going to miss you: jean-marie berrux's 2009 "le petit têtu"

The remorse one feels upon hearing that a favored bottle is out of stock at the caviste, probably never to return, is, when one gets lucky, matched by a corresponding delight upon discovering same bottle still in stock at a different caviste. So it went with Jean-Marie Berrux's "Le Petit Têtu" 2009, a Bourgogne blanc I first picked up on the recommendation of the Cyril* at the Verre Volé cave on rue Oberkampf.

Cyril is not prone to voicing breathless praise of things.** Nevertheless when I inquired about this bottle, his usual stoney-faced tone changed to one of frank admiration as he explained that it was the project of one half of St. Aubin-based natural Burgundy négociant duo Sarnin-Berrux; that it was derived from vines just outside the Puligny-Montrachet appellation; and that it was the last bottle he had in stock, partly because he'd bought and drank so much of it himself.

That was all the convincing I needed. I drank it the next evening with my good friend E, who was shortly to depart for China. Duly stunned by the wine, I let her continue pontificating on some righteous point of philosophical disagreement (our usual routine) while, with a blog post in mind, I took a photo of the bottle, and her, ruefully reflecting on the passing of the vintage.

time and again: les itineraires, 75005

Like, I imagine, quite a few Paris expats, I used to pay a great deal of attention to the New York Times' Paris coverage before I moved here. After one settles in, the articles understandably begin to seem a little exoticist and ooh-la-la. Nevertheless I still thank that paper for pre-briefing me on 2ème cocktail bar Experimental Cocktail Club, where I can still be found far too often, and 5ème market-menu restaurant Les Itinéraires, where I had a fabulous dinner the day I got to Paris, the highlight of which meal was a positively haunting salad of shaved foraged mushrooms, tiny clams, and citrus vinaigrette.

Inexplicably two years passed between that first meal at Les Itinéraires, and the occasion I had to revisit the restaurant the other night with my visiting friend / colleague D, and her friends S and E, editors, respectively, at Vanity Fair and - where else? - The New York Times T Magazine. The meal was memorable partly for sentimental reasons: I spent much of it marveling at how much life has changed since the day I moved to Paris, when my British friend A gave me a lift from London in his parents' car, during which voyage I managed to get struck with a scorching eye infection that I then confused for allergies, causing me to spend much of my first meal at Les Itinéraires, not to mention my first uncertain jobless week in Paris, squinting like a something that had just emerged from hibernation...

Suddenly there I was at Les Itinéraires again, two years in, enjoying some of the most astoundingly impressive wines I've had in years, thanks to Caroline, the rocking sommelier there, with whom I had in the meantime become friends.