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.

Sauvage, a new natural wine bar discovery in rue du Cherche Midi, Paris

While we pick up most of our recommendations online, it’s always good to discover somewhere for yourself as we did a couple of months back heading back up the rue du Cherche Midi and stumbling upon Sauvage.

Having recently opened it consisted of a few shelves of natural wines and the standard wine bar fare of cheese and charcuterie. Now it has a few hot dishes too prepared in a minute space at the back by the owner Sebastien Leroy with the aid of a sharp knife, a microwave and a slow cooker.

Given the fact that Leroy has to combine the roles of salesman, sommelier, chef and front of house (and presumably washer-upper) the operation runs surprisingly smoothly. If you sit down and order a couple of glasses of wine (a slightly wild pet nat - La Buelloise from La Grapperie in our case) you get a few slices of excellent saucisson with it.

Leroy rattles off the menu - there’s no written version so it pays to have a smattering of French - which includes oysters, mackerel, some kind of fish I didn’t catch and sausage de Morteau with carrots. The oysters which we could hear being shucked in the background were wonderfully fresh and salty, perfect with the utterly delicious 2012 Sorcellerie dry chenin from Francois Maudet’s Le Temps d’Aimer (GREEN TO AMBER - see my traffic light ratings on the right) that he suggested to go with them, a generous hunk of beurre de sel and some thickly sliced dark rye bread.

The satisfyingly meaty, slightly smokey sausage came with sweet-tasting heritage carrots which I gather from the ‘ping’ were microwaved (nothing wrong with that) then had some shavings of carrot added to the hot broth for an interesting textural contrast. Very simple but a first class use of good seasonal ingredients, following the natural wine philosophy of adding nothing and taking nothing away. Considering his background is apparently in film rather than a restaurant kitchen according to this review in Le Fooding, Leroy can cook a bit.

A selection of Sauvage's wines - not the ones we tasted

The wine selection is modest but eclectic with not many names i recognised apart from Sebastien Riffault but Leroy says he tries to stock wines that aren’t available elsewhere. The ‘Malice’ Cab Franc we had with the sausage, also from Maudet was delicious too though slightly funkier (AMBER). I can’t find out much about the domaine at all other than that he’s just south of Angers. Certainly one to look out for.

It was hard to keep track of exactly what we spent because there wasn’t a bill and we the took the remains of the two bottles we started away to finish over the weekend. But I’m guessing the wine came to about half our €112 total. You could certainly get away with a lot less.

Sauvage is at 60 rue du Cherche Midi, 76006 Paris (the 6e) and on Facebook at cave.sauvage. Closed Sunday after 3 and Mondays. Open 10-3 Tues & Wednesday and 10-11pm Thursday-Saturday

A sneak preview of Soif, south London's latest natural wine bar

I seldom venture south of the river if I can help it but annoyingly some of the best natural wine haunts are now establishing themselves there. Artisan & Vine, Green & Blue and now Soif, the third restaurant in the Caves de Pyrène-backed group which includes Terroirs and Brawn.

Actually I say 'now' but it doesn't open until Monday but we got a sneak preview last night when it was open to host a Green and Blue tasting with Alice Feiring who was reading from her new book Naked Wine.

I've mentioned Feiring before and will come back to the book in due course but I liked the way the tasting was pitched as an 'anti-Beaujolais nouveau night'. We tasted two proper gamays, Hervé Souhaut's Domaine Romaneaux-Destezet La Souteronne 2009, an appropriately breezy, delicious vin de soif and Foillard's much more muscular, savoury 2009 Morgon which opened up beautifully as the evening wore on.


We also got a chance to sample some of the dishes on the menu which included a very good rustic paté and a to-die-for cep and caramelised onion tart, to which the blurry photo above in no way does justice. There will also be jugged hare which is pretty exciting.

It's all very much in the same register and style as Terroirs and Brawn though slightly bigger and less hidden away than the latter and, being Battersea, with probably a rather different vibe. (Ed Wilson the executive chef of the group (below) told me he wasn't quite sure how the locals would react. Apparently a couple had already helpfully offered some suggestions about the kind of dishes they thought they should be doing. Goodness knows what they'll make of the wines and even of the name. So-if, soyf or swuf?


Anyway they're spoilt for choice if they choose to be. It's a fantastic list and the food is the kind of modern bistro that Wilson does so well (though Colin Westal who was Rowley Leigh's head chef at Le Café Anglais is the one who will be heading up the kitchen on a day-to-day basis). Incidentally he (Wilson) is also going to be acting as consultant to Green & Blue who are expanding their restaurant operation in East Dulwich from next month.


Soif is at 27 Battersea Rise, London SW11 1HG. Tel: 020 7223 1112. If you're coming from central London it's a 8-10 minute walk from Clapham Junction station.

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.

Paris wine bars, like buses, come in threes

Day one of a week in Paris, largely to suss out its natural wine bar scene. We've been meaning to do this for a while and have already had to cancel two trips for reasons too complicated and tedious to go in into so I still can't quite believe we're here.

Actually Paris is swamped with wine bars, natural or not so it's not particularly hard to track one down. But what we're already discovering is that the natural ones seem to come in clusters. Maybe they feel they need the moral support, that their unnatural neighbours will persecute them if they're all on their own.

Today we discovered two hotspots, one in rue des Lavandières Ste Opportune in the 1st arrondissment which we hit rather too soon to start drinking but which includes Aux Vieux Comptoirs and La Robe et le Palais, which we definitely plan to go back to. (Aux Vieux Comptoirs looks quite pricey)

And then the rue de l'Arbre Sec where you can find Le Garde Robe and Spring's bottle shop and wine bar. (Spring itself, one of the most fashionable restaurants in town, is down the rue Balleul opposite.)



We had a cheeky glass of Parigot crémant de Bourgogne rosé at Spring for 6€ each which I'd happily drink instead of champagne and chatted to Brendan from Oregon who had developed a passion for natural wine and was manning the shop in place of the manager, Josh.

Then we drifted over the road and had a plate of saucisson sec and terrine at the dimly lit Le Garde Robe which is far more what you expect a natural wine bar to be like. We tried a glass of a typically Provencal blend of Cabernet and Syrah called Champs de la Truffière which I really enjoyed, and a Caladoc from the Rhone called (I think) Ze Pepe Red Ouane which I can't find anything about on Google so I probably wrote it down wrong. Not that interesting anyway.



And finally a glass of Puzelat Sauvignon Blanc '10 at another bar and restaurant called Les Fines Gueules up the rue Croix des Petits Champs the other side of the rue Rivoli. No horrid confected gooseberry and asparagus flavours - one of the nicest wines I've had from Puzelat.

What strikes me so far:

* how easy it is to find somewhere to drink natural wine in Paris

* Paris winebars are not cheap. Main courses are around 20-25€ (admittedly including service) so it's better to do what we're doing and have a starter and a glass of wine - around 4-6€ a (140ml) glass on average which is good value by UK standards.

* We've eaten a LOT of charcuterie. Vegetables are still sparse in France

* every wine bar seems to have a Japanese girl behind the bar or in the kitchen. Curious, that.


* a lot of Parisiens have small dogs. Can't get to the bottom of that, either.



Incidentally there's this rather good map of Paris wine bars and bistros compliled by Dr Vino. Not all natural but you see what I mean about clusters.