Jacqueline Friedrich: The Wine Humanist

WINE BY PEOPLE, FOR PEOPLE

I'll post articles as I manage to retrieve them. They'll often be accompanied by some sort of brief explanation.Articles in bold are current.

Restaurants come and go. It would be wise to see if the places I've recommended still exist. Some may have gone out of business, others may have moved or changed ownership.

The Articles:
Olivier Roellinger: Maison de Bricourt: Yes, Chef magazine, Winter 2008. I've used the author's cut as the editors sent me a .pdf file of the entire magazine and I don't have the wherewithal to separate out my piece.
France's Maverick Winemakers (plus sidebar): IHT, Nov. 17, 2007
Burgundy : author's cut of an article written for the October 2007 issue of F&W.
Paris Wine Bars & their Current Picks: IHT 2005.
Le Fooding: WSJ 2001
French Vintners Want Liberte: WSJ Jan. 2003
Vinisud: WSJ April 2002
2001 Bordeaux En Primeur: WSJ May 2002
Morellino di Scansano: WSJ Jan. 2002
Garage Wines/Valandraud: WSJ Nov. 2001
Amsterdam: Choice Tables: NYT 2004
Salzburg: Choice Tables: NYT 2004 (with an added restaurant)
Olivier's Twist: Food&Wine 2004: article on Olivier Baussan, founder of Occitane and O & Co.
Budapest: Choice Tables:NYT 2004
Budapest: Choice Tables: NYT 2000
Bath: Choice Tables: NYT 2003
Barcelona: NYT 2002: Travel article w/ restaurants
Bordeaux's Iconoclasts: F&W 2001. The Thunevins and Chateau Valandraud.
Prague: Choice Tables: NYT 2001.
Lyon (the bouchons and the market): Choice Tables: NYT 2000.

OLIVIER ROELLINGER: MAISON DE BRICOURT

The one with the spices. Mention the name Olivier Roellinger to any foodie and that’s the reflex response. Like Marc Veyrat and his hat; like Michel Bras and Veyrat (again) with their wild herbs just gathered from the surrounding mountainsides; like Joel Robuchon and his mashed potatoes. The finely tuned use of spices seems to be a signature chez Roellinger. He uses over a hundred of them.
Mention spices to the chef, however, and his automatic reply, emphatically stated, is “It’s not fusion! It’s the expression of this environment. I’m inspired by soul of St. Malo and its place in history – of explorers, adventurers, and spice traders. By the aura and the force of Mont St. Michel. I subscribe totally to this spirit of openness to the world beyond our horizons.”
One quickly understands that to ask Olivier Roellinger what cooking means to him is, in a very real sense, to ask him the meaning of life.
The following history has – rightly – become part of the Roellinger legend. Now 53, at the age of 21 the future chef was nearly assassinated by five local thugs in what he describes as a Clockwork Orange-type attack. After months in the hospital, he spent two years at home, in a wheel chair, during which time he passed hours reflecting on mortality, on the meaning of life, and more practically, on his decision to study math and chemistry.
“They seemed insipid and pointless,” he recalls, “ I wanted to do something to celebrate the joy of being alive.”
At about this time, his mother – having divorced Roellinger’s father years earlier – was having difficulty maintaining the family home and thought she’d have to sell it. Roellinger was adamantly against this plan. He had been born in this house and wanted, at all costs, to keep it and make it live. He came up with mighty good scheme.
As it happened, while he was at home recovering, his pals from school came to visit everyday. To hear him tell it, the house was always buzzing with activity. As the friends tended to linger, Mme Roellinger felt they needed sustenance. She cooked big family-style meals. They ate. And thus was born the idea that saved the house: he, his mother, his wife Jane, and a friend Andre who still works with him, turned the house into a table d’hote. That was in 1982. In 1983 the influential guide Gault-Millau rewarded this improvised restaurant with a rating of 15/20.Within two years Roellinger’s house had become a full-fledged restaurant, winning its first Michelin star in 1984; its second, in ’88; and its 3rd in 2006.
The Maison de Bricourt itself is a handsome bourgeois home which dates from 1760. It is set back from the port of Cancale on a hill high above the bay of Mont St. Michel. As Roellinger points out, the house once belonged to Heurtaut de Bricourt, a shipowner from the Compagnie des Indes, the legendary firm that traveled the world in search of spices, silk, and exotic woods.
“What’s unusual,” Roellinger points out,” is that there are something like 47 restaurants in Cancale and 46 of them are on the port. I’m the only one in upper Cancale. But people from the region understood what I was trying to do and they supported me.”
Now, with his various enterprises – among them, a cooking school (La Cuisine Corsaire), with baker Yannick Gautier, a bakery and tea salon called Grain de Vanille, and a spice shop called Entrepot d’Epices Roellinger – the chef seems to be colonizing upper Cancale. (Roellinger also owns the Chateau de Bricourt-Richeux, a small hotel/restaurant in a 1920s villa set in a vast park outside of town on a cliff overlooking the bay of Mont St. Michel.)
One can “read” some of the history of the Maison de Bricourt house in its salon – with its unusually tiled fireplace and its vitrines filled with Breton and oriental faience. The three small dining salons look out on a pond populated by fat, satisfied-looking ducks, surrounded by a screen of bonsai and rhododendron. The rooms themselves have a studied spareness. There are few things and they are beautiful – handsome stained wood floors, for example, and elegant Limoges porcelain.
This aesthetic has carried over to Roellinger’s food such as an amuse-bouche of winkles in a subtly devastating horseradish cream sauce served on a bed of seasalt alongside a small slab of seabass delicately scented with green curry, and shrimp whose shrimp-iness is intensified by being served in their own juices.
This was the overture to Roellinger’s 170 euro “Chef’s Desire” menu which, on the night in question, comprised nine courses, including cheese and a medley of desserts. There are no “throw-aways” here: the butter, made nearby, comes from Bordier, and is one of the most celebrated in France. (Bordier also supplies the selection of magnificent, perfectly ripened cheeses.) The inventive, palate-tingling condiments – also sold in Roellinger’s shop – are provocative accompaniments to various dishes.
His Celtic Mustard, for example, a vivid blend of mustard, seaweed, anchovy and cider vinegar, was served alongside John Dory. The fish, marinated briefly in hazelnut oil and ginger, was exquisitely fresh, a silken delicacy resilient enough to stand up to the zing of the mustard.
In addition to the caraway, the tamarind, the passion fruit, and the cardamom, Roellinger highlights local ingredients – from humble Paimpol beans to recherche Tsarskaya oysters raised with great TLC in the bay of Mont St. Michel. These came together in a succulent broth – a foam of the white beans and the fleshy oysters, flavored with citronelle and garnished with the leaves of baby Brussels sprouts. Heated just enough to warm the oysters, the flavors and textures were as rich, as distinct, and as fresh as if they had been served raw but seemed to marry into a satisfying whole when treated to this preparation.
And every single ingredient – from the butter to the oysters – seems to come from someone Roellinger knows personally. He’s one chef you won’t find in Paris, Las Vegas or Tokyo.
“I don’t know how cooks succeed in cities,” he declares. “I can’t understand chefs who simply order ingredients – five kilos of lobsters, say. Every chef should be an ecologist. What we do is a sublimation of nature. I listen to the ocean; I watch it dance. Behind every product there’s a fisherman, an oyster farmer, a history, work. I know all of my suppliers. I need this. The main thing a cook needs is to know what it means to love – a land, people. This is not just a craft. It all starts with the mother – chasing after her child with a bite of something to eat, which is necessary for life.”
Beyond that, he adds, once again waxing oceanic, “Cooking, for me, is a way of casting off the moorings. It’s a form of liberty.

