Four growers we have been pouring by the glass since the weather turned, and why a Loire cabernet franc belongs beside the steak frites.
The by-the-glass list changes more often than the carte does, and autumn is when it moves fastest. Here is what has come in.
Chinon, and why it sits beside the steak
Cabernet franc from the Loire is the bottle we reach for when somebody orders steak frites and asks for something other than a Bordeaux. It has the graphite and the bramble, but it comes in lighter and colder, and it does not fight the béarnaise.
We are pouring a Chinon from a grower who farms nine hectares on the limestone above the river. It is the sort of wine that makes people ask what it is.
Three more on the list
- A Muscadet on lees for the plateau and the oysters. Saline, and far more serious than the reputation.
- A Beaujolais from granite, chilled twenty minutes, which is the best thing on the list with the charcuterie.
- A Jurançon sec, if you want the room to go quiet for a moment.
Tell us what you are eating and we will find the bottle for it. That is the whole method, and it has never once failed.
The full list runs to about two hundred bottles, France first. The by-the-glass selection is a much shorter argument for the same idea.
Written at L'Étoile, the historic Snouder's Building, Oyster Bay.
