9 natural wines I’ve enjoyed in Paris this week

It’s not often I spend a whole week drinking natural wine but I’ve been in Paris with my husband who drinks nothing else, given the chance. And we’ve been hanging out in restaurants and bars that have natural wine lists.

So here are a few things we’ve enjoyed, where we’ve drunk them and what we ate with them. As usual I’ve rated them from green to red - see my traffic lights system, right.

X Bulles at Le Mary Celeste 

A  super bone-dry pet nat made from melon de Bourgogne from muscadet producer Vincent Caillé  Great with oysters. (See my recently updated review of the restaurant). N/A in the UK. GREEN TO AMBER

Le Temps d’Aimer Sorcellerie 2012 at Sauvage

A new one on me, this dry chenin from Francois Maudet’s Le Temps d’Aimer just south of Angers was delicately peachy but with the acidity to make it a great match with oysters (yes, again). See my review of Sauvage in the previous post - I think only they stock it. GREEN TO AMBER

Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet 2013 Vin de Pays de l’Ardèche Blanc at Au Passage

I’ve enjoyed Hervé Souhaut’s syrah before but not tried this richly textured blend of Roussanne and Viognier. It sailed through our starters of salmon with beets and horseradish, salt cod with saffron aioli. and roast Jerusalem artichokes. Les Caves de Pyrène GREEN TO AMBER

Le Vendangeur Masque 2013 Bourgogne Blanc, de Moor at Le Servan


Confusingly this seems to be labelled as Chablis in some markets and Bourgogne in France but it’s very fine either way - beautifully crisp and precise. My mate Fiona ordered a case (from Les Caves de Pyrène) she enjoyed it so much. Spot on with tête de porc with cockles and celery and gravlax of trout with endive and orange. GREEN

Muxagat Tinta Barrocca 2013 at Le Servan
One of the few non-French wines on this list, a deliciously vibrant unoaked Portuguese red from Mateus Nicolau de Almeida of Quinta do Monte Xisto in the Douro (see this interesting background profile from Wine Detective Sarah Ahmed.)  Very good with a robust, sticky beef stew with carrots and black sesame. GREEN

La Stoppa Ageno 2005 at Le Baratin

No real excuse for ordering this as we have several bottles at home but it’s rare to come across a 2005 let alone for €7.50 a glass. Deep, deep orange (as you can see below) with an exotic flavour of quince. Perfect with paté, braised duck and gorgonzola (not all on the same plate, obviously). Les Caves de Pyrène. AMBER

Camerlengo Accamilla 2013 at Heimat

Not quite in the same league as the Ageno but still very young, a beguilingly floral skin contact Malvasia from Basilicata. Very good with a deeply savoury starter of veal tongue. Vini Italiani in the UK has the 2011vintage for £21. AMBER

Sang Neuf, Vuillaud 2013, Beaujolais at Heimat

The name says it all. This unusual Beaujolais really did smell of blood, iron and freshly dug earth which obviously won’t make it to everyone’s taste. Great with a robustly spicy seafood pasta though. AMBER TO RED

Koforobé 2013 Gregory Guillaume from L’Etiquette

L’Etiquette on L’isle Saint-Louis is one of our favourite wine shops (pop by if you’re in the neighbourhood for their Saturday tastings). An unusual blend from Alba La Romaine in the Rhône, marrying peppery syrah with fresh redcurranty merlot. No added sulphur, fining or filtering - a simple vin de soif. 17€ GREEN TO AMBER

Interestingly when I went through my notes and snaps I found we drank more white than red, maybe a reflection of the style of food we were eating. A topic I’ll return to in due course.

Vivant: Paris's newest natural wine bistro

Of all the natural wine haunts we planned to get to this past week Vivant was the one we thought we were most likely to miss out on having read that you needed to book 1-2 weeks in advance. Happily that proved not to be the case. We just walked in off the street on a Monday lunchtime and got a table.

There are several reasons for its popularity, the most significant of which is that it's owned by Pierre Jancou, founder of the iconic wine bar Racines and author of Vin Vivant, the most influential French natural wine handbook. It's also relatively new (it opened back in April) and tiny as is the way with the most fashionable Parisian joints these days.

It's in an unprepossessing street in the 10th but you can see why Jancou fell for the premises which are covered with the most beautiful art deco tiles (it apparently used to be a oiselerie or bird shop according to this post on the excellent Wine Terroirs)


The wines are chalked up on a board and are as good a list of natural wines as any you'll find in Paris. We had three that were standouts - two 'orange' wines - Les Barrieux 2009 from Jean-Yves Peron in Savoie, a deliciously hazy peachy blend of Roussanne and Jacquère and Montemagro, a Durello from Danielle Piccini which I've already written about here and an extraordinarily exotic, scented light red/rosé (depending which way you look at it) called Fanino Catarrato e Pignatello from Gabrio Bini of Serragghia in Pantelleria*. All the wines they stock are unfined and unfiltered with no added yeasts or sulphites.


Foodwise it is more a restaurant than a bar though you could, I suspect, go in for one of the starters - a plate of wafer-thin sweet fiocco ham or burrata which seems to be the must-have entrée on every Parisian restaurant menu at the moment - later in the day or if the restaurant is quiet. We opted to have a main course of sausage en cocotte with root vegetables and milk fed pork with polenta and aubergines, however, both generous and delicious. And a plate of 3 year old parmesan, managing to run up a bill over over €100.


There are cheaper places to drink natural wine in Paris but this must without a doubt be of the best.