International Herald Tribune
France's maverick wine makers
By Jacqueline Friedrich
Friday, November 16, 2007

The Côtes du Marmandais is not exactly high on the wish list of most enophiles. A small appellation - for whites, rosés but mostly reds - it lies in southwest France, halfway between the cities of Agen, of prune fame, and Bordeaux, that hulking reminder that not all vineyards are created equal. Unless, of course, you find someone as gifted as Élian Da Ros to level the playing field.

When 39-year-old Da Ros took charge of his father's 7.5 hectares of vines in the Marmandais he changed everything. Gradually increasing his holdings to 21 hectares, or just over 50 acres, he converted to biodynamics, a form of organic viticulture, bottled his own wine rather than deliver it to a local cooperative, and now sells to ambitious wine bars as well as to a Who's Who of Michelin-starred restaurants, from El Bulli in Spain to Roellinger in Cancale to the Auberge de l'Ill in Illerhausen.

Happily, France has an ever-increasing number of vintners in the Da Ros mold- passionate artistes-vignerons who are determined to make great wine - no matter where their vineyards are. Some, like Da Ros, inherited land; others, with no land and modest budgets, looked for vines in the Valley of the "Uns" - unknown, undervalued, underdeveloped and underestimated.

For Hervé Leferrer (Domaine du Grand Crès) and Hervé Bizeul (Domaine du Clos des Fées), this meant all-but-abandoned hillsides in the Languedoc and Roussillon; for Alain and Isabelle Hasard (Domaine des Champs de l'Abbaye); for Maria Cuny (Domaine Marie Cuny, and for Jean-Marie Guffens (Guffens-Heynen) supposedly minor areas of Burgundy.

Like Da Ros, each has had to push winemaking boundaries to fully realize - and even expand - the presumed potential of the appellation. Whatever nature did or didn't give them, they more than make up for with nurture. Most practice some sort of organic viticulture, pampering their vines like a Sunday gardener pinching back basil. Yields are extremely low, harvest is by hand, and the wines are bottled with little or no filtration. Each has sifted through years of experience to settle on the best winemaking methods they've learned along the way.

Da Ros, for instance, studied in Montpellier, Mâcon and Strasbourg, then became the right-hand man to Olivier Humbrecht, the fine Alsatian vintner who bottles a wide range of wines terroir by terroir. That's what inspired Da Ros to make four different reds. A blend of varying percentages of cabernets sauvignon and franc, merlot, malbec (or cot), syrah and the local abouriou, each cuvée comes from a distinct terroir. The single vineyard Clos Bacquey is the top of the line. The 2004 is as scrumptious as it is soigné, a silken weave of succulent black cherry, fleshy Agen prunes, gentle new oak and cinnamon. You'll be both amused and amazed.

The Domaine de la Romanée-Conti was Hervé Leferrer's muse. When he left his post as the domaine's director he scoured southern France before settling on five hectares in the appellation of Corbières in the Languedoc, at a price a tenth of anything he could have found in Burgundy. This was in 1989. Today, he has 19 hectares and makes Languedoc wines with Burgundian elegance, two whites and two reds, each as vibrant and streamlined as a Bach violin concerto. The graceful 2006 Blanc du Grand Crès, a fragrant blend of roussanne and viognier, fresh as a mountain stream, offers delicate flavors of peach and passion fruit. The 2004 Cuvée Majeure du Grand Crès, Leferrer's top red, is chiefly syrah. Don't look for a blockbuster. This wine is all about harmony and subtlety.

If the wines from Domaine du Grand Crès recall chamber music, those from Domaine du Clos des Fées are downright symphonic. Hervé Bizeul, the owner, was quite the Parisian wine maven from the 1980s through the mid-'90s: he had won the Best Young Sommelier Award, owned a wine bar and was a wine journalist. While visiting the Roussillon, he happened on a vineyard in the Agly Valley, where he was convinced he could make superb wine. The vines were for sale. Bizeul bought them, extended his holdings to 19 hectares, and the rest is history, including the fact that his top cuvée, Petite Sibérie, at 200 euros a bottle, nearly $300, is the most expensive wine in the region. Made from old grenache vines, it exudes aromas and flavors of very ripe black cherries, blackberries, white ash, and oak accents. Almost a meal in itself, it you want to sit with friends, sip it, talk about it and take another sip.

Less voluptuous (and less expensive) but equally delicious is the cuvée Clos des Fées, a velvet cushion of syrah, grenache, mourvèdre and carignan. It cries out for a perfectly roasted duck accompanied by potatoes mashed with the best sweet butter you can find. His 2006 Vieilles Vignes Grenache is a taut, strong white, with floral, verbena and tangerine zest accents. There are other bottlings, too, as well as Walden, Bizeul's optimistically named foray into the negociant business. A yummy, user-friendly red, it's well worth the 7 euros you'd pay for it.

There's something New World-ish about the Agly Valley. But Burgundy? Didn't those wine-savvy monks demarcate everything worth cultivating centuries ago? Apparently not. It's thrilling to find lip-smacking wines coming from unsung areas like the Couchois, where Alain and Isabelle Hasard created Domaine des Champs de l'Abbaye in 1997. Former psychologists, their love for wine landed them on the selling floors of the big wine merchant Nicolas. Last stop, Beaune, where they decided to make their own Burgundian pinot noir. In 1997 they bought vines in land designated as lowly passe-tout-grain, from which they turned out reds replete with joie de vivre. Today, they have 6.5 hectares, having sold off most of the passe-tout-grain land to trade up to a half hectare in Rully and 1.5 hectares of Mercurey. Most of their land, however, is still in the Bourgogne-Côtes du Couchois appellation. Vinified by terroir, there are three pinot noir cuvées, each one an overachiever: The statuesque Les Vignes Martin, the structured and very delectable Les Rompeys, and the exotically perfumed Le Clos, which could be taken for a Volnay.

This Burgundy lover can't wait to taste the Hasards' first vintage of Mercurey, the 2006, which is still in barrel. As it happens, the Chalonnais and Mâconnais zones south of the Côte d'Or, which include both Rully and Mercurey, are humming with activity, thanks to fanatical winemakers like the Hasards.

