Wine News (31)

Josh Adler & Meg ZimbeckParis, between le Louvre & Chatelet
That was a few weeks ago in Paris : a few bloggers with a taste for good food, mostly American expats living in Paris, started a new blog named Paris by Mouth, and the inauguration evening took place at the Spring wine shop in Paris. Meg Zimbeck who is the editor along with Barbra Austin, contacted me through Sharon and here we go, good company and good wine to go with. the new website or blog will deal with tips on food, restaurants and other venues in Paris. Most of the contributors of Paris by Mouth are expats, but they include a couple of French like Clotilde Dussolier and Bruno Verjus with a keen knowledge on food and chefs. Expect insider tips, expats know often better than longtime residents in any city.
Lots of people during this evening, are there so many american expats in Paris or did they come from abroad for the good wine and Daniel Roses's mini-dishes ? I loved the wines that Josh filled my glass with, this Melon de Bourgogne, this Breton's Dilettante and a Mercurey that I was happy to discover. The mood of this evening was excellent, some people even came with their baby and it was so crowded that the party took place mostly on the sidewalk, Josh passing through the guests with a bottle to fill the glasses.
Later I sneaked into the restaurant a few meters away with Daniel Rose and a couple of persons, it's still under construction, with a street level and two in the basement. The chef doesn't make any predictions about the opening day, it should be in the next weeks or months.

