The 1947 Alsatian Riesling and Le Bistro du Sommelier Paris.

The first time I visited the Bistro du Sommelier, I was so bad at the blind tasting menu that I was served a delicious dose of the classic Parisian Waiter Snark. I confused a Bordeaux with a Burgundy. In my defense, the Bordeaux did have an abnormally high proportion of Petit Verdot in the blend. The Sommelier’s response was great, “You are kind of right, both wines start with B.”

So this is now one of my favorite restaurants in the world.

Le Bistro du Sommelier appears to be just another bistro on the Boulevard Haussmann, but this is Philippe Faure-Brac’s bistro and therefore something special.

Philippe Faure-Brac was awarded World’s Best Sommelier long before sommeliers were the hip celebrities they are today and Le Bistro du Sommelier Paris is his vision of a restaurant built around the art of wine and food pairing.

At the core of the restaurant is a series of five-course pairing dinners where the wines are poured blind and it up to you to ascertain the grape, region, and producer. Something you do under the spotlight of your waiter, who is always a trained sommelier in her own right. It is a wonderfully fun way to enjoy meticulous wine and food pairing and learn a little in the process.

Don’t worry though, additional treasures wait in the Cave below the restaurant.

This video shows my first foray down there.

After a beautiful dinner, we had it in our minds to find something incredible. So we went in search of a 1947 Alsatian Riesling.

Stay tuned for the second video where the team of sommeliers goes to work opening the extremely old bottle.

This is Episode #62 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman

---

One Pet Peeve about the Wine Business. Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars Interview: Part Seven

This the seventh and final part of my video interview with Mac McDonald of Vision Cellars.  In this segment, Mac McDonald talks about his biggest "Pet Peeve" in the wine business..

• The first part of the interview is here.  "From Rural Texas to Napa Valley Wine Country."

• The second part of the interview is here.  "How (and Why) to Grow Pinot Noir."

• The third part of the interview is here.  "What Makes Sonoma Pinot Noir Special?"

• The fourth part of the interview is here.  "What Does Wine Mean to You?"

• The fifth part of the interview is here. “Pairing Diverse Foods with Pinot Noir.”

• The sixth part of the interview is here. “Advice for New Pinot Noir Drinkers.”

Please enjoy this quick four minute video or read the transcript underneath it. 

This is Episode #61 of Understanding Wine with Austin Beeman.

Mac McDonald:

My pet peeve really about this is I have this all this thing about all of this stuff where people just write about wine and all these wine magazines and they tell you what you do and by the way, we get great press on all of our wines. And I always have this bottom line about this wine stuff, no matter what the press says about it.

You know, our wines have been served at the White House since President Clinton administration. On the President George Bush administration, our wines was served there at least three times a year in all the eight years he was there which is phenomenal for a small winery like Vision Cellars.

And I say with all of that stuff said, the bottom line is you either like the crap or you don't. I totally believe that. And it don't matter what the scores say, you do that.

I like for folks to really understand you are the knowledgeable person about what you're drinking and it's okay to get opinions about stuff but you know you make your own decisions about what you like.

And I see it's leaning towards that. More and more folks are saying, I like this. Or they'll say, I wouldn't have ever tried a Pinot Noir. I just like for folks to do that.

The other part of this whole thing I like to see folks say, you know, if I'm having fried catfish and I want to have an 18.5 % Zinfandel with it, by God, it's my money and I oughta be able to have whatever I want with the food that I want.

But that doesn't mean that certain pairing wouldn't go better. I'm not gonna say that wasn't. But that may be in my own mind that I think that'd go better. But for the person who is the consumer that's coming in to buy a bottle of wine or a case of wine, if they want to have one thing with they dinner, that's perfectly okay. I'm not saying, again, that it wouldn't be better to have another wine with it but hey, my taste buds not the same as yours maybe.

So that's what I like to see folks do and appreciate and go out on a limb. Start enjoying what they like with the food that they have. Personally, I drink more wine without food than I do with food because it's relaxing, it's enjoyable for me and I like the flavor of wine.

I'm not stuck on Pinot Noir. I try a variety of wines, Cabs and I try Sauvignon Blanc,, I try all types of stuff because I want to try all the different flavors of wine. Just explore this wonderful world of wine.

---

A Rite of Paso: Paso Robles Wine Country. By Chris Kassel. Wine Book Review

You wouldn’t imagine that America’s most interesting wine writer would come from Detroit, but there is truly nobody who writes wine like Chris Kassel. It takes, perhaps, the perspective of a sober alcoholic living a continent away from the infantilizing comfort of ‘wine country’ to understand the beauty of this particular beverage.

Kassel begins his intriguing 2013 study of Paso Robles Wine Country “A Rite of Paso” with a cross-country train ride that slams us quickly into his fraught history with this beverage.

“A train because it’s symbolic, of course; California because on a westbound carrier, it’s the end of the line. Plus, it’s where the wine is, and if I should not - cannot - drink any more of it, I have spent my entire adult life writing about wine, millions of words in dozens of outlets, and writing about wine and wine’s inhabitants is still my comfort zone, even when the comfort zone of a low-grade buzz is no longer an option.”

Chris Kassel innately understands that wine is inherently something beyond the pleasant buzz in the head. It also is something beyond the mere organoleptic game of a blind-tasting sommelier or the Pinterestingly staged images of organic food, wood furniture tasting bars, and ‘wine country casual’ lifestyles. And he isn’t interested in reviewing wines and telling you what to drink.

A Rite of Paso peels away all of that and focusses on a world of real people - often flawed but never boring - who happen to be in Paso Robles Wine Country.

Chris Kassel is actually engaging in Journalism. Writing like this shines a bright light of how much wine writing is merely sales and marketing copy. Those things have their place, but we need much more writing like A Rite of Paso.

Obviously, I enjoyed A Rite of Paso: Paso Robles Wine Country tremendously and I recommend you buy a copy. Click here to buy the book from Amazon.

I’ll finish out this review with a couple of quotes from the book that will give you an insight into the style of the writing.

On Pest Control

“Steve Thompson has been known to sit in the canyon opposite his vineyard, drink a bottle of wine and unleash live-fire hell upon the ground squirrels. He’s also developed a sort of John Wayne vs the Injuns technique while driving his red Polaris wherein he steers with one hand and fires his shotgun with the other. In either case, on a particularly productive whack-a-squirrel day, he may send three hundred rodents into oblivion.”

On the Tarantulas that are a core part of the vineyards of Paso Robles

“About five years ago, I saw a spider a quarter of this size on my washing machine at 4:00AM, and considered that my options were either to fetch my .22 from the gun chest and shoot it or wake up my sleeping teenager to kill it for me. In the end, what the hell? I figured the gunshot would have woken him up anyway.”

And Pinot Noir

“Diaphanous and dainty from vineyard to vat, pinot noir was born with a thin skin, making it hypersensitive to weather and prone to viruses like leaf roll and bunch rot. It’s recalcitrant in handling and as difficult to vinify as it is to farm; it has, as a result, often been described in feminine terms, including ‘voluptuous,’ ‘high-maintenance,’ ‘delicate and driven to drama,’ ‘seductive, wily and sexy.’ Of course, as the French - who have been growing pinot noir since Jesus had milk teeth - well know, the better it is, the harder it is to describe. One thing is for sure: If pinot noir is a woman, it is Carla Bruni compared to cabernet sauvignon’s Kim Kardashia

---