balancing act: l'entrée des artistes, 75011

I'm continually making idle chatter about the prospect of one day opening up a wine bar in Paris. The idea is very far from realisation for me, chiefly because I'm hell-bent on becoming a (more) published author before returning to the restaurant industry, but also because I'm not even sure I'd want to do it then. It's not an easy life.

It's thus with a sense of wistful admiration that I encounter a cracking great new bar like the 11ème's L'Entrée des Artistes, a bar à manger that, along with La Retro'Bottega on the other side of the same arrondissement, stands as one of the only places in Paris that approach this wine-bar ideal I have rattling around in my head.

L'Entrée des Artistes even goes farther than I ever would, and offers, alongside a boldly curated natural wine list, a list of cocktails that is the equal of any in the city. If "natural wine + food + perfect cocktails" sounds too good to be true, well, my fear that it might shortly prove to be is what has me returning as often as possible before that happens.

the copper penny thing

Every so often - usually in the dining sections of popular newspapers - I read about the Copper Penny Trick, wherein an author dispels reduced aromas in a wine by plunking a copper penny in the glass. Hey presto, and gone (or diminished) are the burnt-matchstick / eggy qualities associated with sulfur reduction.

I have always hated these articles, despite having not, until just recently, tried the copper thing myself. I guess I felt the articles subtracted more than they added to wine discourse, in giving the impression to lay readers that wine were some wizardy substance that responded to talismanic rituals. (For that is the image that remains, regardless of whether the article in question delved into the fussier science of copper and mercaptans. Jamie Goode of WineAnorak explains much of that science here.) 

My worry has been, I think, that if we go down this road and make it socially acceptable to propose putting things from our pockets into wine, we will inevitably begin encountering doofuses who know nothing of wine except this trick. We'll be serving wine at a social occasion of some sort and Mr. Copper Penny will stand and do his thing and then cheekily propose adding Eye of Newt, or Deadly Nightshade.