n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine comte senard, aloxe-corton

My friend / invaluable guide J and I had a question mark on our tasting schedule after leaving Domaine Alain Burguet in Gevrey. We'd been thinking to go taste with Sarnin and / or Berrux of the excellent natural Burgundy négociant operation Sarnin-Berrux. But the way things shook out it seemed simpler and more timely to pass by the tasting rooms of Domaine Comte Senard in Aloxe-Corton, not because the acclaimed, somewhat pricey wines were to be any great discovery (for J, at least), but because the night before we'd gotten pleasantly soused in Beaune with a sharp young sommelier called E, who helps run Domaine Comte Senard's restaurant and tasting rooms.

As ever, it makes a world of difference when you know the person showing you around a domaine. You see more, you taste more, you don't run the risk of being treated like a tourist and charged 10€ for three glasses of current-release stuff poured by a bored local teenager. E showed us around the historied, fairy-tale-ish estate, run since 1971 by Count Philippe Senard, and then let us taste through a nice rambling range of vintages and wines, including the estate's most peculiar bottling, a Aloxe-Corton blanc made from Pinot Beurot, a.k.a. Pinot Gris.

when all else fails: aux tonneaux des halles, 75001

The classic Parisian defense of chaotic or miserable or under-exploited establishments insists that such places should be cherished for their flaws, since they represent the Paris of bygone age. And there are indeed more than a few restaurants - Le Petit Vendôme ! Le Rubis ! etc. - that truly merit such sentimentalism. But in my experience the Time Capsule Defense is in most cases a strange psychological sleight-of-hand by which restaurant patrons excuse, in addition to the unmistakeable avarice or viciousness or laziness in a restaurant's service, also themselves, for failing to voice any protest.

Eyes wander up from hideous plates to rest more comfortably on ancient vermouth ads and rustic farm equipment adorning the wall. A guest in this sort of restaurant abandons the idea of deriving culinary-aesthetic satisfaction or even sustenance from a meal, and instead considers the whole experience a sort of living museum, of chiefly historical or sociological interest.

"I've been to this museum before!" is what I usually shout in such situations, and skedaddle. If after a concert recently it was actually me who led a few friends to wine bar throwback Aux Tonneaux des Halles, it was only because it was a thronged Saturday night and we had no other choice, and because Aux Tonneaux remains distinguished, among weird Time Capsule Restaurants, for its superb natural wine list.

alice & olivier de moor's bourgogne rouge at autour d'un verre, 75009

Organic Chablis producers Alice and Olivier de Moor are pretty ubiquitous on the circuit of natural wine tastings I try to follow in Paris and the surrounding area. It just figures that a few months ago the rare professional tasting I decided to skip on account of a hangover - wine agent Sylvie Chameroy's portfolio tasting at Le Café de la Nouvelle Mairie - was the one at which the de Moors débuted their first red cuvée, a 2010 Bourgogne Rouge under their négociant label Le Vendangeur Masqué called "Le Rouge d'Etienne," limited to something like 800 bottles. My friend Kevin Blackwell of 9ème natural wine bistro Autour d'Un Verre raved about it to me that same evening, when we ran into each other at dinner. Kevin had purchased fully a third of the production, with the rest going (I think) to Le Baratin, and one other account I'm forgetting.

In the months since that night I'd been bugging Alice, Olivier, and Sylvie, whenever I ran into them, for a taste of the Bourgogne Rouge, much to their amusement. Of course they never brought it to tastings, since it had already all been sold (just not, alas, shipped). Finally, over dinner with some LA friends at Autour d'Un Verre last month, Kevin availed me of the opportunity to purchase a bottle, only after I'd specifically asked about it (it wasn't on the list), and then only after warning me that the wine wasn't yet en place. [Tr. Wasn't showing that well.] 

Yes, it was ! 

far-sighted: télescope, 75001

... And now for the opening of a laudable venture that Paris actually needs: an elegantly simple coffee-geek café called Télescope, tucked away by Palais-Royal on rue Villedo. It's the debut project of David Flynn, formerly barista at the 18ème's Bal Café and La Caféothèque before that, and Nicolas Clerc, a photographer turned coffee enthusiast. Today will be their first day open to the public for business.

