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. 

utter bacchanalian anarchy at: le verre volé, 75010

My friends R, R2, and A celebrated the last night of their recent visit to Paris with a meal at their favorite restaurant here, the rightly famous Verre Volé. I think we all agree that there are few other restaurants in Paris where fine cuisine and wines are paired with the lurking possibility of sheer anarchy ensuing when two previously unintroduced afficionados begin an arms' race of manic rock-out generosity, purchasing various magnums and sending glasses back and forth over the entire restaurant until the place closes.

Anyway, that's what happened. My friend R started it with a magnum of Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet's 2004 "Saint Epine," impeccably chosen by our friend / server-sommelier Thomas. When the glasses started flying we were anwsered in kind by a cheery Serbian fellow across the dining room. I'd just joined my friends sometime around the cheese course, thinking to share a bottle of wine and call it an early night.

beaujolais bike trip: chez agnès et jean foillard, villié-morgon

Renowned natural Beaujolais vignerons Jean and Agnès Foillard run a small, well-appointed chambre d'hôte just outside the center of Villié-Morgon. Jean wasn't around during our stay, unfortunately, and we hadn't made an appointment to taste, so the experience we had was decidedly non-wine-related. It was like staying in a small, well-appointed chambre d'hôte run by retired schoolteachers.

Having enjoyed Foillard's happily ubiquitous benchmark Morgons and Fleuries throughout roughly 40% of the dinners I've had in Paris, and tasted through same wines several times at tastings, it wasn't a huge disappointment. It would have been nice to see the chais and taste a few back vintages, if any were available. But there's always the next trip, for that.

In the meantime I had a room to myself with an extra bed and a huge shower* and an adjacent sitting room stuffed with French literature, the last item presumably provided for non-wine-drinkers who get dragged to Villié-Morgon by enthusiastic spouses. J and C showered and I sat around fiddling with my iPhone, wanting nothing more than to be in the same environment, only surrounded by, like, twelve good friends with healthy drinking appetites and nowhere to be for a few days.

bravo: la retro'bottega, 75011

Besides the confusing name* - which has inspired several early reviewers to harp on senselessly about an imaginary nostalgic quality to the service and cuisine - there is, in my view, absolutely nothing wrong with La Retro'Bottega, the lower-11ème cave-à-manger opened earlier this year by former Rino sommelier Pietro Russano and his business partner Salvatore Li Causi.

I don't mean this as a back-handed complement. I mean they got almost everything right.

As someone who has developed what amounts to a physical allergy to bad restaurateurism, I'm filled with gratitude that a place like La Retro'Bottega exists: a comfortable, soulful cave-à-manger with a refreshing, vegetable-driven menu and a masterful selection of well-priced French and Italian natural wines.** Had I euros enough, and time, I'd dine there every night.

beaujolais bike trip: l'atelier du cuisinier, villié-morgon

Karim Vionnet was in no state to continue drinking with us, the evening we arrived in Villié-Morgon, but he kindly made sure the kitchen would be open at a restaurant across the road from the bar called l'Atelier du Cuisinier. When asked if the place was any good he affirmed it was fine, simple, that there was a good gratin d'andouillette, which dish sure sounded morbidly interesting.

After showers and general decompression at Agnès and Jean Foillard's chambre d'hôte down the road, J, C, and I returned to l'Atelier, where we were to have a meal that, all told, could've used a bit more back-to-the-drawing-board workshopping by le Cuisinier.

But what the hell. It was probably the best restaurant in Villié-Morgon open on a Sunday night, and furthermore the wine list was straight-up magnificent, a real inspiring banner of Beaujolais:

ain't broke: le repaire de cartouche, 75011

The other Saturday my visiting friend C and I attended the Lobster Sandwich lunch at Spring,* along with a whole gang of other friends. You can imagine it turned into a long afternoon, after which C and I strolled down rue Faubourg St. Honoré, then, ack, down the Champs-Elysée a short ways, just off which hellish road he showed me the decidedly non-hellish apartment he's been contracted to decorate. There we vegged out for a while, watching 400 channels of television in a number of languages.

It was still Saturday night, though, and C was still in Paris. It seemed a shame to not do dinner someplace. Since all of the places I'd previously had in mind to show C were either too five-coursey or assuredly booked-up or already closed for summer holidays, I alighted instead on the idea of checking out Le Repaire de Cartouche, a divisive natural wine bistro in the Marais-adjacent 11ème that seems to be the perennial fallback reservation of every visiting wine industry person I know.

That's about as great as faint praise gets. And as C and I observed later, after a bracing Velib ride across town, Le Repaire de Cartouche justifies all of it.

beaujolais bike trip: le relais des caveaux, villié-morgon

On Sunday afternoon we coasted into the town of Villié-Morgon, the heart of the natural Beaujolais scene. The operation of the late great Marcel Lapierre is based here, as are those of many of the famed winemakers that followed Lapierre: Georges Descombes, Jean Foillard, Guy Breton, Jean-Paul Thévenet, etc.

