the seven sins of wine and social media

It's that time of year again. The Loire salons are approaching, and with them, the annual tempest of facile social media emissions recording an infinity of superficial encounters between historical wine cultures and contemporary social media. We're all guilty: journalists, sommeliers, retailers, importers, distributors, even a few winemakers.

Every gesture on social media is necessarily an advertisement for oneself. But there's good advertising and bad advertising. Bad self-promotion is wearisome and slowly turns us against the perpetrator. When we engage in it ourselves, it can turn us against the wine industry as a whole, which in dark moments can resemble a festering cesspit of forced enthusiasm and transactional endorsements.

In the interest of elevating the general discourse, I've assembled here a list of seven things to bear in mind before hitting "Share." You could call them the Seven Sins, but the list is assuredly incomplete. (Before anyone points it out, I'm no saint myself.)

insiders: monsieur henri, 75003

I recently lauded fledgling 11ème wine bar Aux Deux Cygnes for bringing a bit of professionalism and style to its gentrification-frontier quartier. If that establishment's location is central to its charm, the same dynamic applies to another new Paris wine bar, the 9-month-old Monsieur Henri, which manages to be impressively discreet despite being tucked right off the haute-Marais beard-groomer thru-way of rue de Bretagne.

The Marais, of course, is stuffed with twee concepts long on design and short on experience. Monsieur Henri, for better and for worse, has these proportions precisely inversed.

Co-owner Dzine Breyet is a fixture in Paris' natural wine scene, having previously worked alonside Guillaume Dupré at influential passage des Panoramas wine bar Coinstot Vino. But where that bar benefits from the evocative décor of Paris' oldest public passage, Monsieur Henri rather unfortunately resembles a corridor in a small-town sports center. Harsh lighting, a low ceiling, and ill-advised primary-coloured wine storage cages all ensure that no one drinking at Monsieur Henri has come for the glamour. In the Marais, this seems to improve the clientele.

even the losers: pineau d'aunis

Image swiped from lastfm.com.

Even the most celebrated grapes of the Loire - Sauvignon by a mile, with an honorable mention to Chenin, although the latter is more interesting - tend to be considered runner-up or alternative wines by the drinking public. (C.f. the discouraging number of drinkers you meet who profess to love Sancerre primarily because it's not Chardonnay.) This is fine by me, since it keeps prices down. At least relative to white Burgundy, or (red) Bordeaux.*

But dig a little further and you find a whole other realm of obscurity in the Loire, bizarre little village grapes like Cot, Grolleau, Romorantin, Gros Plants, and the subject of this post, Pineau d'Aunis, the name of which grape seems to really beg for a good anagram**. 

Image swiped from lagrapperie.com.

Had you asked me a few months ago, I would have told you that many of the above loser grapes were, in my experience, straight from the Aligoté school of pleasureless oddity winemaking. I'm in the midst of revising this opinion, though, motivated largely by two terrific Pineau d'Aunis-based wines I've had lately.