eternal sad little life: wine by one, 75002

This futuristic style of wine retail always reminds me of the sex scenes in Woody Allen's Sleeper, where the participants enter a phone booth-like construction for a few seconds and promptly emerge looking disheveled and postcoital. What's missing is a certain physicality.

I was particularly saddened to see Nicolas Joly's gorgeous Coulée de Serrant cryogenically packed into one of these moron vaults, awaiting a decade until enough suckers passed through willing to drop 20eu (or thereabouts) on 10cl of wine in a Jetson-type environment. These wine IV-systems always promise eternal freshness. On the off chance that there's no such thing, the Coulée de Serrant, being a dense biodynamic beast of a Chenin, actually still has a good chance of remaining drinkable for the long haul. (Nicolas Joly extravagantly recommends drinking it over the course of a week, a glass per night. Like hell we will, Nick!) For the rest of the wines in this sad hypermodern little mortuary, I remain skeptical. 

The dude working at Wine By One actually asked me not to take photos, apparently because their architect is very concerned about someone ripping him off. More photos after the jump!

(Related Anecdote: I once went to a similar place in Annecy where, merely to sit down for a splash of wine, I had to put credit on a little bank-card-type doohicky, which I then inserted into various slots which removed credit in exchange for piddling little squirts of oxidized back-vintage Chignin. All the while the server just sat around rubbing his stubble and flipping his cell phone.) 

It doesn't seem worth providing addresses and contact info for places I detest. Obscurity suits them.