Food & Wine October 2019

NV LAURENT-PERRIER GRAND SIÈCLE ITERATION NO. 24 MV ($150) What to do when you finally finish editing a massive French wine issue? Why, celebrate by opening a great Champagne, of course. The latest iteration of Laurent-Perrier’s top wine, a blend of the 2007, 2006, and 2004 vintages, is exceptional: subtly toasty, minerally, refined. 2017 DOMAINE DE LA GARRELIÈRE GAMAY SANS TRALALA ($20) I first tasted this natural Gamay from the Loire at our 2018 Food & Wine Classic in Aspen, and I keep coming back to it. It has zero chemicals or commercial yeasts, it’s light and bright, good chilled or not, and it has that charm that just makes you ask for another glass. 2015 ANDRÉ BRUNEL LES CAILLOUX CHÂTEAUNEUF-DU-PAPE ($55) OK, a guilty pleasure—I already have a Châteauneuf in our “The French 50”…

Here’s to France AS A WINE LOVER I drink omnivorously, but if you chucked me onto the proverbial desert island and gave me only one country I could have wine from for the rest of my life—dire fate to be sure—it’d have to be France. So when F&W Editor in Chief Hunter Lewis invited me to introduce this French wine issue, I said, “Oui, monsieur,” of course. The breadth and depth of what France offers, when it comes to fermented grape juice, is unparalleled: bright, brilliant whites; juicy, crushable reds; stunning values; icons that will age for decades (and dent your bank account accordingly); wines that are sweet, dry, funky, bubbly—you name it. Plus, French wines go with literally everything, from the chicken Chettinad I made the other night (I matched the…

EVEN BEFORE one of history’s most sensational wine-fraud cases emerged, Laurent Ponsot, then the winemaker at Burgundy-based Domaine Ponsot, knew that charlatans lurked at the fringes of his beloved industry. When he first spotted a phony bottle in 1995, he recalls, “I started to think about what to do about it.” And then came Rudy Kurniawan, a youthful upstart wine dealer purporting to possess the world’s greatest cellar and selling tens of millions of dollars’ worth of fine wines at auction—only to be exposed in 2012 as a massive counterfeiter. It was Ponsot who helped the FBI investigate and eventually catch him. (In one memorable instance, an auction was interrupted to pull the Ponsot wines that were up for sale—they had, in fact, never been made by his family.) The affaire…

STEP INTO LA MERCERIE, the all-day café nestled within Roman and Williams Guild in New York City, and you’ll feel transported to Paris. Chef Marie-Aude Rose summons the City of Light with exquisite crêpes; pommes dauphine; and a blackened cheesecake, called Tourteau Fromager, that has become her signature pastry. Her food draws upon the homestyle cuisine she learned while growing up in Paris in a family that cooked every day, as well as her years spent in the kitchens of culinary legends Guy Savoy and Pierre Gagnaire. It’s not only the food that evokes this sense of place. Many of the tabletop accessories in the café come from Rose’s favorite French designers (some of which are for sale at the Guild). Her design aesthetic blends cosmopolitan chic with bucolic simplicity. “I…

FOR DECADES THERE WERE only a handful of Burgundy domaines—Domaine de Chassorney, Philippe Pacalet, Dominique Derain, and Domaine Prieuré Roch—making natural wine. While they were rock stars in New York, Tokyo, and Copenhagen restaurants, they got no respect at home. People snickered: Crazy folk. But change has steamrolled into Beaune, and this famed destination in the heart of Burgundy now has a flourishing natural wine scene. In the vines, many more vignerons and négociants are challenging the rules of this innately conservative region. Instrumental in this movement is a brilliant young winemaker whose name is Morgane Seuillot. Not yet 30, Seuillot is the determined daughter of the most respected horse-plower in the Côte d’Or (yes, there are still horse-plowers in Burgundy), so the epiphany she reached while studying for a master’s in…

VINGARDEVALISE PETITE 02 A worthwhile investment for the wine connoisseur, this sleek hard-shell suitcase (pictured below) has eight cavities that can accommodate all sizes of bottles, from Champagne to Riesling. ($250, vingardevalise.com) VINNIBAG INFLATABLE TRAVEL WINE BAG These inflatable, reusable plastic bags enclose bottles in a cushion of air. In our testing, the individual bags stayed intact (and bottles didn’t break), even when struck with a hammer. ($30, bedbathandbeyond.com) THE WINE CHECK This collapsible, padded, insulated bag fits over a standard wine shipper box. Styrofoam inserts keep bottles safe and snug; wheels, a strap, and lightweight design make easy work of toting your wines to check-in. ($85, thewinecheck.com) Watch our wine editor put more wine travel gadgets to the test at foodandwine.com/video/how-travel-wine.…