The space is tiny, well-appointed, feels a bit like a seat in a Scandinavian lighthouse. Just four or five tables and a spacious bar, upon which will be offered an array of pastries. I suspect at least some of the latter will be sourced from among the gang of talented expat baker chicks who seem suddenly to be everywhere.(Ofr Galerie, La Candelaria, Brunch Bazar, etc.) In the mornings there will be tartines and toast, and the café's intake from on-premises sipping will be buttressed by a wholesale operation. 

No, Flynn and Clerc don't plan to serve any wine. But Télescope remains wholly relevant to this blog, because I can't write without coffee. And since it's the city's first conveniently located coffee bar, Télescope stands to be my main supply of responsibly-sourced, masterfully-roasted, afficionado-approved coffee, something which, despite the testimonials of every dreamy-eyed tourist, remains a total rarity in Paris. 

beef club and beyond: beef club, 75001

Perhaps concerned that by opening Paris' most misleadingly-named wine bar last year, they might have managed to alienate bozos, goombas, and fraternity candidates, the indefatigably ambitious fellows of the Experimental Cocktail Club Group have lost no time launching a new attempt to recapture these critical audiences: The Beef Club, a two story steakhouse-slash-cocktail bar-slash-nightclub, on rue Jean-Jacques Rousseau, by Etienne Marcel. In the words of Dave Barry, I am not making this up.

With The Beef Club the ECC gents will now compete with local wine-huckster Olivier Magny, whose moron-magnet wine bar Ô Château on same street has until now been the de facto destination for all those who'd wish the pleasures of Paris to be more like those of Las Vegas.*

What can I say? I wish the ECC folks a lot of luck, not least because the Native Companion works for them and is liable to catch hell if I get too vicious. In the spirit of congratulation on The Beef Club, a place I will inevitably overcome my revulsion to visit sooner or later, I thought I might offer some concept suggestions for the next ECC restaurant venture.

n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine alain burguet, gevrey-chambertin

My caviste friend J had prepped me for my first jaunt through Burgundy by explaining that while the vignerons we know in the Loire and the Jura might be charming hosts, their counterparts in Burgundy typically react to new buyers by performing a sort of social tornado drill, covering the head with both arms and hiding under a desk away from windows until danger has passed. With the awareness that it's nothing personal, just a function of overwhelming demand, one just grins through it and learns not to expect too much from first-time visits.

What we certainly didn't expect from our first visit to Domaine Alain Burguet in Gevrey-Chambertin was to encounter two extremely genial, curious, dynamic young winemakers - Burguet's sons, Eric and Jean-Luc - whose Odd Couple-esque dialogues during the tasting were nearly as enjoyable as the wines themselves.

for what it's worth: l'écailler du bistrot, 75011

L'Ecailler du Bistrot, the seafood-slinging sister restaurant nextdoor to Bistrot Paul Bert, shares many qualities with the latter legendary steak-frites destination. The décor is traditional but not overbearingly so, the service is snappy and relatively warm for the city, and the wine list, laudably, is tilted towards natural stuff. But - besides the menus - there is one unmistakeable difference between the two restaurants, and it becomes perceptible a few moments after one is seated at l'Ecailler du Bistrot. 

You hear a lot less English at l'Ecailler.  

There are certain very rare occasions in Paris when a lack of Anglos in a dining room can herald the discovery of some rough-cut gem of a resto, as yet unknown to tourists and expats. A visit to l'Ecailler du Bistrot is not one of these occasions; the restaurant, booked solid most nights and situated right beside every good Paris host's go-to for entertaining out-of-towners, is not that sort of gem. Here the lack of Anglos unfortunately means the restaurant provides a service that only the natives in Paris, the Chicago of France, would popularise: very expensive seafood. 

go buy grey magazine

I get no end of quizzical looks from people actually working in the wine industry here in France. Partly this is because, even after several years living in Paris, my French remains halting at best, full of stammers and weird grammar.* But it's also because the wine folk who interest me - the weirdo visionaries without business plans - are almost unanimously unable to fathom why anyone would write a wine blog. Anyone who wasn't, you know, making money from it. This is the unstated question that hovers over most of my cellar tours.

