Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Capitaine tasting (Paris)

The tasting overflowing in the street

Le Marais, Paris
This is small natural-wine tasting named Pépites that took place in the Marais on a side street (impasse Guéménée near the Place des Vosges) in a restaurant named Capitaine, I would have missed it if not tipped about it by Lexie and later Aaron (these Americans are well connected!). This month of april has been mostly fair and sunny in France and in Paris, with a little breeze that prevented top reach high temperatures. . The terraces of course enjoyed in this spring 2022 a solid rebound after two years of restraints and downright suppression, and parks, gardens & lawns were full as well (pic on left : Place des Vosges nearby).

Tastings have taken the same path, even in small venues, people would elbow their way in cramped spaces without masks and worries. The fee for this professional tasting was a mere 5 €, and guess what you could taste for that humble fee and the great wine people you coud chat with ?? That's one of the reasons Paris still offers opportunities regarding wine that few if any other town can offer.

Domaine Perrault-Jadaud (Loire)

Tanguy Perrault & Anne-Cécile Jadaud

Chançay, Vouvray area (Loire)
Here I am on the outskirts of the charming village of Chançay, sitting against the slopes lining the Loire river valley.
Anne-Cécile and Tanguy who started their domaine in 2009 were initially teachers at the wine school of Amboise (Lycée Viticole) where they met. Longing for the vigneron life instead of merely teaching the skills, they ended making the step, first training their hand on a small parcel (0.5 hectare) all the while keeping their day job at the technical school, then later quitting for good as the domaine grew in surface (it now makes about 8 hectares with 7 hectares in production).

Before that, Anne-Cécile (who is from Tours) had done her training in Montpellier [Languedoc] where she got her oenology degree (DNO) and Tanguy (who is from Brittany) got his viticulture/oenology degree in Bordeaux. Otherwise they had no family in winemaking or growing, so their domaine was created from scratched, beginning with a few rentals.

I asked why they chose this area close to Vouvray (and Amboise as well), Anne-Cécile says that Tanguy had worked at Clos Baudouin in Vouvray where one of the staff there [Jean Penillot, not sure of the spelling] who had himself a few parcels lended him one of his own, that's how he and Anne-Cécile started working near here. They looked for other parcels to rent around, bought a few others when possible and that's how they grew step by step, to one hectare, then 2 hectares, then jumping to 4 hectares and so on.

Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux tasting

We had in Paris recently the tasting of the Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux where the wines of 2019 were poured to the invited professionals. The event took place like usual now in the magnificient setting of the Carreau du Temple. The event was initially scheduled to take place early february but the rebound of the pandemic resulted in the postponing to the 3rd week of march, and when we received the invitations by mail in mid-february we were noticed to show a vaccination document (or passe sanitaire) but in between the rules had been lifted. Anyway things seem to go back to normal with spring tastings resuming. This was a monday of course so that sommeliers and restaurateurs could come during their day off. There was a queue at the door at opening time but not that long compared to a few years ago.

For your information, the UGCB is a group created in the early 1970s with the goal to put in the spotlight the 14 Bordeaux appelations with Grands Crus : Pessac-Léognan, Graves, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, Pomerol, Listrac-Médoc, Moulis-en-Médoc, Haut-Médoc, Médoc, Margaux, Saint-Julien, Pauillac, Saint-Estèphe, Sauternes and Barsac. The group orgnizes tasting and promotion events not only in France but abroad, including North America, Asia and Europe.

Vinopiano, Budapest wine bar

The counter and bottle wall

Budapest, Hungary
Here is Vinopiano, this wine bar made its debut on the other side of the Danube on Bartók Béla út and was transfered here because from what I understand the investor behind the venue found another location on Pest side along Tűzoltó utca on premises large enough so that they could fit both a kert (or Biergarten with a ruin pub touch) on the surface and the wine bar in a basement. Wine bars (usually doubling as wine shops) dealing with natural wine have been opening here and there in Budapest in the last few years but this one gets this relaxed approach that makes it more familiar for those of us used to the bohemian laidback atmosphere of the French natural wine bars.

