such an assignment in transcendental gastronomy.
The favorite chef of the Chevaliers, if repeated command performances are any index, is slim, laughing, and far from austere Gabriel Lugot of the Waldorf, a witty and eloquent man of the world who makes as ready an after-dinner speech as the Grand Master himself and knows most of the members personally. At their most recent Victory Chapter, a few weeks ago, Chef Lugot ran up for the beribboned eat-alls seven succulent courses, served on the Waldorf's gold plate of state and washed down by five wines of distinction or controversial merit and an assortment of after-dinner spirits. The big moments were a wonderful salmon served “sailor fashion,” in court-bouillon, an exquisite saddle of spring lamb entirely devoid of the conventional American mint sauce which wine drinkers view with horrified dismay as a confusion of flavors, the first authentic Strasbourg foie gras to be seen at a large dinner since the wars, a variety of Camemberts and “cousin cheeses,” and a dessert consisting of entire Hawaiian pineapples filled with pineapple milk sherbet and upholstered in spun confectioner's sugar.
The wines were more or less conventional until the enchanted Chevaliers encountered the noblest vintage of the evening, a magnificent Musigny of 1934 bottled by the Comte de Vogüé, and from then on the wine butlers in their gold chains of office operated at a double scurry around the perimeter of the Waldorf's Jansen Suite. For the initiation ceremonies which followed, a huge silver flagon of Richebourg Domaine de la Romanée Conti 1933 was used, and between the Richebourg and the Musigny and a number of bottles of Hines An- tique Cognac which made their appearances from time to time, everyone was able to endure the speaking.
The Chevaliers trace their antecedents back to the first Grand Master of the order, François Rabelais, and the society has flourished, like mushrooms, underground in the cellars of Burgundy since the twelfth century. Originally conceived as an annual conclave of the more noted vintners and wine merchants of Burgundy, who met among the casks and racked bottles of their wares and celebrated with prodigious feats of subterranean drinking, the Order has now elevated itself to a status of international importance in the wine trade, and its ranks are ornamented by names mighty and ponderous in the cooper's yards of the world.
Its chapters are nothing if not stately, at least up until an advanced hour when smudges of Burgundian origin begin to stain the shirt bosoms of the members. The Grand Officer, Jules Bohy, wears a robe of watered crimson silk fringed with ermine, and his mace of office is a root from the vineyards of Romanée Conti. Initiations are conducted before an altar of wine barrels, and a great deal of the ritual of the dinners is in the heavily Latinate lingua franca of the Middle Ages. Menus are printed in four colors with gold leaf, and each course is formally announced before its service by the Grand Officer. By the time Chef Lugot came up from his kitchens to make a bow and hoist a ceremonial beaker of Richebourg with the “convives,” the singing was not exactly in French nor precisely in English.
There is not a French hand laundry in New York that can't tell from next day's crop of dappled dress shirts when the Chevaliers du Tastevin have been riding their way through the Park Avenue night.
The chances are that Manhattan's most exclusively masculine club, since even the University and similar onetime butch tongs have admitted ladies to the premises, is the Turkish Bath at the Biltmore where, of an afternoon, the mighty and the witty foregather to stew and slenderize themselves in the hot room and holler murder under the ice showers. Not so long ago Al Smith was admittedly the dean of the Turkish towel brigade, and now the race for senatorial honors is between James A. Farley and Mr. Stettinius, both of whom are regulars in good standing. Other aficionados of the hot rooms are Gene Tunney, John Ringling North, and Steve Hannagan, handiest of all press agents when it comes to big-time promotion. Louis Bromfield adds literary flavor when he is on the town, a truant from agricultural pursuits in Ohio; Iles Brody, the viveur, occasionally rids himself of a pound or two of good living in its steamy premises; Bill Wister, son of the lettered Owen Wister, gets a now-and-then scrubbing; and Ben Sonenberg, whose hallmarks of distinction are the last four-button suits in town and an amazing pair of handlebar mustaches, fascinates beholders by imitating a somnolent seal as he paddles across the plunge. Turkish bathing may not have the same hold on masculine fashion that it did in the eighties and nineties when everything was Turkish from carpets and tobacco to coffee and candies, but the lazy man's exercise still has its followers.
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