Frenchman saves our bacon with bourbon
It’s a tradition at the U.S. Embassy in Paris to hold a huge garden party on July 4th to celebrate our independence and the French role in defeating the British.
About 2,400 people attended this year and many of them may have noticed that the party had a distinctly Bluegrass flavor.
The explanation begins last spring when Lexington and Deauville, France, received special invitations to be one of four pairs of host cities at the garden party because of their long-standing relationship as Sister Cities.
“It was a big deal,” says David Lord of the Lexington Convention and Visitors Bureau, but the bureau couldn’t afford to fly people to France for a garden party.
Then Lord learned that his Lexington friends, Laurent and Mary Jouet, and Lord’s son, Cameron, would be in Paris for other reasons on the 4th and were willing to staff a Lexington-Deauville tent at the embassy.
The discovery was followed by an idea.
Lord contacted Eric Gregory, president of the Kentucky Distillers Association, and Gregory supplied 10 cases — or 1,200 small bottles — of bourbon that could be handed out at the party.
The embassy said get the bourbon to Andrews Air Force Base near Washington, D.C., and a military cargo plane would take it from there.
So Lord rented a large vehicle for a bureau staffer and his family who were going to the East Coast on vacation and they delivered the bourbon to an Air Force major in Alexandria, Va., who works at Andrews. She took it the rest of the way.
Mission accomplished, Lord thought.
Then on July 1, he learned that the bourbon was still at Andrews. Military priorities had grounded our gift to France.
Time for Plan B.
Laurent Jouet, a native of France, suggested that he, his wife and Cameron Lord go to liquor stores in Paris and buy enough really good bourbon for an old-fashioned “bourbon pour” at the garden party.
The United States was saved again by a Frenchman.
Other hosts at the garden party served beer and wine, Lord said.
“When the French learned we were serving whisky in our tent, he (Cameron) said at one point they were 10 and 20 deep” around the serving table. The Jouets and Cameron Lord were “the most popular people there.”
