'You haven't tasted fine wines until you have tasted them on the mouth of a beautiful woman.' Kevin Pilley learns about palate, bouquet and mouthfeelat a kissing festival deep in - where else? - French wine country.
I had never kissed a nun before. She threw back her coif and grabbed me. Our lips met. Full-bodied and decidedly fruity, she smelled heavenly and tasted divine - a red Lirac with a hint of pâté de campagne. She was clearly no novice. Nor was she a nun, it turned out; just a woman dressed up as one. "That is your first grand cru kiss, monsieur," she said, giggling, after unclamping herself from my face. "Today you will embrace all the good things that life has to offer in France. Wine, women and song."
Once a year, the picturesque, close-knit village of Roquemaure, across the Rhône from the vineyards that produce Châteauneuf-du-Pape, gets even more intimate than usual. For the weekend that it hosts the Fête des Baisers, the world's only kissing festival, its people embrace anyone and anything that moves.
By the end of the day, which is held in honour of the patron saint of lovers on the Saturday closest to St Valentine's Day, you have lost all feeling in your lips and you have lost the power of speech. Whether from drinking too much wine or kissing too many people, you can no longer form intelligible words or coherent sentences.
Known officially, if a little coyly, as the Fête des Amoureux, the festival, I learned, was founded in 1989 by a local priest, Fr René Durieu, to commemorate the arrival, in 1868, of St Valentine's relics in the town's 14th-century collegiate church. They had been bought by a local landowner, Maximilien Richard, at a relic auction in Rome, in an attempt to cure the area's vines of disease.
Planted by Crusaders in the 12th century, among the oaks, cypresses, olive trees and chalky stones of the garrigue, the vines had been devastated by phylloxera that Richard had inadvertently introduced when he imported US rootstock. Within four years the ancient vines were healthy again.
Now, all year round, couples visit the church to take or renew their wedding vows in front of a large glass cabinet that contains what are said to be the saint's shin bones and several of his ribs (as opposed to the parts of him kept in a reliquary at Whitefriar Street Church, in Dublin).
Before I could find out more I was grabbed from behind and swung around. "Welcome to the capitale des amoreux!" said a young and happily tipsy girl, who then planted a very wet kiss on my mouth. "Today lip-pressing is like grape-pressing," giggled one of her friends, taking her turn on my bruised and battered lips. "You haven't tasted fine wines until you have tasted them on the mouth of a beautiful woman."
Soon, through a combination of lipstick and red wine, my face was the same colour as the terracotta roofs of the Provençal countryside.
Barrel organists sang chansons d'amour around the fountain in the town's square, and, in the shadow of the rock that gives Roquemaure its name, market traders sold cheese, truffles, gingerbread hearts, lavender honey, walnuts, olives and speciality sausages. Everyone else was kissing or drinking. Free wine and its effects were everywhere.
"We are kissing connoisseurs," said Sylvie, who said she was a local historian. "We go for four pecks and long clinches. Un, deux, trois, quatre," she shouted, demonstrating on my cheeks. "We hate all that air-kissing. The mwaa, mwaa, c'est très désagréable. Only the French know how to kiss. They have made an art of it. They have studied it scientifically. They have conducted experiments for centuries."
The woman dressed as a nun was now being affectionate towards a man dressed as a monk. A man on stilts was looking a little frustrated. I was then accosted by three middle-aged women dressed as peasants. A man wobbled past on a penny-farthing, shouting: "Vive St Valentin! Vive la Fête des Baisers!" The wine and the occasion were beginning to work their magic.
For more details, see www.saintvalentin.org