I want to make money too, obviously. I love money. I'm just going about chasing it in an extremely roundabout way, like a dog who initiates a correspondence chess match in order to attack the postman. The blog functions, when it functions, as a living résumé - a way to get more paid writing gigs.**

Now and then this actually occurs. With this in mind, I suggest everyone go purchase the new issue of GREY Magazine, a fashion-slash-literary magazine, where I have a humor piece on the subject of presidential drinking habits. Not wholly wine-related, but not unrelated, either. The concept was something the editor Brantly Martin and I came up with over a great deal of whiskey at the Hotel Amour last October. I had been reading a lot of Woody Allen at the time. A few quotes after the jump.

hats off: le chapeau melon, 75019

Anyone seeking some semblance of completion in this blog's list of recommended (or faintly-recommended) Paris natural wine spots would have been right to point out the curious absence, until now, of material on Le Chapeau Melon, ex-Baratin proprietor Olivier Camus' celebrated set-menu cave-à-manger in Belleville.

I actually adore Le Chapeau Melon - it has almost everything I habitually seek in a restaurant. Camus' self-trained cooking is tasteful but rugged, accented with game attempts at innovation; his wines are as humbly priced as they are masterfully chosen.

If until recently I hadn't been back in almost two years since my first visit, which occurred some months before I began blogging, I think it was mainly due to the set-menu thing. Set-menus sometimes make me feel trapped in a meal. So it was fortuitous that upon finally returning to the restaurant with some friends and colleagues from New York, we landed on a Sunday, when the Le Chapeau Melon serves à la carte, and the resulting meals, more informal, less fussy, are all the better for it.

n.d.p. in burgundy: le bar à vins, gevrey-chambertin

I like towns small enough for things not to have names. The Post Office, the train station, the wine bar. Probably not great for your Google Search results, but without any local competition, who cares?

When we settled upon lunch at Le Bar à Vins, my friend J and I were still greyfaced and wasted from the previous night at Beaune's Bar du Square, our condition compounded somewhat by the two tastings of magnificent tightly-allocated wines we'd already endured enjoyed that morning. When traveling in wine towns I usually feel pressure to Make Every Meal Count, but at that point we both felt it would be a success merely to hold food down. Additionally we'd remarked that Le Bar à Vins was pouring Thomas Pico's (Domaine Pattes Loup) soaringly great Chablis by the glass. What was such a wonderful not-quite-local wine doing at a nameless bar à vins? Could it be indicative of a greater culinary sophistication than we would have otherwise supposed, given the bar's general pokiness and grandmotherly décor?

n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine gros frère et soeur, vosne-romanée

Driving away from the monkishly spare cellars of Domaine Denis Bachelet, I joked to J that for M. Bachelet to raise neither his production nor his prices despite years of acclaim and overwhelming demand seemed to indicate a lack of imagination. "He's got all he needs," said J. "What would you spend the money on?"

First thing, I said, is I'd go everywhere via helicopter. To hell with traffic. If you can afford to be a prince of the earth, why waste time? 

We were to remember this conversation about thirty minutes later, while tasting Richebourg with Bernard Gros at the rather more elaborate cellars of Domaine Gros Frères et Soeur in Vosne- Romanée. The tasting room looks like it was lifted straight from a David Lynch set, magenta lighting, piano, and all. Then in the course of some topical repartée about the Greek crisis, M. Gros mentioned that while he could not accept payment in drachmas, he was happy to accept payment in dollars - because he used the latter currency to pay for helicopter fuel. 

n.d.p. in burgundy: domaine denis bachelet, gevrey-chambertin

Professional readers might note that, as I write up my experiences tasting around Burgundy, I tend to tread uncharacteristically gingerly when dealing with the wines themselves. This is because I haven't tasted enough. I've never bought Burgundy professionally, nor have I had much opportunity to taste the region's wines very deeply or broadly. Wine criticism, like any criticism, is the act of placing subjective reactions within a context of more-or-less objective information, and it's what I feel to be a lack of the latter that keeps me a bit British and even-handed and unjudgmental about the wines I tasted on this trip.*

For instance, at Domaine Denis Bachelet, the 3.8ha cult Gevrey-Chambertin estate whose Charmes-Chambertin is among the most sought-after and revered bottles of the appellation, what perspective could I possibly bring to the wines, having never tasted them before? They're masterful, magisterial, and no, we could not, at that time, purchase any.**

I was happy just to be there. Even if I could do little more than mutely confirm the greatness of Denis Bachelet's zen-like production.

n.d.p. in burgundy: bar du square, beaune

Visits to picturesque winemaking regions often give rise to certain bland repetitive fantasies of actually living in said regions. In my case these visions usually dissipate in the duration of a train ride back to Paris. At this stage in life I can admit to being unable to sustain myself without certain urban comforts, such as bars, anonymity, girls, etc. Any attempt to pretend otherwise and embrace small-town life would invariably end in pitchforks and torches and hitchhiking back.

