greco skepticism: a fritto misto dinner

Embarrassingly enough, from my recent trip to Rome with the Native Companion I brought back no Roman wine. Nothing from Lazio at all. My baggage limit and my overdraft limit obliged me to narrow my swag down to just three bottles, all purchased from Restaurant Roscioli on the Via dei Giubbonari. The one I was most curious about is the subject of this post: a 2005 Villa Diamante Greco di Tufo.

I have always been completely indifferent to Greco, that's why. This despite tales I've heard from various SF and NYC wine folk of their being blown away by it, in some form or other. An import co. rep who I've no reason to trust* used to insist that he'd tasting a ten year old Greco that had been like manna. On another occasion the wine writer David Lynch** visited the restaurant where I was wine director in LA, shortly after I took the post, and after glancing at my shiny revamped wine list he chose a Benito Ferrara Greco I loathed, a holdover from the previous list.

There was nothing wrong with the Ferrara Greco, actually, except that by the time it reached California it was usually the tail end of the vintage, and oxidation issues were becoming apparent. (In my experience Greco withstands oxidation about as well as a halved avocado.) Maybe D. Lynch was more accustomed to tasting it in NYC or Italy?*** I don't know. If he was disappointed by it, he didn't mention it; nor did I. But it was on the basis of these rumors and intimations of Greco being actually worthwhile that, years later, I brought home from Rome a bottle of cult biodynamic Campanian estate Villa Diamante's version, and cracked it open over a dinner of fritto misto with my friends J, E, C, and D, thinking: maybe this will explain everything.

a question of faith: vivant, 75010

The resplendent antique green tilework lining the walls of vin nature entrepreneur Pierre Jancou's new restaurant Vivant seems to have become a kind of Rorschach test for early reviewers. Mentions of the tiling - either disparaging, as when François-Régis Gaudry of L'Express presumed it was 'stolen' from another space gently mocked its artfully banged-up state, or awestruck, as in many blog reviews - seem uncannily reflective of writers' attitudes towards the controversial subjects of natural wine, restaurateurism as creative enterprise, and, of course, Pierre Jancou himself.

How do I feel about the tilework? It's splendid, and original to the space, a former bird shop. I see no other reason to take this salient element of Vivant's simple décor as anything other than a good design choice, unless, never having quite understood natural wines or enlightened restaurateurism, one gleans satisfaction from implying that both are no more than superficial poses. Gaudry's thievery comment scorn is a particularly obvious example; more insidious, if you ask me, are restaurant reviews that almost reflexively describe the clientele of a feted new restaurant as 'bobo,' as even the positive reviews of Vivant have done.

Use of the 'B' word, an identifying feature of hack writing, is basically a sham populist appeal for writers who seek to cosy up to unsophisticated readers. What's worse, in its implication that guests come to a given establishment merely to assuage their own consumerist guilt, the word contains a sad contempt for the very idea that a restaurant might attract a varied, cosmopolitan crowd by dint of its actually being an intelligent, tasteful, ideologically-sound place. Those exist! And Vivant, despite a few earnest missteps, is one of them.

bon courage: frenchie wine bar opening, 75002

At the opening party of 2ème bistro Frenchie's bar à vin spinoff on the night of La Fête de la Musique Insupportable, a wine industry friend and I amused ourselves by placing mock bets on how long it will be before the intended informal no-res bar becomes a small, slightly expensive restaurant with a difficult booking policy. (In other words, another Frenchie.)

Were it to happen, it would be through no particular fault or avarice of the excellent Frenchie team. It's just a familiar pattern in the Paris restaurant scene, nicely illustrated by 1èr restaurant Spring's short-lived Buvette bar à vin, which has now been more profitably repurposed as another dining room for the unflaggingly popular restaurant. Quality places in Paris shoot for informal and wind up sporting tastevins, for a number of reasons.

first introductions: café de la nouvelle mairie, 75005

For about a year I was in a cross-town relationship with my friend F. In addition to teaching me much of the French I know, I credit her also with getting me into the habit of biking everywhere, without which form of transportation our relationship would probably have been obviated or abbreviated by the hassle of getting to the 5ème from my neighborhood. In less informed days I used to consider the whole quartier kind of a natural wine write-off, and would complain loudly about the sickening moron tourism afflicting rue Mouffetard* whenever we hung out in her 'hood.

Lately, to my continuing bittersweet pleasure, I seem to routinely discover more and more to like about the 5ème. First it was Restaurant Christophe and Les Pipos - a magnificent meat destination and a boisterous bistro à vin nature, respectively - and then earlier this spring I finally got around to visiting Café de la Nouvelle Mairie, a lovely terraced natural wine café just east of metro Luxembourg.

When I stopped by recently, it was to meet my fellow LA transplant T and her rotating cast of colorful friends, most of whom were unfamiliar to me at the time. F dropped by as well, since I was in the neighborhood, and she was there to witness what was perhaps my most catastrophically inappropriate wine choice in my recent memory.

not dead

Recent blog silence is due to a dastardly confluence of unavoidable misfortunes: the death of my laptop, and men's fashion week. I wasn't dressing in black for shows this week to look cool. I was mourning my laptop.