Jean-Marie Guffens, a Belgian who worked in Burgundy as a winebroker, was surely one of the pioneers. A force of nature, Guffens bought two hectares of Mâcon in 1980. Meursault would have cost ten times as much. Today, in addition to a negociant business, Verget, that spans Burgundy, Guffens, with his wife, Maine Heynen, owns 5.3 hectares, split between Mâcon and Pouilly-Fuissé. In the popular imagination Pouilly-Fuissé and Mâcon seem only too familiar; the first, an also-ran; the latter, an underachiever from which we never expected very much anyway. But the perfectionist Guffens turns out breathtaking whites that rival the Montrachets. His Pouilly-Fuissé La Roche and Mâcon Pierreclos are textured, splendid wines, works of art.

Chablis comes to mind when you taste Maria Cuny's 2006 Bourgogne-Vézelay. It's chardonnay but so distinctive you forget about fruit in favor of terroir. It's a racy, ethereal wine with a stinging freshness and a rush of mineral and herbal tea flavors. Working as a shepherdess for Société Roquefort, Maria was sent to apprentice with a shepherd named Yves Cuny. They married, and six children later the couple decided to return to his childhood home near Vézelay. In 2000 they bought a small vineyard in the shadow of the town's basilica, part of the Unesco World Heritage site. Decimated by phylloxera, Vézelay's slopes were abandoned for roughly a century until a local group replanted them. This year marks the 10th anniversary of AOC Bourgogne-Vézelay status for chardonnay-based whites. Maria Cuny's wines prove that Vézelay is a Burgundian cru to be reckoned with.

Jacqueline Friedrich is the author "The Wines of France: The Essential Guide for Savvy Shoppers."

Ten wines to taste at Paris wine fair (This appeared as a sidebar to the above article. Ten stands to visit at the Salon.

Friday, November 16, 2007

The Salon des Vignerons Indépendants, the largest wine fair of its kind, opens on Thursday in Paris, at Paris Expo, Porte de Versailles. The five-day event offers 1,000 wineries and attracts 160,000 visitors. Feeling bewildered already? We've picked 10 excellent winemakers from four regions. Row and stand numbers are in parentheses:

Champagne: Grower Champagne is often cheaper and tastier than Champagnes from the big houses. Agrapart (S-14): Try the Grand Cru Blanc de Blancs, particularly the feisty, barrel-fermented Cuvée l'Avizoise. Moncuit (H-9): Stellar grands crus from Le Mesnil, particularly vintage bottlings: the racy Cuvée Pierre Moncuit-Delos Réserve, and Hugues de Coulmet, a lightly sweet Champagne, perfect for dessert.

Burgundy:Michel Magnien: ( J-33) Côtes-de-Nuits at its most succulent: Try the Morey-St.-Denis Chaffots Premier Cru; the Morey-St.-Denis Millandes, and the Gevrey-Chambertin Seuvrées Vieilles Vignes. Machard de Gramont (C-64): Delectable Nuits-St.-George, including Les Hauts Poirets and Les Haut Pruliers. Goisot (E-7): Excellent, streamlined whites and reds from the outskirts of Chablis. Don't miss the old vines chardonnay and the Sauvignon de St. Bris.

Rhône: Saladin (H-34): Cool Ardèche mountain Rhônes by Elisabeth and Marie-Laurence Saladin. Chaveyron 1422 is the top of the line. Brusset (M-22): Ambitious Cairanne, Gigondas and simple Côtes du Rhône. Domaine Rabasse-Charavin (L-62): Don't miss Corinne Couturier's Cairanne Cuvée d'Estevenas in both red and white. Châteaux La Gardine/St. Roch: (R-57): Delicious Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Cuvée des Générations and the fine Lirac Cuvée Confidentielle.

Bordeaux: If you have to choose just one, make it Château Clauzet: (Q-41): Try the graceful, pedigreed St. Estèphe.

BURGUNDY ARTICLE: AUTHOR’S CUT

This is the Author's Cut (cf director's cut) of an article on Burgundy I wrote for the October 2007 issue of Food & Wine. Note that the three categories are theirs.

MOVERS & SHAKERS

1) Jean-Marie Guffens: Defy and Conquer or Serial Cliché Killer: “There is no reason for any bottle of wine to cost more than 35 euros.” Thus spake Jean-Marie Guffens when I visited him in 2005. Always controversial, Guffens, a Belgian wine merchant who created his own small domaine – Guffens-Heynen -- with his wife, and a larger, negociant business – Verget – with Jean Rijckaert (who has since gone out on his own) in the mid 1980s is not about to stop ruffling feathers any time soon. Just about every move he makes challenges conventional wisdom. He was one of the first producers to bottle his top-of-the-line wines
eg Meursault, with screw caps rather than corks. But that’s minor. He has essentially redefined the role of negociant in Burgundy, setting new standards of excellence and rigor, and producing breathtaking whites from purchased grapes throughout Burgundy, from Chablis to Pouilly Fuisse. Perhaps even more astonishing, he has proved that white wines from the Maconnais can be as majestic and mindblowing as Cortons and Montrachets from top houses (cf the 2002 Guffens-Heynen Pouilly-Fuisse “La Roche,”) And when he works within those exalted appellations, his wines are downright miraculous. The 2005 Verget Corton-Charlemagne was so deep, so layered and so long, it was almost a liqueur. Reality Check: in the USA it sells for $200. What happened to the 35 euro principle? Of course, Guffens was talking about the price his exporters pay. Still, it’s quite a multiple. Though it may not be too much to pay for a wine that sends you into wine orbit after a single sip.

2) Claude Bourgignon: The Soil Whisperer: When Claude Bourgignon talks, friends of the earth listen. Nearly 20 years ago, Bourgignon, a Paris-born microbiologist, pronounced these fighting words: “The soils of many of Burgundy’s appellations (depleted by the use of chemical fertilizers, insecticides and week killers) have no more life in them than the soils of the Sahara desert.” Since that time, Bourgignon has become the flying terroirist, advising winemakers the world over how to reanimate their soils and, thus, enhance the typicity of their wines, by using natural methods like plowing with a horse and digging in biologically correct fertilizers, ie compost. His list of Burgundian clients reads like a 3 Michelin-star wine list, starting with Romanee-Conti, Leflaive, and Lafon in Burgundy, Anselme (Jacques) Selosse in Champagne, Chateaux Ausone and La Tour Figeac in St. Emilion, Mas Daumas Gassac in the Languedoc, and Mas Amiel in the Roussillon. The author of the dense but inspirational Le Sol, La Terre et Les Champs (to be republished in 2008), Bourgignon works with his wife Lydia from their laboratory LAMS in northern Burgundy. Their website, www.LAMS-21.com, filled with pictures of crawly creatures that aerate and replenish soils, explains the philosophy. By the way, to work with Bourgignon, you don’t have to practice biodynamic farming, but it helps.

