Frenchman Is Free and Dry : Hostage Promised God He’d Shun Wine 3 Months If Released

Jean-Paul Kauffmann, the former French hostage released May 4 after three years of captivity, spends much of his time these days thinking about the promise he made to God while a prisoner.

Kauffmann, 44, news reporter and editor-in-chief of the quarterly wine magazine L’amateur de Bordeaux, vowed to God that if he were freed he would not drink wine for three months, according to an interview in the June issue of the publication Wine Spectator.

Kauffmann’s magazine is a quarterly devoted to the wines and culture of Bordeaux, one of the centers of the world’s finest wines.

The story describes his ordeal and incidents including a particular exchange he had with his teetotaling Islamic captors, who regarded their prisoner as a drunkard because they saw a picture of him at a wine tasting. They even tried to persuade him to stop drinking, Kauffmann said.

That promise of abstinence will be discharged on Aug. 4, when Kauffmann will have plenty of wine to choose from. While hostage, his friend, Jean-Michel Cazes, owner of the famous winery Chateau Lynch Bages, put away 200 bottles of top Bordeaux in a special cellar just for Kauffmann.

Gesture of Support

It was, said the story, a gesture of support for Kauffmann and his family by the region’s vintners, who consider the wine expert a great friend of the wines of Bordeaux.

“We’re extremely happy to have him back,” said Cazes. “I’m ready to turn (the cellar) over to him whenever he wants it.”

Kauffmann was abducted while on a news assignment in Beirut for his French news weekly.

“One day when I reached bottom, I made a vow not to drink for three months following my liberation,” Kauffmann said, explaining that during his detention he read the Bible and became religious.

“He said he was ready to sacrifice something important to him in hopes that his prayers to be freed would be answered,” said the interviewer, Jane Sasseen.

When told of the “Kauffmann cellar” of wines awaiting him, Kauffmann was amazed.

“I would never have believed it,” he said. “To create a cellar for my return, it’s truly a gesture of great nobility. It’s too much.”

After his captors learned of his association with the wine world they tried to persuade him to stop drinking, said Kauffmann.

“At the beginning of my detention, one of them (captors) found a picture (in the newspaper Le Figaro),” he related. “It was a tasting at Chateau d’Yquem. I had 15 glasses in front of me. In their eyes that couldn’t be anything but a scene of utter drunkenness.”

Kauffmann said he tried to explain that the taster sips wine and spits it out.

“I don’t believe I was able to convince the Islamic Jihad of the subtleties of wine tasting,” he added wryly.

Kauffmann said that in his discussions with other French hostages, on subjects including literature, journalism and the world of wine, he even drew a map of Bordeaux to explain the subtle differences between the soils where grapevines grow.

Although Kauffmann forswore all the pleasures of wine until freed from his vow, he hasn’t put aside all the pleasures of his favorite beverage.

Two weeks ago, with his family gathered around him, Kauffmann picked up a glass of 1980 Chateau Lynch Bages, gave it an expert swirl, and inhaled deeply.

But he did not drink. That is for Aug. 4--when it will be just ready to drink.