loire salons 2015: la renaissance des appellations, les penitantes, la dive bouteille, demeter france

I found myself with a late afternoon to kill in Angers on the Friday before this years' tasting salons. With the aim of avoiding drinking at all costs, I nursed a café crème on the terrace of a no-name bar beside a parking lot, where I soon ran into Beaujolais vignerons Karim Vionnet and Jean-Claude Lapalu.

They were toting several magnums between them, headed elsewhere. I said I'd see them tomorrow at the tasting, whereupon Vionnet reminded me that they were presenting at La Dive Bouteille, which didn't start until Sunday in Saumur. For the winemakers, evidently, as much as for me and most other attendees I know, the weekend was mainly a social occasion.

I'm guilty of complaining about this dynamic from time to time. The truth is, though, that the pageantry and partying of the Loire salons are signs of a vibrant community, and ought to be encouraged as such, or at very least, gracefully tolerated.  Take, for a counter-example, the Demeter France tasting at Angers' Palais de Congrès, where my friends and I tasted the following morning. Most of the winemakers looked embarrassed to be there, like they hadn't even been introduced to one another. It seemed illustrative of the limitations of merely-biodynamic collective marketing, at a time when even the natural wine off-salons, Vin Anonymes and Les Pénitantes, are metastasizing each year. I missed out on Anonymes this year, in favor of arriving earlier at La Dive Bouteille - a somewhat unnecessary precaution, it turned out, since this years' edition was notably better organised, and seemingly less overrun by local daysippers.  After the jump, some scattered takeaways. Slightly more in-depth posts on a few topics to follow in days to come.

coming round again: à la renaissance, 75011

Like any frequent host in Paris, I've learned to grin vacantly through inarticulate endorsements of "little neighborhood bistrots," those magical gold pots every tourist manages to discover at the end of the RER B rainbow. What our clients, friends, and relatives are discovering is usually not quality, but cuteness, for when one arrives in Paris from a New World nation, almost everything appears quite shrunken, frank, and twee. 

Whereas, in reality, the odds of stumbling upon a unambitious, mostly unknown establishment serving sincere and reasonably well-informed food and wine in Paris - the most visited and most discussed restaurant scene on earth - are vanishingly small.    

Yet, astonishingly, that is how I and my friend and colleague Meg Zimbeck of Paris by Mouth both independently came upon A La Renaissance, an anachronistic 11ème bistrot which, in all aspects save prices and opening hours, resembles its anonymous small-town-square archetype. That we hadn't heard of A La Renaissance before wouldn't be surprising, were it not for bistrot's massive natural wine list, and the fact that, almost alone among Paris natural wine spots, it is open past midnight seven days a week. In the revitalized Voltaire area, newly studded with destinations like Septime, Clamato, Bones, and Le Servan, A La Renaissance is an under-acknowledged pioneer.

something else entirely: la bodeguita du IXème, 75009

In the 3ème there is a faddish twit restaurant called Derrière that is outfitted to look like someone's shabby-chic apartment. It is pretty much a playground for inattentive club kids who, knowing nothing of what constitutes good cooking or good drinking, seek a restaurant that offers, as substitute for both, gimmicky things like foozball tables and a "hidden" smoking room.*

The dining area of the recently-opened La Bodeguita du IXème, sister-cave to La Bodeguita du IVème, happens also to look kind of like an apartment. With more emphasis on the shabby side of shabby-chic. But there, happily, the similarities between the two establishments end. La Bodeguita du IXème is not in fact a restaurant, just a solid well-intentioned cave à grignoter. I juxtapose it with Derrière only to provide a contrast between funny décor intended as the crux of a concept - a terrible idea, reminiscent of mini-golf courses - and funny décor as the result of hapless necessity, which is what you find at La Bodeg du IXème. The weird clocks suspended on the walls and the hideous rec-room couch at the latter establishment are basically forgiveable and even kind of charming.

Anyway, what matters is the wine.

joyous naked pagans: natural wine tasting at autour d'un verre, 75009

After making the rounds at Spring's "Une Promesse du Vin" tasting recently, I popped over to meet my friends D and C at Autour d'Un Verre's significantly more informal natural wine tasting in the 9ème.

The differences in atmosphere and philosophy between the two restaurants and their tastings could not be more pronounced. Both places prize fine winemaking and both are very enjoyable. But where Spring very astutely emphasizes the fineness - as in comprehensive luxury, right down to the Aesop soap in the toilets - the scene at Autour d'Un Verre seemed to celebrate rather the winemaking, the physical act itself, with all the attendant sweatshirts, red stains, and mud-encrusted boots.

It's also just the difference between very established vignerons - those at Spring that day, accustomed to high profile wine events in NYC, London, San Francisco, and so on - and the up-and-coming ones, like the ragtag gang of bearded farmer-savants who manned the tables at the Autour d'Un Verre tasting, many of whose delicate unsulfured wines see limited distribution even in France. Some of the wines of this latter category of vignerons are true mystical natural wonders, with a joyous naked pagan quality to them. Others just taste amateurish and unhygienic - 'look what I found in this barrel' wines.

I tasted both that day at Autour d'Un Verre, but for the sake of diplomacy I'll focus on the naked pagans.