2023-08-26 18:58:54
Over 3,000 documents, including aristocratic menus and wine lists, precious evidence of what was once crowned as the emblem of “French gastronomic diplomacy”. A collection that has no equal, that of Prince Robert of Luxembourg, gathered on the estate of the Château Haut-Brion at the gates of Bordeaux, dating back to the 16th century. A real treasure for cooking enthusiasts and more. Undoubtedly curiosities such as the lunches, at the court of Versailles (but also in the residences of Saint-Germain or at the Tuileries), all strictly handwritten, the registers which scrupulously annotated the illustrious guests of his majesty the Sun King and of the heir to the throne of France, the Dauphin, or the dishes served at the table of Madame Adélaide, daughter of Louis XV.
Among the treasures of Prince Robert of Luxembourg was the lunch menu offered in Paris on 2 May 1903 to the King of England, Edward VII, but also that prepared a few years later (21 July 1938) in honor of King George VI and his very young heir to the throne (not yet queen) Elizabeth II, of the shah of Persia on the occasion (October 14, 1971) of the celebrations for the 2,500th anniversary of the foundation of the Persian empire, six years before she left the country forever with her family. And then there was the recent purchase of the Thackrey collection, a well-known Californian winegrower, which brought together over 700 books (cost of the operation 2 million dollars) and the library of the Belgian baron Pierre de Crombrugghe (2,000 volumes) of extraordinary interest dispersed by Christie’s Paris.
“My passion – Robert of Luxembourg confided to ‘Point de vue’ – is not just something personal, I don’t want to possess and accumulate treasures. I hope as soon as possible to be able to make my passion available to researchers, scholars and the general public collection. In a digitized, virtual, technological universe there is an absolute desire for truth. Seeing, even touching what surrounds us, objects with their own experience, their own past”.
Among the rarities, a precious original volume autographed by Antonin Careme, one of the first cooking stars, ‘Le Maitre d’hotel francais’, chef to the Prince of Talleyrand and first owner of Haut-Brion in the 19th century. “But above all – he revealed again in the interview with the French weekly – it was my first acquisition. It was 2010, the same year in which Unesco had declared French gastronomy an intangible heritage of humanity”. Perhaps a case of fate. From that year began the adventure of the well-known winemaker and collector who for over 10 years has participated in auctions to buy treatises, letters and books. A ‘literature’ of wine and food and wine that has no equal.
Like the letter written to his brother-in-law by the American ambassador Thomas Jefferson, accredited guest at Haut-Brion on May 25, 1787, anticipating that he would have 144 bottles of French wine sent to the United States. “Proud of this precious document, Robert of Luxembourg. His great-grandfather Clarence Dillon was also a well-known diplomat and for a time was the United States Ambassador in Paris.
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