n.d.p. in beaujolais: marcel joubert, quincié

The prolific and indefatigable Marcel Joubert, arguably the most senior natural winemaker in Brouilly, made his last vintage in 2015. He's been producing ruggedly natural wines in a plethora of appellations since meeting pathbreaking Morgon winemaker Marcel Lapierre at motorcycle rallies at the end of the 1980's.

The two winemakers couldn't have more different profiles today. Lapierre, who died in 2010, is a legend, the subject of books and cartoons, perpetually fêted in the press. Joubert, alive and well, is almost a ghost by comparison. While beloved by his peers in Beaujolais and his direct clients, Joubert's larger-than-life personality, like his individual winemaking style, remains unknown to most drinkers. A fourth-generation winemaker who began his career in 1972, Joubert belongs to a previous generation of Beaujolais winemakers for whom discretion bordering on anonymity was part of the game.

As of 2016, he's handing over the reins of his domaine to his tall blonde daughter Carine, who worked in human resources before deciding to devote herself to the family business. "I'll stay as an intern," he said slyly in November in his tasting room in Quincié. "If she lets me."

never-ending terrace: les caves de reuilly, 75012

Remember that scene in Wayne's World, where Wayne and Garth do impressions of various US states, before being confounded by the unsatirizable dullness of Delaware?

I find the joke applies equally to Paris' 12ème arrondissement, a pancreas-shaped swathe of east Paris containing the marché d'Aligre, the Bois de Vincennes, and not much else. Between these two destinations, beneath the oft-overlooked Coulée Verte, lies a no-man's land of wide-laned roads and faceless residential blocks, as if the families lodging north of the Gare de Bercy tangle, faced with a choice between typical rail-side rat-commerce and nothing at all, chose the latter. Before last week, I'd only had reason to venture there once, in order to visit Au Trou Gascon, a well-priced one-star Michelin restaurant to whose Armagnac library I have, sadly, not since had the occasion (i.e. euros) to return.

Alarmingly, it now seems I may be back in the neighborhood rather often. My friend Mike Donahue - 12ème resident, fellow Philadelphian, and brew maestro behind Montreuil beer upstarts Deck & Donahue - recently introduced me to the re-vamped Les Caves de Reuilly, an august address for quality wine in Paris that seven months ago came under new ownership. The new owner, Pierre Le Nen, hails from Brittany, studied wine in Paris, and at some point in between, worked in the Vancouver and attained what is, in Paris, a rare fluency in both English and good hospitality. Under his direction, Caves de Reuilly maintains a balanced, mostly-natural wine selection and a vast, expandable terrace, where one can enjoy the former with zero corkage fee. For any Parisians feeling gipped about 2014's summerless August, Les Caves de Reuilly's terrace is a marvelous place to recoup.

a family affair: mon oncle le vigneron, 75019

Most wine geeks learn to take the recommendations of non-aficionados with a cellar full of salt. This is because wine, or rather the idea thereof, is one of those elementally good things to which almost everyone is predisposed to a greater or lesser degree, like art, or music, or breakfast. A wine geek therefore tends to listen to casual drinkers talk wine in the way a contemporary art dealer will hear out a description of a painting someone bought at a yard sale.

This is my excuse, anyway, for why it took me so absurdly long to accompany the Native Companion to one of her favorite restaurants, the wincingly named Belleville table d'hôte Mon Oncle Le Vigneron.

Now it's one of my favorites, too, probably for similar reasons as hers. (Not the wine.)

follow your nose: au nouveau nez, 75011

In a perfect world - one with no shortage of material, and natural wine available everywhere - I would decline to post anything about Au Nouveau Nez, the blip-sized little cave à grignoter in my neighborhood, because doing so only increases the chances that, when I next stop by seeking a divine St. Véran and a plate of charcuterie, both tables will be occupied. There are only two tables. (If you read this and subsequently crowd the joint, you have to let me pull up a stool.)

I went there for what turned out to be a long apero with my British friend B the other day, and we lamented the impossibility of anything like Au Nouveau Nez ever turning up in London* in the near future. In London everything would require too much explanation, we reasoned. The fresh charcuterie and well-judged cheeses on offer, the slim selection of natural wines, the rotating what-ever-we-have glass pours - all these things would get fussed-over, exoticized, over-presented. There would be a coherent graphics package. Whereas in her tiny outpost in Paris' 11eme, the friendly and punctilious proprietress Nadine serves everything rather comme il faut.