Paris wine bars : Quincave

Outside Quincave on a 3rd thursday of november...

Beaujolais Nouveau in Montparnasse (map)
Quincave is a gem of a caviste/wine bar lost on the very conventional 14th arrondissement, It's like it had been put there to remind us that there has been a time (well, quite some time ago...) when Montparnasse was an easygoing place where artists could let themselmves go and enjoy a laidback life style.
The place which has been set up in 2003 is managed by one of the main characters of the natural-wine scene in Paris, Frederic Conne (say Fred). You can stumble on him in many of the tasting events that dot the city at this time of the year, but the first time I really had the time to enjoy this colorful character was during the solidarity harvest shortly after the passing away of Christian Chaussard, the initiator of natural winemaking in the Loire region. Dozens of fellow winemakers and wine dealers including a Japanese importer had gathered at the winery to give a hand and help Christian's wife Nathalie harvest the Pineau d'Aunis.

Planning your Beaujolais-Nouveau evening in Paris is something tricky. Of course you'll have the opportunity to drink BoJo Nouveau almost everywhere in any bar but if you're in Paris there's a good chance you'll go to the best, I mean, to places pouring uncorrected, unfiltered Beaujolais. You'll pay possibly a bit more but there's a better chance you enjoy the wine and the festive mood in these venues is several notches up from the regular bar down the block.
We can almost say that a few years ago Beaujolais Nouveau was a fading event in Paris, the reason lying I think in good part in the fact that the wine had become a mass-produced beverage with an appeal inversely proportional to its enological engineering. To say how the situation was serious, even the foreign markets were beginning to be tired of these wines. When the first such yearly Beaujolais-Nouveau event was organized nationally in 1970, the wines were still made naturally, the bulk of additives only began to flood the wine regions and revolutionize the vinification process during the 1980s', before that and particularly in poor regions like the Beaujolais the vignerons were working the old way, especially that much of their wine was consumed locally. Along the years from the 1980s' the enologists brought their science and ended up chiselling wines that were supposed to be nice and well-behaved but in fact these wines had lost all authenticity and even the clueless public began to shun the wines. Retrospectively, it's pretty true to say that the uncorrected, lab-yeast-free Beaujolais Nouveau (what we call usually natural wines) rescued this vinous celebration : people were experiencing again the basic joy of drinking with these wines and all it took was for these vintners to just go back working the old way in the vineyard and not try to polish their wines.

The room at Quincave

There are dozens of venues in the city where you might have fun and expect weird burst of vinous joy, but it's better to plan ahead, some of these places are a few metro stops away from each other and if you don't want to be on your knees at 3 am you will be wise to line up carefully your targets.

My own choice was limited by other factors, I was only recovering from a cold, still coughing, and I had to wake up early the following moring to catch a flight. I had planned something reasonable like make two places after work, I went first to the Café de la Nouvelle Marie, parked my motorbike on the other side of the square but it was so quiet at 6 pm that I decided not to wait for the tide and went on to Quincave on the other side of the Jardin du Luxembourg. I knew this area for having worked rue Delambre a couple of years and the next street (rue de la Grande Chaumière) happens to be where you find the best choice of Rudolf Steiner books in town (at Triades). Quincave was also very quiet when I got there so I called a friend who lives in this same street and spent an hour in his appartment waiting for B. who was on her way to the bar hafter having finished her work.

One hour had passed and when we finally walked in La Quincave there was already an auspicious activity in there, and not by visitors buying bottles to go (the place is also a wine shop) but by folks determined to drink some good Beaujolais Nouveau and have fun with friends.. La Quincave is a venue selling and pouring only uncorrected, additives-less wines and on this edge of the 6th and 14th arrondissement I'm not sure you'll find plenty of similar wine bars, and this affordable too.

Fred at the counter When I shot this picture the bar had filled considerably and it was needed a bit of strategy to reach the counter. Here is Fred with the main waiter/sommelier. You'll notice the saucissons hanging above the kitchen door, you'll not be short of charcuterie to go with your wine here.

On the counter you can see the bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau that were available, there were 7 of them : Karim Vionnet Beaujolais Villages, Le Lapin de Noël (a Beaujolais white by Nicolas Testard), Jean Foillard, Marcel Richaud (this one is not from the Beaujolais, it's a primeur wine from the Rhone), Remi Dufaitre, Jean-Claude Lapalu and "Loup y es Tu" by Stephen Durieu. The guy with the cap offered us to taste before we choose the wine, I tasted the Karim Vionnet because I liked it very much last year but it wasn't what I expected, so I tasted Foillard and settled my choice on Lapalu while B. actually preffered the Karim Vionnet.