3) Ma Cuisine: BurgBuff Central: On a cobbled alley off the Place Carnot, this restaurant plays to a knowing crowd of regulars -- both local and visiting wine buffs for whom the place seems to be something of an HQ. The ambiance couldn't be friendlier, the food couldn't be more pleasant, and the reasonably priced, book-length wine list will make you drool. Pierre and Fabienne Escoffier, husband and wife sommeliers, count as friends many of the leading vignerons in the 30 to 50-something age range, vintners like Dominique Lafond, Philippe Charlopin, Eric Rousseau, Pascal Lachaux (Domaine Arnoux) and Jean-Marc Roulot. Not surprising, then, that you’ll find many of their wines – on the list. Anne Gros bottlings, for example, start with her “simple” Burgundies and run throught a 2001 Combe d’Orveau (75 euros) to her 2001 Richebourg (325 e); similarly Coche-Dury and Lafon are equally well represented. Big spenders will want the 2002 Meursault Caillerets (170e) from the former and the 2001 Meursault Perrieres (180e) from the latter. And the list goes on…and on…and on, with long sections in Bordeaux (you can do a sweeping vertical of Yquem – from 1928 to 2002) and the Rhone (12 vintages of Chateau de Beaucastel in Chateauneuf-du-Pape.) Pierre runs the dining room; Fabienne, the kitchen, from shich she serves flavorful Burgundian comfort food. Her jambon persille is terrific and a heaven-sent match for white Burgundy. To accompany red wine, opt for perfectly roasted half pigeon or duck breast that is as rich as sirloin steak. If creme caramel is on the dessert table, don't miss it. Using her grandmother's recipe, the chef creates a version that is silken and ultra-creamy, with hits of lemon and rum. Note that the Escoffiers also run a wine shop, Les Caves Sainte Helene, next door. Ma Cuisine, passage Ste. Helene, 03.80.22.30.22; cave-sainte-helene@wanadoo.fr.; ma cuisine@wanadoo.fr.

4) Bouchard Pere & Fils: Big and Beautiful or Super-sized and Just Plain Super: Under the direction of Joseph Henriot, this important producer has become a true ambassador for the region. It is one of Burgundy’s largest grower-negociant houses – making wine from both its own vineyards (more than 230 acres, most of them Premier or Grand Cru) as well as from grapes and young wines that it purchases. Once an underachiever with a lot of good land, Bouchard is now virtually synonymous with quality, offering excellence and consistency at every level of its encyclopedic range. (Bouchard owns William Fevre, an outstanding producer of Chablis.) In France, such domaines are called “locomotives,” as they drive their respective regions forward, making a strong presence on the world stage. No question: we all adore the artist-vignerons whose minuscule production sells out before we can our hands on a bottle. But we should give thanks to quality-driven big houses like Bouchard. Not only do the set a fine example, they insure that there’s enough great Burgundy to go around so that the less obsessive among us might just possibly find Bouchard’s “La Romanee” or its Beaune 1er Cru Clos de la Mousse, both exclusives, happens on a wine list or see its signature wine, Beaune 1er Cru Greves Vigne de l’Enfant Jesus – an embodiment of the “iron fist in a velvet glove” analogy -- in a shop where we’ve gone to get a special bottle for an important birthday.

5) Vincent Dureuil-Janthial : The White Knight: Every generation has its shining stars, its role models. For Burgundy, in the first decade of the 21st century, Vincent Dureuil, 37, is a vigneron who will inspire generations to come for his unerring precision -- his flair for choosing exactly the right nano-second to harvest, for exampleso that the grapes are super-ripe without being over-ripe, and his light touch with the wine press. He made his name with magnificent white Rullys , particularly the 1er Cru, old vines bottlings like Les Margotes and Le Meix Cadot. Rully is part of the Chalonnais, south of the Cote d’Or. You’re not supposed to make whites here that rival Puligny-Montrachet. Dureuil does. And recently he expanded his reach into the coveted crus of Puligny where he makes a predictably superbChamps-Gains. Nor are his reds – a sensual Mercurey and exquisite Nuits-St.-Georges des Argillieres – to be ignored. Production is very limited. If you find a bottle, grab it. And if you come across his old vines Rully, buy a case.

6) Frederic Magnien:The Red Baron or God Bless the Child (thats Got his Own):
We’re in 1993 or thereabouts. Dad (Michel) nixes son Frederic’s ideas for change, telling him, basically, to go forth, get a negociants license, buy grapes, make wine his way and show dad what he could do. Which is precisely what Frederic did, bottling the resulting wines under the Frederic Magnien label. With brilliant results. Now he’s making wine from pruchased grapes under his own label and he has taken over his father’s vineyard, producing wines under the Michel Magnien label. Like his good buddy Vincent Dureil, Magnien, 35, is a role model and is likely to be remembered as one of the greatest producers of Burgundy of his generation, though his forte is red wine. Dynamic, with the can-do spirit of a Pilgrim father, Magnien has apprenticed in both Australia and California. He cycles the Cote d’Or countryside, scoping out potential vineyard sites. (He’s looking for chalky, stony soils and good morning sunlight.) He then thins clusters with a vengeance and sorts the harvested grapes meticulously, two, three or four times. There are numerous bottlings, from small parcels throughout the Cote d’Or– including Grand Crus such as Clos de la Roche and Charmes-Chambertin. Extremely hard to pick a favorite here but I see that, in my two pages of notes on the Frederic Magnien 2004 Chambertin Clos de Beze (GC), I finished with “What more can you demand of a wine?

7) Domaine Dujac: Expanding Family Values: It is a truth universally acknowledged that there can never be enough great Burgundy. The recent expansion of the Dujac family’s wine business, then, is cause for celebration. Jacques Seysses,a previous generation’s role model, built his justly esteemed domaine in Morey-St. Denis from scratch, consistently producing elegant, fine-grained red Burgundies – from Morey-St-Denis Villages to the Grand Cru Clos de la Roche, to Premier Crus from Gevrey-Chambertin. Recently joined by his son Jeremy, the two have added a negociant arm – Dujac Fils & Pere – thus expanding their line in Morey and Gevrey-Chambertin and adding some Chambolle-Musigny and Puligny-Montrachet as well. And they keep growing. In 2005 they acquired a couple of very desirable hectares, including minuscule pieces of Le Chambertin, Bonnes Mares and Romanee St. Vivant, and somewhat bigger parcels of the Premier Crus Romanee les Beaux Monts and Les Malconsorts. And as the family grows, so does the wine business. Jeremy’s wife Diana is a UC Davis-trained enologist. In addition to the Dujac wines, hey make the wines for her parents’ domaine, Snowden Vineyards in Napa, and they’ve invested in land in the south of France as well, Domaine de Triennes. As the Seysses family goes global, this Burgundy lover prays that they’ll never leave Morey-St. Denis. That they’ll continue to make heartstopping wines like the vigorous, monumental 2003 Clos St. Denis Grand Cru, a wine that exudes everything anyone could want in a Burgundy.