We were scheduled to meet natural vigneron Karim Vionnet, who wasn't picking up his phone when we arrived. The town was as placid and inscrutable as any country town on a Sunday, and we did a few donuts around the roundabout by the church before deciding to just lock up the bikes and hit the bar Karim had mentioned frequenting, Le Relais des Caveaux. 

Which is of course where we found him, grinning with a demi in hand, explaining that his broken phone could receive but not make calls at the moment. 

if only: le marsangy, 75011

For several months my friend J had been intermittently proposing we get dinner at Le Marsangy, a dingy unassuming burrow of a bistro midway between our respective apartments, near metro Parmentier in the 11ème. "Really not bad," he'd say, "and a good wine list," before we inevitably decided to go elsewhere for dinner.

We finally got there the other Monday evening, with his wife C and the Native Companion, and discovered he'd been half-right. It made for an interesting meal, because while I consider it settled that I won't bother visiting restaurants that get only the food right, neglecting wine, I had until that evening no definite knowledge of the lower boundary of cuisine I'd stomach for the sake of a good wine list. 

Call it the swill threshold versus the crud threshold.

beaujolais bike trip: isabelle et bruno perraud, vauxrenard

Sometime during the cheese course of our hit-or-miss pit stop in Juliénas, my friend C expressed confidence in the ride ahead, but added the qualifier that, since it was her first wine country bike trip, we ought to "avoid the big hills."

I then proceeded to frustrate the heck out of her by taking us on numerous accidental long-cuts over the vineyards southwest of the town, near Emeringes. We were on our way to the tiny hamlet of Vauxrenard - not really a common destination in Beaujolais, I gather, but the home of natural vignerons Isabelle et Bruno Perraud of Domaine des Côtes de la Molière, and, as we later found out while tasting through their 2010's in a fairly exhausted state, one of the highest elevations in the region.

domaine les mille vignes at spring boutique, 75001

I'll admit to having had a kind of skeptical interest in attending a recent tasting with winemaker Valérie Guérin of Domaine Les Milles Vignes at my friend Josh's cave in the 1ère, Spring Boutique. Like many wine geek friends, Josh and I tend to gently rag on each other's tastes now and then. I accuse him of liking everything too sleek: silky tannins, quiet acid, polite persistence. He rightly accuses me of drinking mostly oxidative unprofessional farmer wines.

We had differed on Domaine Les Milles Vignes' 2007 Vin de Pays de l'Aube Rosé. At 28€ retail, it's up there with the Château Simones and Domaine Tempiers of the world, in terms of baller rosé. Josh was all bee's knees about it. After sharing a bottle with some friends the week before, I was more ambivalent. I appreciated its waxen dark cherryness, its length, and the fact that it was still proudly drinkable after 4 years - but found it a bit unnuanced, particularly for the price. 

A second tasting didn't persuade me otherwise. The tasting with Mme. Guérin was nevertheless quite worthwhile, for the impressive back vintages of Fitou that appeared towards the end of the tasting, and for introducing me to Guérin's superb Muscat de Rivesaltes, the best of its type I can remember encountering.

going to miss you: jean-marie berrux's 2009 "le petit têtu"

The remorse one feels upon hearing that a favored bottle is out of stock at the caviste, probably never to return, is, when one gets lucky, matched by a corresponding delight upon discovering same bottle still in stock at a different caviste. So it went with Jean-Marie Berrux's "Le Petit Têtu" 2009, a Bourgogne blanc I first picked up on the recommendation of the Cyril* at the Verre Volé cave on rue Oberkampf.

Cyril is not prone to voicing breathless praise of things.** Nevertheless when I inquired about this bottle, his usual stoney-faced tone changed to one of frank admiration as he explained that it was the project of one half of St. Aubin-based natural Burgundy négociant duo Sarnin-Berrux; that it was derived from vines just outside the Puligny-Montrachet appellation; and that it was the last bottle he had in stock, partly because he'd bought and drank so much of it himself.

That was all the convincing I needed. I drank it the next evening with my good friend E, who was shortly to depart for China. Duly stunned by the wine, I let her continue pontificating on some righteous point of philosophical disagreement (our usual routine) while, with a blog post in mind, I took a photo of the bottle, and her, ruefully reflecting on the passing of the vintage.

beaujolais bike trip: le coq à juliénas, juliénas

Note on the text: due to an infuriating error, in which I deleted from my iPhone the photos that were to accompany this text before having put them on my computer, the pictorial content of this post is laughably pathetic. I considered not even posting this episode of the Beaujolais Bike Trip, but decided, in the end, to let the text just stand (mostly) alone. 