The kind* Geniuses** at the Apple store were thankfully able to sort it out for me. In some uncharacteristic fit of rational foresight at point of purchase two years ago I apparently subscribed to Apple Care. It took the duration of men's week for the Geniuses to fix, or seemingly replace most of, my laptop, meaning that very shortly I'll be back to my usual routine of nonstop wine yammering into the nothingsphere.

Below is me and my friend / colleague E, in mostly black:

pro bistro: l'ébauchoir, 75012

It occurred to me the other evening, during my first visit to 12ème neighborhood bistro l'Ebauchoir with my visiting friends M and A, that upon entering we had effectively rendered it impossible to evaluate the restaurant's normal service standards, by ordering an ostentatiously excellent bottle of Champagne like it was nothing.

It was M's first night in Paris, where he'd been flown after winning a blind-tasting contest sponsored by Ruinart. He was celebrating. It was Anselme Selosse's "Version Originale" Blanc de Blancs, dégorgée 2009. I got over my micro-journalistic quandary pretty quickly.

And regardless - if the extenuating minor-league baller circumstances can be overlooked - I suspect that l'Ebauchoir's sterling service would have been just as sincere had we ordered a Loire pétillant. L'Ebauchoir is that rare thing in Paris: an efficient, well-run, philosophically-sound restaurant, replete with a sharp, expansive natural wine list.

monk time: julien guillot at quedubon, 75019

Much of the natural wine I rave about on this blog is arguably the result of vignerons' efforts to recall  - under whatever banner, organic or natural or biodynamic - preindustrial viticultural traditions: practices whose logic was necessarily dictated less by market demand for a consistent recognizable product, than by local tastes, and the particularities of the regional environment. 

That wines made with these ideals in mind often show so exciting and fresh and new - that they occasion strange scaremongering newspaper articles in nations so close, at least geographically, as England - is testament not to their actual newness, but to how drastically the product we call wine has changed since it encountered the global marketplace. 

At 19ème natural wine bistro Quedubon's recent "Vivent les Vins" tasting, I was pretty enthralled by the bracing Mâcon wines of Julien Guillot of Domaine des Vignes du Maynes, whose oddity "Cuvée 910" bottling in particular seems to demonstrate the potential - both for quality, and for surprise - of the old ways. 

jura bike trip: dinner chez bindernagel

Upon descending into Ludwig Bindernagel's nascent cave space at his chambre d'hôte in Poligny, we encountered - someone else's wines, and a small pile of cheese.

"Oh, let me get that," said my friend D, who'd resourcefully, if cheekily, placed the take-home groceries we'd purchased that morning in the cave without informing our hosts. Ludwig, ever genial, said nothing of it, and continued to show us around the cave. 

We didn't do any barrel tasting - if I remember correctly there was just a tiny lot of Pinot Noir stationed in Poligny, and the rest of his operation is based in Arlay, a nearby villlage that we were unfortunately unable to visit on this trip. Instead we poked around a bit, admiring the work he'd done in clearing the old cellar, and then returned to surface level, where Nathalie had prepared an enormous feast, accompanied - at last! - by a few of Ludwig's splendid wines.

show us your bourgogne

The other day, as I was leaving the comically cramped rear dining area of beloved 2ème Auvergnat canteen Le Petit Vendôme, I noticed a bottle whose label had evidently charmed the owners enough to be put on permanent display.

The label appears to be a pictorial representation of the vineyard name, which translates roughly to "Show your bum."

jura bike trip: macvin ice cream at le grand jardin, baume-les-messieurs

One thing I noted in the Jura was the relative abundance of artisanal ice creams I saw advertised in village after village there. It wasn't, like, the Ile St. Louis or anything, but it was noticeable. I expect it has something to do with the region's other chief industry,* the production of comté. Most villages are home to at least one fruitière, or cooperative cheesemaking operation, often linked with local winemaking cooperatives.

During our pit stop in Arbois on the first day we'd gotten ice cream from a stand whose brand I forget. The ice cream, too, was forgettable - like bad gelato, oversweetened, with far too much air in it. Nevertheless we decided to give Jura ice cream another try on our way back from Domaine Macle, when our attempts to go see the abbey at Baume-Les-Messieurs** were frustrated by a major repaving operation. On our way out of town we found ourselves admiring an older gentleman's vintage motorcycle on the terrace of a restaurant called Le Grand Jardin.

Initially we planned to just get apéros. But we'd just had some fairly weighty, consequential wines earlier than afternoon, before more sunbeaten uphill biking. Ice cream was more appealing, and - the clincher - they had some amusing regional flavors, such as Macvin.

day brightener: domaine du picatier at quedubon, 75019

Paris' natural wine scene, like any subculture, can get a bit repetitive. I've been in town just two quick years, and already I find few new discoveries at a public tasting like the one held at 19ème bistro Quedubon the other Sunday, entitled "Vivant Les Vins!"  The wines themselves are familiar, if not from the similar line-up Quedubon proprietor Gilles Bernard hosted last year, then from other tastings and dinners around town since then. And the vignerons, cavistes, restaurant staff, and so forth who reliably appear at these things comprise a cast of a hundred or so, no more.