8) Philippe Pacalet: Theme and Variations: The Theme: two grape varieties – pinot noir and chardonnay; the Variations – the infinite expressions each of these grapes can render in the diverse soils of Burgundy. Yet another type of role model, Pacalet, 43 and a University of Dijon-trained enologist, goes to great lengths – literally – to give voice to as many expressions as possible to these two noble varietals. He rents small, well-placed vineyards throughout the region – from Chablis in the north, to St. Aubin in the south, with stops in Chambolle-Musigny, Pommard, Corton Charlemagne and, particularly, Gevrey Chambertin, where he has parcels in Grand Crus like Charmes-Chambertin and Premier Crus such as Lavaux St. Jacques – and maintains winemaking facilities at key spots within each subregion. Sounds like a big operation. Yet, all told, Pacalet has only 7.5 hectares, about the size of small-to-mid-sized family winery. And in order for his grapes and his soils to truly speak, Pacalet practises what I have called hypernatural winemaking. He waves away questions about organic or biodynamic farming, saying, “Yes, yes, but what I’m after is vin de terroir, I don’t care about labels. I care about the life of the soil.”Briefly, then, Pacalet uses indigenous (wild) yeasts, ferments his wines in wood vats with no added sulphur, and bottles his wines without filtering them – including the whites, when that’s possible. Non-interventionist winemaking is risky business: flawed wines are legion. Not, however, the finely-tuned wines chez Pacalet, from a Chablis 1er Cru Beauroy that’s fresh as a waterfall, to a silky Chambolle-Musigny, to a vibrant, structured Gevrey-Chambertin. Maybe he’s the Glenn Gould of Burguny wine.

9) Dominique Laurent: The Wine Refiner: It is said that artisanal negociant Dominique Laurent is to red Burgundy what Jean-Marie Guffens is to white Burgundy. That’s not inaccurate. A former pastry chef, Laurent set up his negociant business in the Cotes de Nuits in the ‘90s and very quickly became the reference for very high quality, hand-crafted red Burgundys. But I prefer to compare Laurent,who doesn’t actually grow the grapes and make the wine he sells, to one of France’s great cheese mongers or affineurs, as they’re called in France: he’s someone who buys top-quality, freshly made product – in this case red Burgundy wine from, say, Chambolle-Musigny and Gevrey Chambertin, including Grand Crus like Bonnes Mares Clos de Beze – and then “raises” it with TLC, in his own cellars, in his own barrels. (Snarks say “with 200% new oak.”) The wines are bottled by hand, barrel by barrel, without filtration or added sulphur. Almost inevitably bottle variations occur, so does the occasional mini-flaw, but the wines – like a slightly oaky though structured and succulent 2002 Chambolle Musigny – are polished, site-specific, exciting and delicious. And, when all is said and done, the Guffens analogy has its merits: both have played major roles in redefining – and significantly upgrading – the role of the Burgundy negociant.

10) Domaine Jacques-Frederic Mugnier/ Chateau de Chambolle Musigny: The Clos Comes Home: This excellent (and improving), minuscule domaine, known for its racy, seductive versions of Chambolle-Musigny – including Bonnes Mares and Musigny – more than doubled in size in 2004 after recuperating the 9 hectare Clos de la Marechale, a Premier Cru in Nuits St. Georges that Mugnier ancestors had previously leased to Faiveley for a period of 50 years. In honor of the repatriation – Mugnier is the sole owner of the plot – new cellars were built and extra staff hired. It’s an important property, Mugnier, a former pilot,has proven to be a superb and a dedicated young vigneron, and the wine world will be watching to see how he fares with what had been Faiveley’s signature wine. Full disclosure, I have a certain sentimental attachment to this wine, having bought six bottles of the ’59 (then made by Faiveley, natch) at an auction in the Loire Valley for around $40 a bottle. (Everyone else was bidding on Bordeaux, Chinon and Vouvray.)

MOST SOUGHT AFTER

1) 1985 Romanee-Conti GC: Domaine de la Romanee-Conti: At a May 2007 sale at Christie’s Auction House, a case of ’85 Romanee-Conti
from the Domaine de Romanee-Conti made wine auction history – bringing down the hammer at $237,000. This comes out to roughly $20,000 a bottle. A track
record of outstanding quality combined with achingly limited supply (about 600 cases yearly from a 1.8 hectare plot), guarantees that this wine head
any list of sought-after bottles.Domaine de la Romanee Conti, or DRC, as it's known, is one of the most famous domaines in winedom, its various bottlings topping the wish-list of any wine geek worth her Riedel Burgundy glass. And the Grand Cru Romanee Conti, with its tiny production of amazingly nuanced, ineffably profound wine, is la crème de la crème and is priced accordingly. its very worthy, nearly as regal stablemates – La Tache, Richebourg, etc – will also set you back a pretty penny.But Romanee-Conti
leads the pack. Two bottles of the ’86 brought in 10,000 euros when the cellars of Paris’s Hotel de Ville (City Hall) were auctioned off last year. For a mere
6600 euros you can buy a bottle of the 2003 – at least that’s what the website www.monmillesime.com promises.

2) Domaine Leroy: 1996 Richebourg: Such is the aura of sanctity surrounding Lalou Bize-Leroy (despite the haute couture wardrobe) that I find myself referring to her as Notre Dame de la Cote d’Or. A perfectionist’s perfectionist, Bize-Leroy’s closest rival is the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti – of which she was co-manager until 1993. Perhaps biodynamic viticulture’s most prestigious convert, Bize-Leroy makes splendid wines – whether at Domaine Leroy or Domaine D’Auvenay. A bottle of the above mentioned Richebourg is on sale at 888 Euros (down from 1110 Euros) on www.chateauonline.fr.

3) Henri Jayer: 1999 Vosne-Romanee “Cros Parantoux”: When he died in September 2006 at the age of 84, Henri Jayer was firmly established as Burgundy’s Obi-Wan Kenobi, the sage, mentor and guru for a generation of idealistic young vintners. While Jayer made a complete range of Burgundies – from Passe-Tout- Grains to Echezeaux – his most treasured bottlings must surely be the Vosne-Romanees he made from a tiny Premier Cru parcel at the top of the appellation called Cros Parantoux. You can buy a magnum of the ’99 for 9500 pounds sterling from the respected British merchants Berry Brothers & Rudd.

4) Comte de Vogue: 1999 Musigny Vieilles Vignes: One of the oldest and most celebrated domaines in Chambolle-Musigny, Comte de Vogue owns 70% of the Grand Cru Le Musigny, with a healthy percentage of old vines. (There’s also a minuscule amount of white.) A profound, structured and immensely concentrated wine, the 1999 might just be ready to approach in 2008 – if you can find it. . (Hint: it has been seen on the Berry Brothers & Rudd website –www.bbr.com -- at 389 pounds sterling.)

5) Comtes Lafon: 1999 Montrachet: Although the domaine is mostly associated with Meursault – where it produces truly noble wines – its most sought after cuvee surely comes from the small piece of the Grand Cru Le Montrachet which it bought in 1991. You can find the 2004 in specialist shops in Paris for close to 1200 euros. The more evolved ’99, however, is probably the one to drool over now – if you can find it.

6) Coche-Dury: ’96 Corton Charlemagne: Top wine mavens – the self-same sages who pronounce Jean-Francois Coche the best white wine maker in Burgundy – have declared his ’96 Corton-Charlemagne to be “perfect” – scoring it 20/20; 100/100. This wine has also been seen on Berry Brothers & Rudd website – at 2100 pounds sterling.