Robin, a New Zealander in Paris I first met Robin Hounglee a few weeks ago when I visited Domaine Coste in the Loire, she was finishing a week-long training there before going back to the Université du Vin in Suze-la-Rousse. A New Zealand native, she has been living for a few years in France and following the wine trail through her jobs and her studies. Now she was recently in Paris again for another short training week, this time in a cool place for people interested in wine and food : Coinstot Vino opened a few months ago in the Passage des Panoramas, in this same gallery where another hot spot for wine lovers beams : Racines. Guillaume Dupré is the man behind this wine bar/restaurant, he has been involved in La Muse Vin and le Garde Robe, two other great venues for wine in Paris. Robin was finishing her service and she offered me to taste several wines served at Cointot Vino (women pay you drinks, I love this job...). First there was a nice white I need to ask about (it was a Beaujolais or a southern Burgundy I think). The second wine was a Bois Moisset Gaillac Cuvée Merens 2008, a red blend (Syrah-Duras) from organic vineyards with a fresh mouth with mentol and fruit notes. Not bad. the vigneron visited the bar yesterday. The third wine was Planquette made by Didier Michaud of Chateau Planquette, a table wine (vin de table de France) from Bordeaux, it should have been labelled as Medoc if the agreement had been given. Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot, plus a bit of Merlot.
Coinstot Vino, 26bis Passage des Panoramas, 75002 Paris, phone 01 44 82 08 54. A great bavette with a great Chateau YvonneWe had noticed several times Marie-Odile Chauvelot in good tasting events and B. had sympathized with this discreet woman who had a keen interest for artisan wines. We learned that she managed a restaurant in the 9th arrondissement in Paris where she chose carefully her products in the markets, ordering also organic vegetables from Annie Bertin and another grower. She made us want to try her restaurant, which we did recently. It is named Georgette and it is located in the 9th arrondissement, in a street with no particular appeal, the interior is on the yellow and red tones with a 1960s' style, it's at the same time cool and unpretentious. The staff seems very active and efficient with a very precise cuisine and a well-thought wine list. Entries and salads cost about 10 € and main dishes are often at 14 €. I chose a bavette with lightly-cooked vegetables (artichoke & fennel). Excellent, tender meat. B. chose fresh, lightly-cooked anchovies with piperade and red pepper. To go with our food, we chose a Chateau Yvonne 2006, this Saumur-Champigny was a delight with ampleness, blueberry notes and a refined texture, and a good length too (cost : 40 € for a bottle). I took a cheese plate and B. took a dessert, an elder-tree-flowwer flan which had the lightness and the texture of Chantilly cream, very refined indeed. The whole thing cost us 88 € altogether with the wine, which was worth it.
Georgette, 29 rue Saint Georges, 75009 Paris. phone : 01 42 80 39 13 From California to a Paris wine shop The story of Josh Adler is very interesting too : We have been in contact a few years ago as he needed a picture of Catherine Breton for a tasting at the Bi-Rite Market shop where he worked in San Francisco. He also worked for Joli Vin, a San-Francisco-based importer and distributor of fine wines which favors artisan wineries and natural wines. He happened to have the opportunity to meet chef Daniel Rose who had a project in Paris named Spring, a wine shop and a restaurant, the latter being still under construction a stone throw from the shop. Daniel Rose offered him to come along and that was it. Josh Adler is the one behind the wine list of Spring (the wine shop), and he already had the time (in just a few months) to find a few more producers to add them on his initial wine list. He's into the best of what the artisan natural-wine producers can offer, and he selects wines that really make a difference in terms of taste and pleasure.
Note that the shop is next door from Ô Chateau which organizes wine tastings in English.
Spring boutique, 52 rue de l'arbre sec 75001 Paris. Phone 01 58 62 44 30. Laeticia Laure, Christian & Nathalie ChaussardYes, I'm over there again, tasting wine on the sidewalk, isn't that outrageous ? Should I say that it was a good, chewy tasting again ? On the picture on the left, this is Laeticia Laure, who is working for the AVN or Association des Vins Naturels, a non-profit group gathering vignerons and other people interested into the natural wine question. She'd like me to join and I'm weighing my ambivalence about structured organizations before deciding anything... Here is the Twitter page of the AVN, with many tips about natural-wine tasting events !
I tasted quite a few good things there :
__Eric Morgat's L'Enclos Savennières 2007 with an intense, long mouth and a striking minerality. It's made out three parcelles (vineyards) at yields of 20 hectoliter/hectare. Fermented one year in 400-liter casks, then blended in a vat. 2-year elevage plus one year in bottles. It's dry, he says, no redidual sugar.
__ Alexandre Bain Pouilly Fumé Mademoiselle M 2008, Sauvignon Blanc from near Sancerre. Dark color, vinified in cask. The color comes from the fact it was harvested late. Nice mouth with ripe grapes feel, hay too. Reverberates well in the mouth. Beautiful substance with acidulous ending.
__ Sébastien David (pic on left) Ni Dieu ni Maître 2007, from Cabernet Franc on 50% gravel and 50% on clay/limestone. Complexity with fruit on the nose. Nice texture in the mouth. Also liked his Ke Za Ko 2009 made with grapes put to ferment intact inside a cask, the cask being rolled from time to time to make a semi-carbonic maceration. It makes a differents with the tannins. The grapes are pressed thereafter. New oak. 50 days in the cask. Just bottled. Nice mushroom nose, very chewy with fruits.
__ Also liked Breton's Chinon Saint Louans 2006 and his Perrières 1989 that he brought a magnum of, a real pleasure to sip.
__ Chaussard had nice things too : his Jasnières 2008 bottled last march, a nice Chenin (no notes sorry). Also his Coteaux du Loire red les Mortiens 2008, 100 % Pineau d'Aunis. That's good !
La Bellivière had a nice white Coteaux du Loir Vieilles Vignes Eparses 2008. Intense mouth with notes of honey, wheat. Liked also his red Coteaux du Loir Rouge Gorge 2008, 100 % Pineau d'Aunis. Very nice tannic mouth.
Also liked Jérôme Lenoir's wines(pic on right), always with long élevages : his Chenin 2005, with a nice ripeness. And his red 2002 of which I still have a couple of bottles, a good way to check how the wine goes. The color is the one of an evolved wine, I like the nose with its hard to define complexity. Nice to swallow. Wrong place for a giant apéritifThere's been another of these apéros géants planned in Paris recently, and it made the headlines for different reasons as it was not the typical flash-mob apéritif that I wrote about recently. It was planned to take place at la Goutte d'Or, a muslim neighborhood near Montmartre where prayers take place all over certain streets on fridays. The organizer was an unknown woman named Sylvie François [she may not even exist, but here is what is said to be an interview of her in French]. The organizers at large who seem to be diverse, a far-right fringe movement, a laicist [secularist] group and feminists, also used facebook for the planned party and chose the symbolic date of june 18th known for being when De Gaulle spoke solemnly from London to occupied France in 1940. They called the thing apéro géant saucisson et pinard (pinard being the French slang for wine) and chose this particular place, la Goutte d'Or , because this tiny neighborhood was long time ago was known for its cheap white wine where working-class people would go to indulge themselves into easy drinking and fun. Today, this neighborhood east of Montmartre has become mainly muslim to a point that several streets are converted as mosque grounds every friday with hundreds of men kneeling down and praying under the supervision of some sort of armband-wearing muslim security. Watch this video put online by the co-organizer radical laicist group Riposte Laïque, it's pretty impressing.
While the planned apéro géant was obviously provocative and was banned by the Prefecture for that reason (it took place near the Champs Elysées instead), it knowingly put in the spotlight the ressented cultural changes taking place in France like in much of Europe in that regard. Islam is hardly a religion like any other, it's been associated with lots of violence and killings commited in its name all over the world and although debating this religion's features is considered a slippery terrain, we may be entitled to ask ourselves about the possible consequences for the countries going through this cultural landslide, including for what matters for us here, wine culture, freedom and tolerant lifestyle. The food and wine aspect seems a secondary issue compared to more alarming issues like for example the many attacks against jews, but a few months ago though, there had been lots of protests about the French fast-food chain Quick going halal and imposing this islamic-sanctionned food to non-muslim customers. It brought to light the topic of the disappearance of pork products under pressure from this part of the society. This saucisson-with-wine apéritif thing was set up as a provocation, but the matter remains, something is going on.
The question is, could wine come next ? Alcohol under any form or strength is considered as a bad thing for the followers of this religion. According to this English-language page listing impure things, animals and people in Islam (the impure people concept already rises a flag), 9 categories are stamped as being impure for the mahommetans. After the three first banned things that shed a Lacanian light on the people who wrote these laws (urine, stool & semen), we find several categories including people considered impure. The good news for us is that fermented beverages (which includes wine) are listed last, at the 9th position. there's bad news alas folks : we, unbelievers and unrepentant wine-drinkers (kafirs) are listed # 8, just after dogs and pigs...

