thought it was over? there's moore.

I figured I'd pretty much exhausted the whole Ô Château conversation last week with that post on the concept of Greatness in wine. But now omnipresent Paris lecher / blog superstar Adrian Moore has saddled the dead horse, armed with a persuasive counterargument.* 

* He appears also to have posted the same bon mot in the comments section of the relevant article - but anonymously. Why on earth would you say something anonymously and then say it again on an attributed Twitter feed? I can only assume that when the sentiment first occurred to him, he found it somewhat risky, and dared only post it anonymously; but, upon seeing it published, he was seduced by the genius of his argument, and grew bolder.  

on greatness

A recent exchange in the commentary section of this blog got me thinking about the concept of Greatness in wine. It seems to me that many disagreements about wine might be reduced to differing ideas about Greatness.

In the exchange I mention, the owner of O Château Wine Bar, Olivier Magny, responded to my critique of his establishment by citing the Greatness of the wine on offer there: 

If people want a non distinct glass of wine for less than 5€, and a big crowd of arrogant bobos then yes, I'm not afraid to say that our bar is the wrong place... 

...Maybe Paris is not ready for [O Château Wine Bar], maybe in a few weeks, we'll realize that the project of a wine bar that serves only great wines is too ambitious and that we should do what Everybody else does: serving glasses of average wines in average environments for 4 to 9€ and make it sound like Good value because it's inexpensive.

Setting aside, for the moment, Magny's hilarious and completely unwarranted martyr syndrome, there are two substantial flaws in this argument, which was intended to counter, or deflect attention from, my assertion that wine at O Château is rapaciously overpriced. Both involve, I think, misunderstandings about Greatness.