7) Domaine Leflaive: 2002 Chevalier (or Batard) Montrachet: Under the ascot-sporitng, oh-so aristocratic Vincent Leflaive, this domaine became the most celebrated producer of Puligny-Montrachet. Its wines, admired for their consistency, majesty, age-ability and deliciousness, became “must tastes.” When Anne-Claude Leflaive inherited the domaine from her father she became an empassioned convert to biodynamics. Batard and le Chevalier, both whites of great depth, intensity and purity, are considered the most complex and long-lived. (And, when asked to bring a bottle to a very special dinner, Anne-Claude – in my limited experience – usually offers Batard.) Expect to pay about $600 a bottle for either of the two recommended above.

8) Domaine du Clos de Tart: 2002 Clos de Tart: Under Sylvain Pitiot’s stewardship, the wines from this domaine have become more stylish, riper, and more forward – seemingly without having lost complexity or elegance. The 2002 Clos de Tart is one of the stars of the vintage – racy, vigorous and downright gorgeous.

9) Bernard Dugat-Py: 2002 (or 2005) Mazis-Chambertin: It would be sadistic to have singled out Bernard Dugat’s Chambertin GC: there are only 200 liters of it and, as a result, the cuvee must have its own tailor-made barrel. Nevermind. Dugat makes thrilling wine -- always in small quantities – in a number of Gevrey’s most privileged plots. Always intensely concentrated and ultra-ripe, they are also pure, fresh and majestic.

10) Armand Rousseau: 2002 (or 2005) Chambertin-Clos de Beze: Never flashy, the Rousseau style is discretion itself. Subtlety is the byword here. The wines are haunting, finely-tuned and distinctly terroir-driven. They also age remarkably well. The Clos de Beze is a monument.

UNDER THE RADAR

1) Arnaud Ente: 2002 (or 2004 or 2005) Meursault “Seve du Clos”: (Kermit Lynch has the 2005 at $125.) Cut to the chase: some of the most thrilling white Burgundies I’ve ever tasted come from this eco-friendly small domaine. Ente makes a range of spectacular, unfiltered Meursaults, all of which are breathtaking. Clos des Seves, made from century-old vines, is complex, layered, and so rich it’s almost viscous.

2) Domaine Arlaud: 2005 Morey-St.-Denis 1er Cru “Les Ruchots”: ($110): An eco-friendly domaine with a new generation at the helm and very small quantities of some mighty fine Burgundy. There are only 200 cases of this beauty. Immediately seductive, with a hauntingly mingled nose, lush, ripe 2005 fruit and cascade-like freshness, it still needs a bit of time to shed its baby fat and let its majesty shine.

3) Domaine Patrick Javillier: 2005 Meursault “les Tillets”: ($63) For another view of Meursault, try the atypical but utterly authentic versions from Javillier. Oakaholics beware: wood flavors don’t dominate here. These are mellow yellows of purity, extremely ripe fruit and lots of marrowy texture. Javillier’s Meursault Charmes is, arguably, his most prestigious and complex wine but “les Tillets,”a lipsmacking fusion of butter, cream, preserved lemon, minerals and stone, is more widely available.

4) Anne Gros: 2005 Chambolle-Musigny La Combe d’Orveau ($94): Supple yet structured, poised and precise, the fragrant reds from Anne Gros really do seem to have a feminine touch. Her piece of La Combe d’Orveau, too high on the slope to be part of the Grand Cru, may owe a good part of its freshness and fluidity to a location formerly deemed too cool to merit classification. What’s more, you can start drinking this wine now. Gros’ powerful 2005 Richebourg – five times the price – demands patience, not to mention the detective skills of Sherlock Holmes.

5) Domaine Robert Arnoux: 2005 Vosne-Romanee: ($78) This is when you know you’re a goner: I could spend an entire evening simply swirling and sniffing this wine – black pepper, white pepper, mingled fruit, licorice. On the palate, it’s equally fine – wonderfully nuanced and racy. While waiting for it to age a bit, opt for the complex, refreshingly fluid 2004 Romanee St. Vivant – if, that is, you can find it.

6) Coche-Bizouard: 2005 Meursault “Les Chevaliers”: Finesse is the byword at this rising star of a domaine, from the overachieving Aligote and Chardonnay, to the seductive Monthelie, to the range of excellent Meursaults, including the concentrated, crystalline “Les Chevaliers” and the impossibly long “Charmes,” so rich it’s a meal in itself.

7) Domaine Georges Mugneret-Gibourg: 2004 Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru “Les Chaignots”: ($88) I dare you to spit this nuanced, lipsmacking red, a weave of plum, herbal tea, and forest underbrush with light oak accents. And you can drink it now, while Marie-Andree’s splendid 2005s -- from classified parcels in Vosne-Romanee, Chambolle-Musigny, Gevrey-Chambertin and Clos Vougeot (downright mindblowing)-- gently come of age.

8) Domaine de la Pousse d’Or: 2005 Volnay 1er Cru En Caillerets Clos des 60 Ouvrees (Monopole): ($87): Patrick Landanger, who made his fortune in prosthetic body parts, bought this renowned domaine in 1998, built state-of-the-art cellars, invested in new and even more prestigious vineyard plots and has been restoring Pousse d’Or to its rightful gloryThe Clos des 60 Ouvrees is essentially a cru within a cru in Volnay, one of the finest red-wine appellations of the Cote de Beaune. Totally owned by this domaine, the vineyard is further blessed by having very old vines. Not surprising, then, that the ripe,luscious and stylish 2005 bursts with upfront charm but that there’s real depth, elegance and complexity not too far under the surface.

9) Jerome Galeyrand: 2005 Bonnes-Mares: A dynamic young vigneron whose wines have improved dramatically since his first harvest in 2002, Galeyrand seems to have hit his stride with the 2005 vintage. Rich, fresh, ultra-pure and mineral, his range of reds (unfined, unfiltered and bottled by the phases of the moon) – from Cotes de Nuits to Gevrey –Chambertin -- are so tasty you’ll lick your lips with pleasure. The Bonnes Mares is impossible not to love.

10) Jayer-Gilles: 2002 or 2003 Nuits St. Georges 1er Cru “Les Damodes”: Plush, pure and blueberry-scented, this is a supreme example of Nuits St. Georges – succulent, fresh and elegant, even in the overheated 2003 vintage.

Paris wine bars thinking 'petit'
By Jacqueline Friedrich International Herald Tribune
(Note: this is the version that appeared on the IHT website. A slightly different version appeared in print.)
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2005

PARIS Who is Marcel Richaud? And why is his name printed on nearly every wine list and scrawled on the blackboard of nearly every wine bar in Paris?

Richaud is the vintner who brought southern Rhône wine into the modern era. His Côtes du Rhône and his Cairanne - a Côtes du Rhône village - are plush reds with succulent, ripe fruit, great freshness and purity of flavor, a welcome change from the scratchy, leathery, standard Rhônes of yesteryear. So when you see a Richaud wine on a list, be happy. You can't go wrong here; the price is right and the flavor is delectable.