If I still entertain ideas about residing in Beaune someday, it's largely due to a very memorable nightcap my friend J and I shared with winemaker Axelle Machard de Gramont and her friend E at Bar du Square, an unassuming bar du coin that early last year came under the proprietorship of the lively and well-connected Romain Escoffier, son of the owners of nearby bistro-legend Ma Cuisine. Perhaps semi-inadvertently, he's created the most sophisticated bar concept I've ever encountered, an establishment that would be the toast of Paris or New York or London, were wine supply channels ever to change to allow its successful replication in those cities. 

The concept is simple: a killer, bargain-filled Burgundy list, without a restaurant attached. Instead, there's an electric guitar lashed to the bar taps, and the Kinks on the stereo. 

b minus: agapé bis, 75017

When I was introduced to restaurateur Laurent Lapaire at Le Grand 8 a few months ago, I confessed that while I'd heard a great deal about them, I'd yet to visit any of his restaurants - not the 17ème's Agapé, not its "bistro" sibling Agapé Bis, not Agapé Substance, his tiny nigh-unbookable haute-gastro kitchen on rue Mazarine. I asked him which I ought to hit first. He suggested trying them in ascending order of price and refinement: first the Bis, then Agapé, Substance last.

To be fair, it's natural for restaurateurs to consider their restaurants as parents would their children. He was probably taking care to provide equal attention, and making allowances for differences of personality. But, taking his advice at face value, some colleagues and I took two taxis out west to the 17ème after showrooms one night this past fashion week, planning to check out the tasting menu at Agapé Bis.

Let's say that if any of us ever make it to the other two restaurants, the bar is set pretty low.

n.d.p. in the loire: 2012 - la renaissance des AOCs, la dive bouteille, le salon les pénitantes

While they're fresh in mind, I thought I might as well post some impressions of three natural wine tastings I attended in the Loire the weekend before last. This is to break from my habit of posting things six months after they occur, when everyone has forgotten each others names and it becomes curious to see pictures of friends sporting t-shirts and tans, as though it were still summertime. 

Like last year, I traveled with my friend J and his wife C. This year we were accompanied by our good friend D, another non-wine-professional who, in addition to being a capable photographer and worthy iPad Scrabble opponent, also provided a sunny foil for C's patient boredom during the Renaissance des Appellations (Angers), La Dive Bouteille (Brézé), and, new this year, Le Salon Les Pénitantes (Angers).

My main takeaways: an interview with Catherine Breton (to be published elsewhere), a reaffirmed obsession with Chinon Blanc (another post), and a perceived uptick in the quantity and quality of Jura-style oxidative cuvées, from the likes of Ludovic Bonnelle, Michel Augé, Julien Courtois, and Dominique Derain. 

   

n.d.p. in burgundy: ma cuisine, beaune

As we walked to the restaurant, J explained that it was a sheer fluke to have landed table at Ma Cuisine in Beaune at such short notice. The place is usually booked solid and owners Fabienne and Pierre Escoffier are tactically very lax at responding to the phone, because they operate with the certainty that any unbooked tables will no doubt be filled by passing winemakers in the course of the evening. We had only gotten our reservation, he mused, because it was a national holiday, and most people probably assumed the place would be closed.

Tant mieux,* as the natives say here, often when profiting from the ignorance or negligence of others. That the meal at Ma Cuisine was my very first in Burgundy, land of plenty, was, I think, entirely incidental to how totally sumptuous and fulfilling I found it. With its heartbreakingly long wine list, its brisk service, its richly satisfying menu, Ma Cuisine succeeds by any standard. Only later was I to understand that the restaurant's success stands out yet further in Beaune, where curiously enough there are not many good restaurants.