Wine Tasting, Vineyards, in France

Japanese whiskies

Taketsuru 17 years

Fukuoka, Kyushu
While I'd occasionally allow myself a treat in a night bar like here with this Nikka Taketsuru 17 years (delicious !), I gave up on buying these whiskies even in duty-free shops at the airport be cause the prices have risen so much due to the influx of wealthy Chinese tourists eager to spend on Japanese prestige brands. But on the side of spirits there's a hidden side European tourists don't look into enough, it's the cheaper whisky range, often from unknown or lesser-known brands. You'll not find them in duty-free but rather in retail stores in the cities or even in supermarkets. You have a wide range to choose from and some of these bottles are surprisingly cheap, that's the ones I decided to try this time. I took some risks as I brought back 7 bottles in my checked bags (maximum for spirits is one liter), Airlines serving Japan often let you check two 23-kg bags which encourages shopping. I relied for my purchases mostly on two liquor stores in Fukuoka, I stumbled into their branches while crisscrossing the city by foot, these are Alliq and Yamaya. You can also find whiskies in the 24-hour supermarket chains Sunny and MaxValu Express as well as in the liquor department of Bic Camera.

Natural-wine bars in Fukuoka

Hsiao Huang, of Kochang

Fukuoka, Kyushu
I made a couple of visits to natural-wine venues in Fukuoka, I had found some addresses on the web but ended to visit other place after my friend Alex from VineyardGate sent me a tip about one place, just telling me to look for @minnano_kochang. I did my part of research on the web and ended up finding the location and more exciting details through the tabelog page devoted to this venue... Comments of visitors were also interesting and helped me really find the door, as in Japan, many bars are not directly on the street level but are actually appartments either in upper stories with no particular sign on the door, or also in basements. In short, when you stroll in a street lined with restaurants in Japan, you miss possibly 50 % or more of the operating bars, they're somewhere up there in buildings and you have to know by word of mouth.

By precaution I first came there during the day, I indeed located the building but failed to find the door as it was before further web research where I stumbled on comments pointing to this back door. When I came back in the evening, the people inside were surprised to see me, a foreigner coming for the first time to what almost looks like a secret bar is certainly unusual. Here is the Google Map page for the address, don't look for the street view of the building, it's a new building on what was then a parking lot.

Drinking, eating in Fukuoka (Kyushu)

Nice after-work party !

Fukuoka, Kyushu (Japan)
While Japan is known for having kept countrywide its age-old tradition of having good time with colleagues in bars after work, some cities like Osaka and Fukuoka bring with them an even richer food culture, given they were the entry port for foreign tastes and ways. Not that all foreign input were welcome : Hakata (an other name for Fukuoka) was the site of several attempts by Mongols at invading the country in the 13th century, these almost succeeded with the unpreparedness of the Japanse soldiers unused to face experienced and ruthless foreign armies. But two well-timed natural phenomena (a storm with changing winds and a typhoon named kamikaze) turned the tables, allowing the defenders to go from an anticipated defeat to a divine victory....

This story is mostly a picture journey through the eating/drinking mores of this charming city. Fukuoka which is located on the Island of Kyushu, is large enough to offer all the pleasures like other large cities in this country but it is small enough that you can criss-cross the city by foot without having to rely on the subway or buses (which are nonetheless very reliable like elsewhere). Even commuting from the airport to downtown is incredibly easy : 5 minutes and two stops, and it costs only 210 ¥ or 1,4 €. The city also has this interesting culinary particularity of the yatai : These are food carts which are wheeled to their spot every evening and that go away in the middle of the night. Even if tourists (which are here mostly Korean, Taiwanese, singaporeans and Chinese) love the yatai, patrons are also locals, company employees or salarymen who spice up their afterwork with choosing one of these carts instead of an indoor bar. This one here was located on Showa dori on the other side of the boulevard from Mitsukoshi. There's also one of these yatai which is famously managed by a Frenchman (chez Remy), it's very appreciated for it's French cooking input, I didn't try it though. the yatai gets all the plus of the tachinomi (standing bars), you're tightly packed next to people you don't know and end up striking a conversation, the only difference is that you're sitting and it's almost outdoors with the excitement of enjoying good time in a yurt, reassuringly warmed by the sight of the cooking stove...
This story is a first part, more to come about a couple of natural-wine bars here.

"Les Caves de la Vallée du Cher" tasting

Man, that was a tasting event !

This is Les Caves de la Vallée du Cher, this professionnal tasting took place on march 26 & 27 in the Cher valley (Loire) in 5 different cellars (there's one I didn't have time to visit alas) distant from 2 to 4 kilometers from each other in Faverolles sur Cher and Thésée. More than 50 vignerons took place, from the Loire and beyond. The protocol was very informal even if you're supposed to be in the trade to take part (if you love natural wine I'm sure you'd pass through as well), the entry fee was 5 €, you're given a screen-printed wine glass which will be your pass to access the 4 other sites. Street food could be purchased at each location.
Video above : the site of the cellar of Les Maisons Brûlées.

Raw Wine Paris

The main room

Malakoff, Paris suburb along the 14th arrondissement
That's it, Raw Wine made its debut in Päris (march 12 & 13) after a long history (2012) of setting up tasting events along the past years in cities like London, Los Angeles, Berlin with the goal to present nature/biodynamic/organic producers to the growing crowd of winelovers focused on artisan wine. Raw Wine was created by Isabelle Legeron, a French expat who has been living in London for many years now, and given the UK culture of interest for all wine regions across the world, you find this global touch in the geographical diversity of the participating wineries. At Raw Wine Paris, some 150 wineries and vintners (see list here) were presenting their wines and the interesting thing compared with our usual natural wine fair in Paris is that it was very international oriented with some 15 countries involved, France and Italy holding the lion's share of course. The entry fee was quite high for the general public on sunday with 45 € if I'm right. The pro fee was more in line with what we usually pay (15 €) here (although it's even often free when it takes places in Restaurants). While questions arise if Raw Wine will find its niche in a city (Paris) already overflowing of vibrant natural-wine fairs and events, several outstanding nature vintners like Caleb Leisure of Stagiaire Wines (California) credit Raw Wine for having helped him early in his start (read this piece by Aaron Ayscough on Raw Wine Paris).