Wine styles change. Time was when every bistro offered Duboeuf Beaujolais alongside Jaboulet's Parallel 45 from the Rhône and Olga Raffault's Chinon. And a good wine bar owner would go out into the countryside, buy in bulk from his favorite vigneron, and bottle the decidedly rustic - though often charming - wine himself. That was maybe 20 years ago. Today's Parisian bistrotier steers clear of the big houses. Like a journalist chasing a scoop, buyers scour the major wine fairs - Vinisud, say, or the Salon des Vins du Val de Loire - and their collateral "off" tastings to find dynamic young vintners who make exciting, reasonably priced wine. So the good Paris wine bars, wine-oriented bistro or wine shop - like Lavinia near the Madeleine, Le Verre Vole on the Canal St. Martin, Les Papilles and the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie in the Fifth and Les Enfants Rouges in the Marais - are the best places to sample the delicious discoveries coming from every corner of the hexagon and to find out what's really happening on the French wine scene.

We are living in a golden age of French wine quality, despite the well-publicized crisis in sales. True, disgruntled southern growers from the hills behind Montpellier to the outskirts of Beziers have made headlines recently.

But producers like Richaud and Sylvain Fadat, who produces Domaine d'Aupilhac in the Languedoc, are making - and selling - wonderful wine. Fadat, however, was one of the precursors.

The heart of his production is a range of fragrant, spicy and elegant reds from the Montpeyroux subregion of the Coteaux du Languedoc. Like most Coteaux du Languedoc reds, they are made from a mix of grape varieties similar to that of southern France in general and Chateaneuf-du-Pape in particular. A quirkier Aupilhac red, however, has become wine bar favorite. His pure Le Carignan, a formerly overlooked, undervalued player in the southern mix, is a supple, characterful red with delectably juicy fruit.

The popularity of Fadat's Le Carignan evidences some of the anti-merlot sentiment that was so vividly expressed in the film "Sideways." Indeed, the weirder the grape, the more wine lovers want to drink the wine. Bring on the Cinsault (another part of the southern mix), the Poulsard (the base of many of the Jura's light reds), and Gaillac's Le Len de l'El! By now, indeed, many wine lovers are wondering just when Petit Manseng is going to join the galaxy of superstar grapes.

A staple of France's southwest, Petit Manseng is mostly associated with luscious, nectarlike sweet white wines from Jurançon and Pacherenc de Vic Bilh, a stone's throw from both the Spanish border and the French resort town Biarritz. Perhaps the greatest ambassador of Jurançon is Charles Hours, a bear of a man (coincidentally, his name is a homonym for "bear" in French).

His wines are as generous as he is and they seem to be on every Parisian list - whether the sumptuous sweet wine Clos Uroulat or Clos Marie, made from Petit Manseng's sibling, Gros Manseng.

Another dry white that is all but unavoidable on stylish Paris lists is a Muscadet from Jo Landron's Domaine de la Louvetrie. It's called Amphibolite, after the soils on which its grapes grow. The wine is neither chaptalized nor filtered. Chaptalization refers to the addition of sugar to fermenting grape juice to raise the alcohol level; filtration is a way of clarifying a wine. The resulting wine is very pure, mineral and fresh as a sea breeze.

Most, if not all, of the above producers make "natural" wine. Richaud, for example, uses indigenous yeasts rather than adding industrial yeasts to start fermentation; he never chaptalizes or adds acid, and he does not filter his wines.

Ecologically friendly winemaking is one of the strongest new trends in French winemaking. It may take a number of forms - from "agriculture raisonnée" (literally, reasoned agriculture), to organic, to biodynamic (a system, in which vineyard operations are scheduled by the positions of the planets). In the Rhône, Richaud is joined by Domaine Gramenon, Dard & Ribo, Domaine Viret and Yves Cuilleron - all of whom also share shelf and blackboard space in up-to-the-minute Paris wine shops and wine bars.

While the movement toward natural wines has been growing in force from Champagne to Corsica, the Loire Valley has been one of the leaders. Among the first to grab the imagination of the wine-loving public were the brothers Thierry and Jean-Marie Puzelat, who follow many of the same principles as Richaud in their relatively humble appellation, Cheverny.

Located in the Loir & Cher department, Cheverny's is a terrain more renowned for its chateaus, its white asparagus and its strawberries. Its wines, made chiefly from sauvignon blanc, gamay, pinot noir and cabernet franc, are direct, easy-going quaffers. The Puzelats' wines, however, seem to come from another world: they are very pure, tender, light and mineral. Two whites, Brin de Chèvre and Le Buisson Pouilleux, give an accurate, and rather tasty, impression of their style.

Even more radical is Claude Courtois, also in the Loir & Cher. His wines are as ruggedly individualistic as he is. Sold under the label Cailloux de Paradis, they are placed onto some very deluxe cartes de vin despite the fact that many seem like works in progress. There are some rather strange brews: the sauvignon blanc-based Plume d'Ange, for example, is often fizzy and oxidized. There are also some nice surprises: the hyper-concentrated red Racines, for instance, even though every bottle is marked by a certain warts-and-all appeal.

Actually, Courtois has been a perennial discovery for at least eight years, as have almost all the producers listed above. Some newer names making their way onto wine lists, and putting their respective appellations on the wine lover's map, include Jean-Baptiste Senat from the Minervois, Cyril Phal from the Roussillon and Elian da Ros from the Côtes du Marmandais in southwest France - each of whom makes terrific wine. So do two domaines surely destined for similar success in the very near future: Maria Fita from Fitou and Alain Hasard, who makes astonishingly good Burgundies at his Champs de l'Abbaye in the Couchois.

All the Rage in Paris? Le Fooding
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH
February 9, 2001

PARIS -- Fooding is the buzzword of the moment here. Merging the English words food and feeling into a French noun, it was coined in early '99 by Alexandre Cammas in the hip Parisian magazine Nova. And ever since, le fooding has been on every Paris gastronome's lips as well as on food-oriented pages from Elle to the Air France in-flight magazine.

At the end of the year, Figaroscope, the weekly entertainment section of the daily Le Figaro, wrote, "[Le fooding] has become a movement and might well turn into a phenomenon, stirring the consciences of gastronomic critics. Behind its trendy sounding name, le fooding seeks to give witness to the modernity and new reality of drinking and eating . . . in the 21st century. . . . [E]verything is fooding so long as audacity, sense and the senses mix. After Gault and Millau's nouvelle cuisine, le fooding?"

Yes, yes, but what on earth does that mean? To get a better grip on this seemingly seminal locution, I called Mr. Cammas himself. An intense 29-year-old beanpole, he told me, "In February '99 I was writing an article on hot restaurants with DJs, like Cafe Mosaic and Man Ray, and, just to fool around, I asked if le fooding threatened le nightclubbing. It was a play on words. At the time, le fooding didn't mean anything. But right away the word was picked up by journalists in other papers. And it was irritating to see how people interpreted it. A writer at Liberation said that to do fooding you had to go to a restaurant carrying two mobile phones, wearing a Paul Smith suit, eat expensive, mediocre food and have Catherine Deneuve at the table opposite you. So at Nova we felt we had to define it and do something to make people understand what we meant by the term.

