Plundering Burgundy Past 

BY  NEAL MARTIN | JULY 12, 2018

Have you ever seen the 1973 French-Italian classic La Grande Bouffe? The plotline is essentially four male friends lock themselves in a suburban house with all the food/wine/prostitutes necessary in order to eat/drink/fornicate themselves to death. Despite its morose, calorific and carnal nature, this celluloid masterpiece sprung to mind during a four-day Parisian trip that redefined the concept of hedonism – minus the suicidal pact and hookers. For sure, the bacchanal set a personal benchmark for libation, but to all intents and purposes, it was a weekend that celebrated friendship, Burgundy and the dying tradition of the “time-spanning restaurant wine list”.

Once upon a time there was a noble tradition of restaurants buying wines to cellar for a commensurate number of years in order to offer patrons the opportunity to drink mature fine wines at their plateau of maturity. This tradition now lies on the brink of extinction. Release prices prevent restaurants tying up cash in slowly maturing wines whilst their accountant warns that they will risk bankruptcy if they don’t monetize the inventory by the following tax deadline. When I started in the wine trade in the 1990s, there were still restaurants that boasted thoughtfully curated lists: veritable treasure troves of vintages old and new, the well known and esoteric. Nowadays there are a dwindling number of restaurants that have the means and wherewithal to buy and cellar over the long-term, the two most famous stalwarts are Berns in Florida and La Tour d’Argent in Paris.

In January, I visited La Tour d’Argent for the first time with a party of Far Eastern wine-loving friends making their own pilgrimage. They had spent months planning not which galleries to visit or sites to see, but exactly what wines to drink with military precision. Arriving at an ungodly early hour at St. Pancras, I found my fellow Brit lugging a heavy suitcase. It either contained a dead body or multiple bottles of DRC Montrachet. Fortunately, it was the latter. It was going to be that kind of weekend. La Tour d’Argent’s private room in the upper floor had been reserved for not one but three dinners, to the point where I am surprised we did not roll out our sleeping-bags and camp there the entire stay. The private room boasts a jaw-dropping, picture postcard vista over the Seine towards Notre Dame, a constant reminder that Paris will always be Europe’s most dazzling of cities. Perhaps there would be more romance had my wife accompanied me instead of a dozen men poring over the minutiae of the wine list, but hey, the romance here was always going to be of the fermented kind.

La Tour d’Argent is a restaurant of extremes. It is extremely old, dating back hundreds of years. It is extremely French. The panorama across Paris is extremely beautiful. The food is extremely expensive and given the prestige, to be honest, not the main attraction. However, the wine list is extremely sensational. It is beyond my wildest expectations, so comprehensive that it obliges a leather-bound hardback tome so large and heavy that I am certain it was last used when Gandalf needed to look up a spell. Fact: a sommelier once dropped it and broke his foot. Since time immemorial, La Tour d’Argent has bought wines upon release, buying directly from growers and cellaring until ready in a two-floor basement labyrinth (pictured on the Vinous homepage link). Obviously I have not perused every wine list in the world, but this must be unparalleled, especially apropos the Côte d’Or, page after page of eye-popping verticals from famous names and lesser-seen growers. Two facets of the list take my breath away. First, the reasonable prices if prepared to pay a modest amount of euros and secondly the knowledge that every bottle is of perfect provenance irrespective of age. Surprisingly, the head sommelier is not French, as the name “David Ridgway” implies. David is British and having worked at La Tour d’Argent since 1981, is a fixture of the restaurant as much as the cellar itself. I suspect that he has never been “worked” as much as when our party descended! I heard that David is due to retire next year – difficult shoes to fill.

The cellar at La Tour d’Argent

There is little point in describing each wine, but I do recommend reading the tasting notes because you will probably never see such a cluster of legends knowing that all have impeccable provenance. Though undeniably there was a sense of hedonism over the four days, it transpired to be a lesson in mature Burgundy via its most famous growers. Though there were a plethora of winemakers to choose from, when I collated my extensive notes, they focused on a small clutch of Domaines: Coche-Dury, Méo-Camuzet, Leroy/d’Auvenay and Dujac.

No Domaine de la Romanée-Conti?

Apart from my friend’s bottles of Montrachet, the mark-ups for Aubert de Villaine’s wines were such that they made little financial sense when there were so many relative bargains elsewhere, from Domaines whose wines are more elusive. Case in point, try finding the 1991 Richebourg from Méo-Camuzet and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti and see which takes longer.