The nice thing also is that the event took place in a place with character, Espace Clacquesin, a 2000-square-meter ancient distillery reconverted into an event space for rent, for private or corporate use. It's in a suburb (very safe one, needs to be said nowadays) very close from Paris, you could almost go there by foot from the 14th arrondissement. They kept the 19th-century red brick chimney, and the cobblestone courtyard lovely ! And like it used to be in these late 19th-century industrial buildings, there's the administration/office building near the gate, nicely built in red bricks too... I Hope they'll keep this place for the following issues.

Paris des Sens tasting

Overview of two of the tasting rooms (there were three)

 

Paris, 20th arrondissement
There are always some tastings restarting at that time of the year, generally on mondays like here for professional events, I was tipped about this one otherwise I'd have missed it, this was the second edition of it, Le Paris des Sens being a Paris-based distributor of artisan, biodynamic and natural wines who set up now every year a tasting with their winegrowers so that their buyers can get a feel of the available (or soon-to-be) cuvées (their IG page here). There were a large number of vignerons (see the names below) in this tasting on january 16, many working on a small vineyard surface.

The other nice thing here was the location for the tasting : Caché (means hidden in French) is a restaurant which is indeed hidden in a remote corner of the 20th arrondissement, along a dead-end cobblestone street (Villa Riberolle, villa being another French word for impasse or dead-end street) lined with former workshops next to the Père Lachaise cemetery (but there's no entrance to the cemetary on this side). so unsuspecting visitors can't stumble upon this place by chance). Caché restaurant was founded by two Italians (Lorenza Lenzi and Gianpaolo Polverino) focused on delicate cuisine including seafood. Part of the tasting also took place at Amagat next door, a restaurant sharing the same philosophy but with Spanish (Catalogna) roots.
Pic on left : entering villa Riberolle from the rue de Bagnolet. The restaurant is toward the end on the left. The trees in the far are the Père Lachaise beyond a wall.

La Goulayance 2022

The crowd

Paris, 12th arrondissement,
This was another beautiful edition of La Goulayance, and it took place again in the premises of Ground Countrol, this vibrant venue set in a former railway locomotive workshop, I can't but encourage you to visit the place, have a drink, read books, play games, whatever this place offers which is pretty diverse, and families are welcome. Entry fee was 10 €, you were given a glass which you could keep after tasting the exciting natural wines of many vintners, who were present of course to chat with visitors and buyers. You could buy cases of wines or individual bottles on the site, that was also the good thing, direct from the producers. The vintn,ers took also time to walk around and taste their colleagues/friends' wines of course and I'm sure that's also what brought many of them here. I didn't taste many of them alas, having to ride my bike back to the Aube in the afternoon, possibly before dark (and the tasting on both days was starting at 12, not the usual 10, that's the low point).

Rôti de Porc pairing

Easy cooking

This is autumn and we're in the middle of troubled times with rising prices including for everything related to food, but there's still room for indulging in tasty meat dishes like the one I'm going to tell you about. Energy is also getting a subject we're getting told to worry, and good cooking often often needs to be long. You know I've been a longtime fan of everything off-the-grid and these days are the good time to experiment in this direction if you're still on the mainstream consumer side : all you need is a good old stove upon which you can sit a pan or a pot.

A few images from the end of harvest 2022

Harvest scene at Julien Prevel

Cher valley, Loire
I managed to get in time in my Loire hideout just in time for the last days of harvest and toured a few producers, some by myself and some with Lexie Jordan who was at the time picking with Julien Prevel. Lexie is living in Paris mostly and she imports wine for her San Francisco-based company Funk De Funk (actually in Mill Valley, Marin county). Several producers had in fact already just finished picking, some still had a couple parcels yet to be picked, for which they were waiting for a bit more maturity. This story will be most a picture story, first because I/we visited unannounced (in some instances there was no body near the chai/cellar and we'd just move and try our luck elsewhere) and our hosts were busy or enjoying quietness at last after several weeks of stress, and also because the end of harvest is just, like, relax, take your time and pause...
This took place around the 3rd week of september, I know, this is late to post that (even with backdating it) but I keep being busy these days.

Hoop Wines (Mátra, Hungary)

Zoltán Németi & Zoltán Kerekes

Gyöngyöspata, Mátra (Hungary)
This was really a quick visit here, we're here at Hoop Wines which is run by two childhood friends, Zoltán Németi and Zoltán Kerekes who make wine from a small overall surface 1,5 hectare, plus from the equivalent of 0,5 hectare of purchased grapes, for a total yearly production of 5 to 6000 bottles. We're here in a family house in the village that was refurbished as a small winery facility by Zoltán Kerekes who had himself a 10-year experience working in a local winery. Zoltán Németi is himself an IT specialist in Budapest and spends his weekends here for this venture.
This small facility has all the hygiene requirements needed for a safe winemaking, mostly there's the main room which we could call the chai (they press inside), and a barrel room on the side which does the job of a cellar. Asked if they got European funding for these investments, they say no, the conditions for these subsidies are difficult to gather and unfortunately they are designed mostly for big wineries, so they funded this by themselves. They're happy to have this facility which is now easy to clean and keep clean, something essential for thoughtful winemaking. Their first commercial vintage was in 2019 (before it was more like experimental and for themselves and friends).