At times it can seem like all that's changed is the vintage. Which, in the case of the entry level wines of reliably good natural winemakers,* does not always imply a markedly new wine. Another slightly oxidative Chenin, eh? More bright Gamay, more Grolleau? No kidding.

It was heartening, then, to encounter at Quedubon that day the surprisingly solid, opinion-reversing red cuvées of Côte Roannaise estate Domaine du Picatier, which fall under the heading of Things I Thought I Knew But Did Not.

jura bike trip: domaine macle, château-chalon

In Donald Barthelme's short story "The Glass Mountain," the narrator scales the face of a mountain, enduring bitter winds and the taunts and jibes of skeptical acquaintances below, only to be disillusioned upon attaining the summit, where the enchanted symbol he's been seeking turns into an "ordinary princess." The unspecified symbol, with its "layers of meaning," had been worth the narrator risking his life for, whereas a princess, quantified and familiar from fairy tales like the one that inspired "The Glass Mountain," can be discarded without remorse.

After our picnic among the vines below the village of Château-Chalon, we climbed a mountain to reach the cellars and tasting room of Domaine Macle, whose little-seen, essentially undistributed wines remain the enchanted symbol of the whole strange appellation.

jura bike trip: picnic dans les vignes, château-chalon

Before our tasting at Domaine Macle in Château-Chalon we stopped for a picnic below the town.  Ludwig Bindernagel had told us the night before about a tiny parcel of land, less than 1ha, that he had purchased and was preparing to plant with Savagnin; near this parcel, he said, was an excellent spot for a picnic. The appropriate cluster of vineyards was marked with a handpainted wooden sign that said "Le Nid" ("The Nest"), visible from the road.

My friends and I identified Ludwig's new parcel as soon as we arrived - the earth was freshly turned and an infinity of stones awaited arduous removal. As far as we could see, however, there was no shade anywhere near it. Since we had just pushed our bikes halfway up the steep straw-narrow path in fierce sunlight and were about to collapse, we installed ourselves some ways away from Ludwig's parcel, on the outskirts of neighboring vineyard beneath a tree.

Although drinking at that point of exhaustion was more appealing in theory than in practice, we cracked open the bottle of 2008 Domaine des Cavarodes Vin de Pays de Franche-Comté and tucked into some comté and saucisson.

jura bike trip: marmara kebab, poligny

Our dinner together being planned for the night after, we asked our vigneron host Ludwig Bindernagel if he had any suggestions for where to eat on a Sunday night in Poligny. His response was quick, cheerful, and unequivocal: Marmara Kebab, a Turkish kebab spot just around the corner. I got the impression he wasn't just suggesting the place because it was the only thing open on a Sunday night, either: he seemed to really appreciate the food and the hospitality, saying it was their regular neighborhood retreat after a day tending vines.

Hell, we were game. After a day of grueling uphill mountain-road biking, doner sounded fantastic.

jura bike trip: chez bindernagel: les jardins sur glantine

While tooling around the Jura on our bikes, we stayed at a new chambre d'hôte in Poligny called Les Jardins Sur Glantine, run by vigneron Ludwig Bindernagel's wife Nathalie. Nothing marks the place from the outside, except a barrel during business hours signifying the availability of wine. So when we showed up the first evening at sunset, sweat-drenched and wobbly from fatigue, nothing prepared us for the gorgeous mise-en-scène that awaited us behind a dreamy white curtain at the end of the entrance corridor.

There's a view out over Nathalie's vegetable garden in the foreground; in the background are the dun rooftops of lower-lying houses. On a table in the expansive central courtyard sat a bottle of Ludwig's own crême de cassis, some sparkling wine, and some homemade elderflower syrup. After a quick tour of the chambre d'hôte's two suites and its outdoor kitchen facilities (for use during harvest time, when they lodge 25 good friends), we all shared a long apéro, and Ludwig and Nathalie told us a bit about the operation they've established.

old school: les bacchantes, 75009

Not far from the concert venue l'Olympia in the central 9ème is a conspicuously classic-looking bistro-à-vin called Les Bacchantes, plastered with PUDLO Paris dining guide tags dated back to the early 2000's.* I passed by the other day and, noting a few natural / organic names on the wine list (Bernard Defaix, Domaine Combier, Philippe Pacalet) I resolved to return one day for lunch, thereby proving that, despite my often-overwhelming cynicism on this blog, I'm just as susceptible as anyone else to vain hopes of discovering overlooked gems in this raked-over city. It's because I'm an optimist.

The other day my friends R and N gamely agreed to pay the place a visit with me during our lunchbreak. They'll probably be more skeptical of my lunch suggestions in the future.