The easygoing feel may also have to do with the location, Tűzoltó utca is off the beaten track, a bit off-center it's not the classy (but rather cold) 5th kerület nor the crowded 7th' party district in the former Jewish Ghetto. It is certainly closer to where young Hungarians live and thus more neighborhoody, but still at easy reach for an ousider : take tramway 4 or 6 to Corvin Negyed and from there a short walk along Tűzoltó utca 22.
The street view of the building shows a nondescript facade but with the backlit stencil signs you immediately feel there's more than that underground. This visit took place in the evening of the 23rd of february, in the night when the Russian invasion of Ukraine started, we live through very dangerous times and hope it stops...

An other era and perspective on wine

Who loves wine, loves life

It is good to remind that along history the vision and understanding on things has evolved continuously. What you believed as rock solid decades ago evaporates overnight, and this in many fields (today's righteous certitudes will follow the same path, be sure of that). This story is not only an interlude while waiting a warmer season but a reminder on times where optics were totally different... These posters date from, say, around 1915 to the late 1960s'. Since the censorship law of 1991 there has been of course no positive communication campaign in France regarding wine, everything now unfolding instead by word of mouth and undercover. But on the bright side the natural-wine milieu is certainly the most vibrant in emphasizing the healthy and joyful nature of this age-old beverage...

Bistrot Paul Bert tasting

Festive street window

11th arrondissement, Paris
This is another tastingI went to in the vibrant 11th to recently (actually in early december...) and this was my last tasting in that year (not that there weren't more, this season was hot, but I was busy or away afterwards). This professional tasting was organized by Solenne Jouan, the young woman behind Vins Eléments, she is a distribution agent and through this structure she deals only with living wines, selling to professionals in Paris. The young sommelière worked at Le Baratin, Saturne and Bistrot Paul Bert (all hot spots for real wines/real food) before setting up her own thing.

The tasting took place at both the Bistrot Paul Bert (I linked to their wine list) and L'Ecailler du Bistrot next door, two venues that work in tandem (also owned by Bertrand Auboyneau and Gwenaëlle Cadoret). These are good places to hang around for good wine, especially now that mass tourism has receded (yes, there was also kind of a mass tourism for natural-wine venues a couple years ago until 2019...), there's a little more chance to find a seat now. Plus, these venues have the feel of an authentic patina, nothing overstated, and you really feel at ease in there.

Les 10 Vins Cochons 2021

The marquee-like room

Saint-Rémy-sur-Durolle, Auvergne
This early december took place the 18th edition of the famed (if small) wine fair Les 10 Vins Cochons, a natural-wine, direct-sale event centered on the wines of Auvergne and Massif Central. The organizers had in mind from the start to make these wines better known for the locals who don't have the opportunity to know them, that's why the organizers kept selecting along the years venues located deep in the heart of this vibrant mountainous region which as you know is dotted with so many exctinct volcanoes. That's why also the bottle prices were pretty friendly, that is, either the same price than at the wine farm or even cheaper from what I was told by a few winemakers. The remoteness of the chosen location tends to make this wine fair indeed very local with few Parisians or foreigners attending because of the complicated issue of commuting by public transport (first reach Clermont Ferrand by train, then a secondary town (here Thiers), then the final stretch who-knows-how (taxi, acquaintance...) to reach the given village.

So in short, practically I gave up, but there was an unexpected turnaround when Aaron tipped about the impending event (which anyway had passed under my radar) and offered me to get there together and possibly visit a vigneron the day before. Doing crazy things collectively seemed wiser than venturing there alone, especially when not aware at all about where we'd sleep (and the region was under the snow), so I said OK, just that I was busy the day before. So here I am taking the train to Clermond Ferrand where I'd meet a few folks including Aaron (blog & Substack newsletter) and Hannah Fuellenkemper (blog or Instagram), and find myself in good company in the back of a Saab with Dutch license plates heading to the white mountains, exactly to the reservoir of the village of Saint-Rémy-sur-Durolle (pictures on both side)... I love this job

La Goulayance tasting

Happy crowd

Ground Control, near Gare de Lyon (Paris)
This is a time of the year you have plenty of exciting tasting in Paris, I was tipped about La Goulayance by Maryse and although I intended to go there, when the day came for real on november 28, it was so rainy, grey and cloudy (typical Paris weather at this time of the year you might say) that I really was going reluctantly (j'y allais à reculons like we say in French), taking the métro where at least the rain couldn't reach me for this Ground Control thing which I had visited recently also for a tasting (given the venue, this tasting couldn't be but worthwhile)...