Note: Vivant is closed on Saturdays and Sundays.

* about whom you can again read more on Wine Terroirs here (scroll down the post).

When is a wine bar not a wine bar?

One of the more mysterious aspects of this pilgrimage through Parisien natural wine haunts is how few of them are actually wine bars in the conventional sense - i.e. somewhere you can go for a glass of wine and, perhaps, a nibble. Most have turned themselves - for obvious commercial reasons, I guess - into bistros or restaurants. Many have a wine shop on the side.

The most obvious example was Le Verre Volé, one of the original band of Paris's natural wine bars where we hoped to stop for a drink before we ate at Philou, a neighbourhood restaurant on the Canal St Martin the other night.

The omens weren't good when we saw every table laid up for dinner but that had happened to us already at the Chapeau Melon so we weren't unduly deterred. We asked for a glass of wine. They said we couldn't have one, despite the fact that two people were already in the corner tucking into a bottle and a plate of sausage. All the tables - completely empty - were fully booked they said. We said we'd eat a course but it made no difference.

My husband who has spent the last three months researching the Parisien natural wine scene remarked that was odd since they made their reputation as a wine bar (in perfect French, I should add. They can't have thought we were tourists). No, they said, they'd never been a wine bar*. And that was the end of that.


At the Chapeau Melon by contrast they said they hadn't got any bottles open but asked what would we like to try. They opened a bottle of Puzelat's Touraine La Tesnière (a blend of Menu Pineau and Chenin Blanc), poured us a couple of glasses, expressed regret that we couldn't eat with them that night because they were full but would we like to come back on Sunday as they were one of the few restaurants in Paris to open on a Sunday night. Which, given the very appetising smells coming out of the kitchen we're going to do. Now that's the way to get a customer.

Moral: Eat at Le Chapeau Melon, avoid Le Verre Volé**. (Sadly this proves not to be the case. We had a really disappointing meal at Chapeau Melon last night. Very long wait. Poor food. Great wine list though - a good place to buy a bottle 17/10/11)

Incidentally you can have a very well priced glass at Inaki Aizpitarte's modern bistro and bar Le Dauphin which is next to his uber-famous Chateaubriand. A Mauzac pet nat from Domaine Plageoles in Gaillac and a Chez Charles 2009, a curious slightly botrytised sauvignon from Noella Morantin in Touraine, both for just 5€ a glass. Can't say I was crazy about the marble and mirrors decor which looked like a celebrity hairdressers but at least the natives were friendly. And we think we spotted Inaki although since almost all the servers sported beards or designer stubble it was hard to tell.

* Proof here on the Wine Terroirs blog which said back in 2004 you could have wine by the glass and charcuterie between 7 and 8 pm. (We were there just after 7). Also I'd forgotten that we ran into the guy who used to run the Verre Vole in Banyuls back in April (see here) who said he'd left Paris for exactly that reason: that wine bars had lost touch with their roots.

** Although I have to admit we're in a minority here. Most critics love it as you can see from this round up on Paris by Mouth.

Why you shouldn't be scared of Le Baratin

We'd heard so many bad things about Le Baratin we almost didn't get there. It was only reading an interview with Bertrand Grebaut of Septime, one of Paris's most highly rated new restaurants, in a funky food magazine called Fricote saying that is was his favourite restaurant in Paris that made us think twice. That and the fact that Le Baratin is still the main place of pilgrimage in Paris for natural wine lovers.

We'd heard bad reports though from friends who had found the owner insupportably rude so we arrived with some trepidation. We were sat next to a group of very noisy Americans of the sort that might just account for his attitude.

Fortunately my husband speaks French like a native so we were fine. When we asked to move to a quieter table there wasn't a problem. He actually got a smile out of the gaffer. And the rest of the staff couldn't have been more charming or helpful.

And the food and wine are terrific - well worth the trek up to the 20th. I had a simple crab and green bean salad and my husband a ragout of artichoke hearts and carrots which miraculously survived the bottle of Yoyo KM31, a glorious rich, heady grenache/carignan blend from the Roussillon we had ordered from the tempting list on the board. It was better though, admittedly, with our two main courses a braised veal cheek (below) and the most amazing joue de boeuf (beef cheek) I've ever eaten which managed to be fall-apart tender and crisp on the outside. I find it rare these days to find main courses better than starters but these were both brilliant.


We finished by sharing a perfectly matured Brie - ripe right the way through but not bitter as Brie can become if it's allowed to go too far.

A really super meal - not cheap* but totally delicious. French chefs love it. Brave the boss and go.

Le Baratin is at 3, rue Jouye-Rouve in the Belleville area in the north of the city. (20th arrondissement). Nearest metro: Pyrenées Tél: 01 43 49 39 70. It's closed Sunday and Monday

* They do a lunchtime menu for 16€ from Tuesday to Friday.

If you're in that part of town and can't get in to Le Baratin try Le Chapeau Melon the other side of the road (evenings only)

A glimpse of Le Chapeau Melon

We've had two trips planned to Paris in the last six months which we've had to abort - one on grounds of the heavy snow just before Christmas, the second last month for a family funeral. On both we planned to check out Paris's well developed natural wine bar scene so I have a twinge of envy when I come across posts like this from a blog called Paris Kitchen about Le Chapeau Melon which is run by Olivier Camus, one of the founders of the famous (and apparently famously rude) Le Baratin.

So that's it really. Looks great. Thought you'd like to read it . . .