Edit : Incidents like the one listed on this page are beginning to occur and even the non-muslim part of the population are pushed in these areas to follow their lifestyle in the hiding because of potential violence by muslim youth. Georges Duboeuf (left) with some of his teamI shot this picture of Georges Duboeuf at the Fabuleux Beaujolais tasting rue de Rivoli in Paris.
Georges Duboeuf is a heavy weight in the wine business in Beaujolais and in the world. He founded his company in 1964, teamed with restaurants, including top chefs like Bocuse to promote his Beaujolais wines, then bought from other vignerons to keep up with the market growth of his brand. He took advantage of the Beaujolais-Nouveau thing to market it as a must drink and export it worldwide, putting the Beaujolais on the table of the world. The craze backfired somehow since it peaked in the 1990s' maybe, but Georges Duboeuf still makes 75 % of his business abroad, which means that the wines from Beaujolais sell well. At 77, he is at the head of a major wine group, his négoce buying wine from about 400 wineries and more than 20 coops for a total output of 30 million bottles. He manages his négoce with his family and with his son Franck. Hospices de BeaujeuI didn't taste all the 2009 wines at the Fabuleux Beaujolais but most wines weren't very interesting, it was all business-as-usual wines which hadn't much life and authenticity to offer. Of course there was the Marcel Lapierre Morgon 2009, a pleasure to swallow, and there's no positive prejudice in this statement. Mathieu Lapierre, Marcel's son was there to pour the wines (pictured on the right with Alice Feiring whom I tipped about the tasting). I guess he must feel lonely here but in fact the real drive to come to Paris on that sunny 21st of june was the Fête de la Musique in the streets of Paris in the evening...
__I discovered the Hospices de Beaujeu during that tasting, with the cuvée des Sires de Beaujeu Regnié 2009, bottle n° 11536. I liked the nose and the mouth comparatively to most of what I tasted here. It was bottled a month ago. This wine cost only 4 € professional price. The woman on the picture who works at Beaujeu told me that the Hospices de Beaujeu are older than their Beaune famous counterpart. It can be visited on appointment. Most of the wines there are exported from what I understood.
__I also liked the Domaine de la Madonne Vieilles Vignes Fleurie 2009. 70-year old vines. Nice cellar aromas on the nose. Also of small red fruits. Nice mouth. 100% stainless-steel vat. Costs 11 € at the estate public price. This is an early bottling, the resty will be bottled in september. 14° alcohol but not hot in the mouth. Total vineyard surface : 18 hectares. 5 different cuvées are made in this estate. Alice about some Beaujolaisjust listen to Alice, she has been travelling around much lately and gathering lots of material for her writings, including her next book which is due next autumn...Out of the beaten path terraceThis could be a regular topic : the quiet and cool terraces and cafés in Paris. Many nice spots on the café & terrace scene are too successful with the mass tourism and you may feel surrounded more by other tourists than with Parisians. But there are many places if you look around and leave the main tourist hot spots that can give you a more authentic experience. La Sardine is a tapas bar with wines, it is located on Place Sainte Marthe in the 10th arrondissement between Belleville & Colonel Fabien, south of the boulevard. The inhabitants are a mix of north-African immigrants and young French natives having chosen the area for its affordability and because it's rather cool and lots of artists live here. We dropped for a glass the other evening, there seemed to be some interesting wines in the list like Breton's Dilettante, we chose a Rioja for a try at 4,4 € a glass or 8 € a 25-centiliter pichet. The wine was alas just a mix of alcohol, sugar and wood (wood-chips probably). But the place is really cool and relax, plus it's very quiet with almost no through traffic. Another reason you might go there is that it's located at 20 meters from a very good caviste, la Contre Etiquette.