There a few plates or planches of charcuterie and/or cheese that you can order with the wine. The rate for the wine that day was 15 € for a full botytle which you could drink in the venue. The policy at Quincave is that you can choose any bottle on the shelves (they cost from 7 € to 30 € roughly) and you just add a 7 € cork fee to drink it here. All these wines are natural wines of course. They don't do wine by the glass and you can of course leave with your bottle if you haven't finished it (which I doubt is very common). Being still ill with my cold I managed to get an exception from the rule and we both ordered just glasses at 3 € each, i doubt anyone in town got such a good Beaujolais Nouveau for this rate.

Meg Zimbeck At one point I saw Aaron who was also walking through the vinous crowd (Aaron is the American expat who manages Not Drinking Poison which has become a must-read blog on Paris restaurants and on natural wine). Then I spotted Meg Zimbeck, another American who has been running for years now Paris by Mouth and doing with a few friends some walk tours in English centered on wine and food in Paris.
I first met her at Spring in 2010, Spring being a wine shop that was then managed by Josh Adler, another American who since has founded a wine import business, Paris Wine Company. Some of these vinous expats I met that day at Spring have moved away from Paris since then, like Sharon Bowman (back in New York and she alas stopped her blog) and Barbra Austin (in Hong Kong).
This evening at Quincave there was also a guy named Chris (leaning on the car on the picture on top), he is from San Francisco, is a choregrapher and has been living for a long time in Paris. Early hours of Beaujolais Nouveau This short video will give you a glimpse of what it looks like in the early hours of Beaujolais Nouveau in a wine bar like Quincave. This was maybe 9pm or 10 pm and an early hour for this yearly event, but I somehow praise my being ill that day because I wouldn't have been able to make my way through this room with a camera a couple hours later anyway, would certainly have obliged to stay outside. The street side is nice too, with a couple of high tables and a breath of fresh air. Modigliani, Soutine and other artists would flock there if they were back in Montparnasse (the poor guys wouldn't recognize the neighborhood I'm afraid)... Camille & Anne Lapierre visiting That's the nice thing with the Beaujolais Nouveau in Paris, not only will you get very nice wines in a festive surrounding but you may well stumble upon vignerons who come to Paris for the occasion, first to deliver themselves their wines (these artisan vignerons really do all the ground work) and second to visit several of these bars and have fun, the bar owners having become close friends of these vintners. If unlike me this time (I'll try to do it next time) you really spend the evening and a good part of the night hopping from one natura-wine bar to the other, you'll cetainly come across many of them, and not only the ones from the Beaujolais.

When I saw Camille (of Domaine Marcel Lapierre) making her way through the packed room I needed a couple of seconds to put a name of this familiar face. I guess they also like not to be recognized at every step by passionate wine lovers, this Paris incursion is their breakaway from consecutive months of work in the vineyards and chai.
On the left you recognize Fred of course, and the young guy between the Lapierres is Fred's son, also named Fred (you know it now, La Quincave will be a dynasty).

I asked Fred (the father) about his wine portfolio (this is supposed to be a story about a wine bar and I need to do some fact checking) and he told me that he has 200 + different wines, half of them being stored in the cellar but available on the spot if needed. The wines can be consumed in the bar from 5pm to, say, 11 pm but it may go later sometimes... Fred is attending many tastings and I trust him for being aware of the best finds on the market. He recently had a delivery of Bordeaux's Château Meylet and Michel Favard himself says Quincave has the best verticale of his wines.
You can of course buy here wine to go, and this all the time, which makes this place a strategic asset if you live in the area, and as said, just add a 7 € cork fee to drink any wine, which puts the cheapest bottle (7 €) at 14 e on your table in the bar, a pretty good price for this type of wine, especially in Montparnasse or the 6th arrondissement.

La Quincave 17 Rue Bréa 75006 Paris phone 01 43 29 38 24 Quincave Facebook page La Quincave street view Mon-fri : 11am-1pm--5pm-11pm Sat : 11am-11pm -- Sun : 11am-2pm La Quincave webpage

Comments

[Winederlusting]

Great tips here! I've always wondered about this, and unfortunately have yet to be in Paris during the yearly release. I'll be on the lookout for natural Beaujolais when I get back over there :). Quincave sounds like a great start to the evening.