This is what I always say. I love it when people compliment the wine list and my wine knowledge. They should have met me 6 years ago when we started Chez Nous!
I thought that it was particularly hilarious when we were invited for a - fantastic - meal at some of our guests’ home a few weeks ago. Their friends had chosen a great Willamette, OR Pinot Noir for the dinner, which they said was one of their favorites. When Franck took a sip and said “Wow! That’s great!” they said “Wow! It really must be good if you said so!” I guess they said that since he’s a chef and has a French accent. This is a completely understandable but really ironic reaction
Chefs (and pastry chefs), don’t actually get to drink a lot of wine (or particularly good wines, I should say, on normal chefs’ salaries). We’re working in the kitchen … a lot of hours… and most of the times when “normal” people, with normal jobs and lives are drinking and celebrating… and it’s not a good idea to mix heat, knives, pressure, etc. with too much drinking anyway. We spent years working in places with historic, unbelievable wine lists, and never had a sip of anything. Why our jobs would automatically qualify us to be good judges of wine in people’s minds is in reality a mystery to me.
When we started to plan the restaurant, it was the wine list that daunted us the most. If it hadn’t been for our great friends and mentors, Bill & Claudia McNamee, who we were originally connected to by our time at The Point, and who invited us to meet with their wine experts at Citigroup (where we had worked as chefs under the McNamee’s afterwards), we wouldn’t have known where to start. After a day-long intensive with Dan Pepe, their wine director, and our old friend Louis Vial from our days at Le Gavroche, we at least had a vision for our list, and a way to handle all of the wines that the representatives from different distributors were literally, flooding us with.
Big problem, I guess you must be thinking…but it was! There is an unfathomable amount of wine out there and how were two chefs supposed to know which ones to pick??
We eventually arrived at a decent beginning list. After submerging myself in wine books and wine tasting for the first year (I’d always said I’d wanted to learn more about wine…) I was actually able to go and visit my in-laws in France (who have impressive wine knowledge and palates, themselves), and have an extremely helpful tour of the Loire Valley with my brother-in-law, Patrice. We came back with a renewed focus and vision for our list. Take a look at it now, and let me know what you think!