Here is another short video (on left) of a quiet terrace, and this is in Montmartre. The small terrace of Autour du Moulin has a great view on Paris with the rue Tholozé going down. It's located at 88 rue Lepic at the intersection with rue tholozé, the rue Tholozé ending with a few stairs there. There's very little traffic here too and it's not too much crowded usually, most of the visitors staying on rue des Abbesses which has an impressive number of outdoor terraces. It's a stone throw from le Moulin de la Galette, a historic spot of Montmartte.

Comments

[John Roberts]

I've always admired your blog, but the discussion of Islamic culture in this article is simplistic and deeply disturbing: "Islam is hardly a religion like any other, it's been associated with lots of violence and killings commited in its name all over the world and although debating this religion's features is considered a slippery terrain, we may be entitled to ask ourselves about the possible consequences for the countries going through this cultural landslide, including for what matters for us here, wine culture, freedom and tolerant lifestyle." Has Christianity been associated with killings and violence? Do poor immigrants really threaten your freedom? No mention of that fact that Iraq and Afghanistan are in the process of being destroyed? What do you mean by a "cultural landslide"?

This appears to be the worst kind of French nativism, and this casts other aspects of your blog, such as your love of "natural" and "indigenous" wines in a different -- and altogether unflattering -- light. In fact, it's right-wing bullshit.

[Bertrand]

That the zealots of this "religion" threaten freedom around the world is hardly a question, and if you add the yearly body count of people who fell under its name (including their own) I find strange that there are still people in denial of the problem, it’s beyond outdated notions like right-wing or left-wing ( bullshit or not ;-) ). But on the other hand, it’s very human to ignore facts and find their noticing "deeply disturbing", I've read that in the early 1940s’ there were many jews who still thought that they were heading to a comfortable resettlement in Poland after having been packed into cattle trains…

Poor immigrants have nothing to do with this per se, France welcomes more than a hundred nationalities many of these people being poor and playing by the rules. Plus, the most active in this vicious ideology [of islam-inspired terror] are usually not particularly poor, and some of the worst are even European natives, go figure... What we knew as happening routinely in muslim-majority contries is beginning to happen on a grander scale in western countries, see link here.
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/296594

Long debate, John, we’ll not win each other’s views, when I wrote slippery terrain, I meant it…

P.S. You probably misread my stories in your search for politically-uncorrect sentences, I write about indigenous yeasts (wild yeasts) and not "indigenous wines"...

[John Roberts]

Believe me, I don't scour your stories for politically incorrect sentences. As I said, I've long been a fan. But referring to Islam as a "religion" or a "vicious ideology" and talking about "body count[s]" while ignoring the fact that there are two wars going on? And you're surprised that "European natives" actively engage in a "vicious ideology" ("go figure") even as you recount stories of how Europeans sent fellow Europeans off to their death in the 1940's?

Have fun with your war against Islam! You are a fanatic, and an idiot!

P.S. The link you provide does not prove that "What we knew as happening routinely in muslim-majority countries is beginning to happen on a grander scale in Western countries."

[Bertrand]

I'm not at war with anybody my friend, I'm just looking at what is going on and the signals coming from this side are not encouraging, to say the least, with this culture (more a political ideology than a religion, as many say) going suicidal worldwide. (freedom of opinion is still allowed ?).
Debate closed (no more calling names please)

[carmen]

Hi, every month I go to an aperitif organized in a wine shop in the city where I live...very funny! The guests can taste every month the wines of a producer, every time they change wines so it's an advantage for me because I can know new products and taste them before the purchase. And every time I know a lot of people! Last time I knew a scottish boy! I went in Paris in 2003, a wonderful city! Bye