la courtille, tavel

The renown of Paris 20ème-arrondissement bistrot Le Baratin has a firm basis in the indisputable finesse of chef Raquel Carena's cuisine and the marksman-like natural wine instincts of her partner Philippe Pinoteau. Oft-overlooked amid the accolades surrounding the restaurateur couple is their savvy in human resources. Decades of hiring staff dedicated to natural wine - if not deriving directly from winemaking families, as in the case of front-of-house alums Inès Métras and Thibault Pfifferling - has helped the restaurant's influence expand far beyond Paris.

This summer, the southern Rhône village of Tavel saw the opening of La Courtille, a seasonal restaurant by two other talented Le Baratin alumnae, server-chef Natalia Crozon, and chef Marie Lézouret. Housed in the courtyard of an historic building formerly dedicated to silkworm production, La Courtille offers a menu that, in Crozon's own telling, is kind of another Le Baratin.

Bravo to that, my friends and I responded, over lunch back in July. Who wouldn't be overjoyed to find an homage to Carena's rustic preparations of veal kidney and beef cheeks transposed to a spacious sunlit courtyard provisioned with an unending supply of natural and organic Tavel rosé ?

the tavel rosé of today: couleur tavel 2018

"Couleur Tavel" is an annual tasting festival held in the Gard village of Tavel to celebrate its eponymous rosé appellation. I had the pleasure of attending this July on the invitation of the Lyonnais press agency Clair de Lune. The public tasting itself, held in the warren of ancient gardens in Tavel's town center, was a labyrinthine clusterfuck, choked with giddy wandering families; it was followed by dinner at a wagon circle of food trucks surrounding a sort of dance-free dance-party, resembling a nocturnal exercise video, held in the Place du Président Leroy.

Given that the appellation comprises just 930ha, and is devoted exclusively to rosé wine, the "Couleur Tavel" event is not particularly diverse, nor does it appear to be aimed at a professional market. I was still delighted to attend, because it offered an occasion to familiarize myself with the prevailing norms of the Tavel appellation. The only Tavels I ever seem to drink are the wines of the appellation's black sheep, Eric Pfifferling, and as magnificent as his deep red rosés are, they are unrepresentative of the appellation at large.

Perhaps it is better to say Pfifferling's wines are unrepresentative of the Tavel appellation as it exists today. As I've come to understand it, a rosé wine, at the time the Tavel appellation was decreed in 1936, resembled more a light red wine than the transparent pink wine present-day drinkers have come to know as rosé. The overwhelming majority of the vignerons of Tavel, meanwhile, are producing something in-between, but closer to the latter, a watermelon-coloured rosé neither quite of the present era, nor of tradition.