Unsuspecting passerbys certainly couldn't imagine that day what was going on behind this bleak street access (picture on right), the place is as you know a former train workshop that belonged to the state rail company SNCF and the new managers obviously haven't been looking to make it glamorous, too much work I guess, plus there's a charm in converted industrial premises.

The tasting event was centered on the "vins sains sans artifices" which could be translated by "healthy wines made without tricks", it took place on two consecutive days november 217 & 28, access was unrestricted, fee was 10 € which included a glass and tasting of everything, chatting with all these winemakers, and you had to have your valid pass sanitaine scanned beforehand (that's the law), otherwise, when inside you weren't requided to keep your mask. Que la fête commence !
And if you want to see how valuable this tasting was indeed, just check the list of participating domaines/winemakers (on the left)...

Loire Volcanique tasting

View on the tasting

La Marbrerie, Montreuil (Paris suburb)
This is yet another interesting tasting which focused on the easternmost sub-wine regions of the Loire, gathered here under the unifying concept of La Loire Volcanique. What we call the Loire as wine region has as you know a very wide span (see Loire wine region map here) as it goes literally from the Atlantic (with Vendée) to the extinct volcanoes of the Massif Central (West of Lyon), the closest "Loire" vineyard over there west of Lyon being a mere 60 kilometers from this city as the crow flies, quite far east when you think about it... Precisely in the vicinity of these exctinct volcanoes, there are a few small regions which need to be better known, these are Saint-Pourçain, Auvergne, Forez and Roannais, and this professional tasting event put in place by Aurélie Soubiran for the collective Loire Volcanique helped correct this. Auvergne has been on the map for many of us thanks to the great work of a small band of intrepid artisan vignerons but the other neighboring regions somehow remained off focus, that's why we're grateful for this type of initiative.

This event took place at La Marbrerie, another of these multi-faceted community centers where you can have concerts, live events, wine fairs, plenty other things that don't always fit in regular venues or theaters. The place is located in Montreuil, and I came with my motorbike but by metro it's line 9, Mairie de Montreuil and from there 400 meters by foot. Montreuil has another hot place for real wines : L'Amitié Rit, which now and then holds its own tastings (not to miss, check their Facebook page, I just saw I missed Naturisme, their 28th november tasting).

Tastings have resumed : Biotop

Things get on track again (video overview)

Gare de Lyon, Paris
It's been a fact that tastings had resumed already a bit in spring 2021 (still very limited because vaccination was just beginning and organizers were scary of problems with the authorities I guess) but in autumn 2021 I really felt we were back for some normalcy after almost two years of virtual shutdown on the wine-events front. The relatively high vaccination rate in France (reached after a late and sluggish start, to be honest) allowed for this easing which we hope will last throughout winter months). Some kind of complained on Instagram when i posted a picture of the event, like this unmasked crowd was a no-go signal and full of risks, but of course there was a document check at the door to make sure everyone was either fully vaxxed or had a recent negative test for the pandemic virus.

The Biotop tasting event is organized by Isabelle Jomain of Verre Bouteille, it is like usual open for professionnals only for an entry fee of 10 € which includes pen, notebook and a nice tasting glass, that's pretty well the norm for such tastings which costs routinely in Paris from 5 € to 10 € (we're lucky in this regard). The setting at Ground Control near the Gare de Lyon was a roomy former SNCF locomotive repair shop, it looks indeed like a former plant with high roofs and thus is perfectly suitable in these times of virus-related claustrophobic worries. Ground Control is a multi-purpose community center where you can eat and drink on any given day (open wednesday-saturday noon-midnight/1am, and sunday closes at 10:30 pm), looks like a good alternative experience.
For once I didn't use the motorbike and the most convenient metro stations are Reuilly Diderot, Gare de Lyon or Montgallet (you still have to walk a bit).