I find myself, on these bike trips, unable to shake the naive faith that at each meal in a village of oenological interest I will discover a treasure trove of local delights and unforetold curiosities, on the plates and in the glasses. That this almost never happens does nothing to prevent me from seeking such an experience everywhere I go. To wit: when my friends J, C, and I stopped for Sunday lunch beneath murky skies in the eponymous village of the esteemed Beaujolais cru Juliénas, we found ourselves hesitating between two restaurants in the main square, debating whether the short wait at one was worth enduring to avoid the higher prices and slightly pretentious-looking menu of the other.

The restaurants' names are Le Coq à Juliénas and Chez La Rose, respectively. We found out later they share ownership, along with an attached grannyish hotel. Our decision to wait for a table at Le Coq turned out to be an ambiguous one, for while the cuisine was honest and decent, the wines were null, and the only server, a contemptuous middle-aged bruiser with a buzz cut and an ex-con demeanor, ensured that the restaurant's name remained uncomfortably apropos regardless of whether chicken was on the menu.

greece invades china: q-tea, 75009

My friend D visits us each men's fashion week from Athens, where he has an excellent high fashion boutique in the Kolonaki area. (Just a stone's throw from the riots, in fact. His shop has so far been spared any looting, possibly by dint of its not having any windows.) After his visit this past January, we got to talking about Greek wine, and he kindly insisted on bringing over some bottles of my choosing in June.

The problem is, I know almost zilch about Greek wine. The only place besides Greece, to my knowledge, where one can taste it in educational quantities is, of course, New York. I wound up just emailing D some PDF wine lists of reputable NYC places and telling him I remembered reading nice things about Assyrtiko.*

D, in typical fashion, showed up with a generous sack of interesting bottles, most of which we cracked open after showrooms one night over a B.Y.O.B. dinner at 9ème Chinese gem Q-Tea,** thereby creating another incidental politically-odd pairing.

everyone wins: septime, 75011

I came upon Septime the old-fashioned way: by happening to stroll past one day, and noticing, in addition to the ambitious décor of the restaurant, a flyer advertising a public natural wine tasting, replete with some excellent names. (Cornelissen, Pfifferling, etc.)  I wasn't able to make it to the tasting in the end, but I remembered the address when my friend / colleague D visited during men's fashion week, and she and I engaged in our quarterly trawl through Paris' culinary vanguard.*

Early reactions to Septime have run the gamut from impressed to enraptured. Chef Bertrand Grébaut has serious Michelin-star credentials, having worked in the kitchen at l'Arpège before running the kitchen at Agapé, when latter restaurant earned its star. ParisByMouth reports also that he received a 10,000€ grant from Evian-Badoit to open Septime, which budget, to judge by the cosy-industrial, Monocle-ready looks of the place, probably covered the cost of about seven light fixtures.

I don't mean to patronize. The place is indeed very enjoyably outfitted, with a nice wingspan around each table, and evident attention paid to lighting, ease of movement, etc. - the usual humane comforts that Paris restaurants, and natural wine spots in particular, have traditionally withheld as a method of torturing guests. And this mercy on Septime's part is, I think, just the most visible aspect of a wider change represented by Septime and restaurants like it: the maturation of the natural wine meal, mostly for the better.

beaujolais communiqué

This time the blog silence is wine-related. My friends J, C, and I have been tooling around Beaujolais on bicycles for the past few days. Above is the sleepy village of Fleurie at midday.

We tasted with natural Mâcon / Beaujolais vignerons Isabelle et Bruno Perraud in what turned out to be one of the highest elevation villages of the region, Vauxrenard. Then we coasted down to stay in a chambre d'hôte run by Agnès et Jean Foillard in Villié-Morgon. Jean wasn't around; instead our guide in that town was natural vigneron and all-round hilarious fellow Karim Vionnet. The next day we toured Vionnet's new facilities in Morgon, and then, after a wonderful long lazy lunch together, several parcels of his Beaujolais-Villages vines near Lancié. Monday evening was spent in Mâcon, wondering what to do on a Monday evening in Mâcon. (Nothing.)

Now upon return to Paris, with all this material to rake over, I've realized my laptop is again broken, or wasn't fixed properly the first time by Apple's team of geniuses. In any event I should be back to the usual shcedule of breakneck scribbling by next week.

Related Links:

Jura Bike Trip - May 2011

UNESCO Champagne

My architect friend C's role, on the occasional wine region sojourns we take together with her husband J, typically consists of directing our attention to this or that UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was marvelously fitting, then, that on C's recent birthday a friend of hers from UNESCO brought a bottle of the IGO's in-house Champagne.

So that's where all that inter-governmental funding is going!*