"We realized that the word fooding combined two aspects of the dining experience that previously had not been taken as an entity," Mr. Cammas continued. "Up until now, the focus was totally gastronomic and that was too limited. To eat with feeling in France is to eat with your head and your spirit, with your nose, your eyes, your ears, not simply your palate. Concentrating on gastronomy alone means that certain places are completely overlooked.

"My favorite example is Favela Chic. It's not a good restaurant -- far from it -- and I've read lots of reviews that say that. But those reviews don't give readers the necessary information. Readers ought to know that people go to Favela Chic for a drink, then a second drink, maybe a feijoada that isn't the best in Paris but that's not important, and then at midnight there's an incredible ambiance with people dancing on tables. It's a real party atmosphere. Merely to say the feijoada was overcooked tells you nothing about the place. Yet I think the person who invented Favela Chic has as much merit within that particular category as the person who has three Michelin stars. It's just that their work is different, but it all revolves around the table. It's fooding, but it's not gastronomy. Fooding isn't a recipe. There's no cuisine of fooding. There's no chef who created fooding. It's not fusion food plus a DJ plus design. Fooding is simply a word that my collaborators and I find more appropriate for talking about the universe of the table."

To interpret -- or, as Mr. Cammas says, to "read" -- the "universe of the table," the Nova crew works with a mental grid of criteria that takes into account food, decor, music, ambiance, hospitality, the pulchritude of the servers and more. In early December Nova mounted a week-long Fooding Festival with an art exhibit at the "water bar" of the tony boutique Colette; as well as cooking demonstrations accompanied by a soundtrack at Bon Marche's lavish food market; a debate at Cafe Flore; and an awards dinner at Alcazar, the left-bank restaurant owned by the British food and furniture mogul Terence Conran.

Among the 18 honorees were La Favela Chic (for best musical ambiance); Thiou, a sizzling new Vietnamese restaurant in the seventh arrondissement (for best place in which to "see and be seen"); Bon, owned by the omnipresent aging rock star Johnny Halliday and designed by Philippe Starck (for the most convivial toilets); Le Verre Vole, an adorable wine bar in the 10th arrondissement (best wine cellar); Twins, an eight-table family restaurant on the quickly gentrifying Rue Oberkampf (best canteen); and L'Astrance (for best menu).

Where sheer gastronomic excellence and creativity are concerned, L'Astrance, which opened in October, was one of the most notable restaurant debuts of the year 2000. Of the Fooding award, co-owner Christophe Rohat told me recently, "I have no idea what it means."

And, frankly, its definition seemed elusive, if not superfluous, to me. After all, haven't people always chosen to go to one restaurant over another for all of the diverse reasons subsumed by the word fooding? "Yes," Mr. Cammas agreed, "many people did fooding before the word existed. But more people are doing this today than ever before. One michelines less than one does fooding." (The man likes to coin words: micheliner , v. int.: to make ones dining decisions based on the Michelin Guide.)

And in France, at least, Cammas and Co. may be on to something. "It used to be that the sole reason we'd choose a given restaurant was because we wanted to eat whatever its particular specialty was -- choucroute, foie gras, oysters, couscous. Fooding has changed all that," explained Christian Flaceliere, a wine writer and consultant who happens to be not only a sensible man but one of the first people with whom I ever discussed the fooding phenomenon. At 55, he takes a longer view of the gastronomic scene than Mr. Cammas, tracing dining patterns from high-calorie postwar cooking through the streamlined nouvelle cuisine of the 1970s to the present day, and he sees fooding as one of the grand crossroads in French gastronomy.

But Mr. Flaceliere disagrees with Mr. Cammas about what it is. To him, fooding is very much a combination of fusion food and up-to-the-minute restaurants. "Le fooding is always new," he asserted. "It's 'we happy few,' a discovery, a place about which you can say, 'You haven't been there? You must be out of it.' Like Korova," he added, referring to a hot restaurant owned by the omnipresent, yuppie TV personality Jean-Luc Delarue, at which the signature dish is chicken in Coca-Cola sauce.

Mr. Flaceliere made a typically French moue when I observed that Mr. Cammas rejects the reflexive linking of fooding to trendiness and that Mr. Cammas, after all, invented the word. (Indeed, he has even copyrighted it.) But such ideological dust-ups seem inconsequential when the two men, both close observers of the French food scene, agree that the national way of eating is undergoing a fundamental change, a tectonic shift thus far described only by the loopy word fooding. It could only happen here.

French Vintners Want Liberte
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH
January 15, 2003 1:02 a.m.

French wine is highly regulated: The top 50% of production falls into one of 450 different appellations controlees -- or AOCs -- an official designation for a wine from a geographically limited zone made according to legal specifications. Born in 1935-36 to guarantee a wine's authenticity, the appellation model has been imitated the world over. Now, however, a group of winemakers called Vignerons dans nos Appellations is claiming that current methods of judging wines allow mediocre products into the appellation designation while many ambitious wines are excluded.

Here's an example: The Domaine de la Rectorie makes the best rose I've ever tasted, a barrel-fermented blend of grenache gris and grenache blanc called La Goudie. Normally a rose of this kind could call itself Collioure. In 1974, however, the Institut National des Appellations d' Origine enacted a law requiring wines wanting an appellation to be endorsed by panels made up of local winemakers, enologists and wine merchants. This is called the agrement. Year after year, La Goudie was rejected by its panel on the ground that it was "atypical" -- it didn't fit the prevailing profile of Collioure rose, an insubstantial beach wine. "They're destroying the appellations by imposing . . . a system of standardization defined by mediocrity," Marc Parce, the owner of Domaine de la Rectorie and the spokesman for Vignerons dans nos Appellations, told me recently.

It was to combat this predicament, which is increasingly widespread, that Vignerons dans nos Appellations was formed. It started with a Lutheresque "Here I stand" statement written by Mr. Parce and Patrick Baudoin, a winemaker in Anjou. This was circulated throughout France and signed by some 100 winemakers, many of whom have also had their wines rejected. To name just a few: Didier Dagueneau of Pouilly Fume, the Foucaults of Saumur-Champigny, Marcel Deiss and Andre Ostertag of Alsace, Anselme Selosse of Champagne, Francois de Ligneris of Chateau Soutard in St. Emilion and Jean Thevenet of Domaine de la Bongran in Macon-Clesse.

Originally intended to weed out flawed wines, the agrement has been used to eliminate wines made by mavericks, or, as Messrs. Parce and Baudoin put it, "If everyone in an appellation makes a red tricycle and you make a blue tricycle," yours will be rejected. And there are penalties. For example, for many years Mr. Parce was obliged to market "La Goudie" as a Vin de Pays, a lower rank in the French wine hierarchy. Additionally, growers expose themselves to taxes or fines. And, unlike countries with more recent wine legislation -- Italy comes to mind -- in France the AOC system is entrenched and revered. Few French vintners, no matter how irreverent, willingly repudiate it.

Panels' reasons for finding the wines "atypical" include aging of the wine in new oak barrels, too little sulphur dioxide, and the use of natural yeasts to begin fermentation rather than industrial yeasts. Whatever the stated reason, however, the declassification boils down to this: The "atypical" wines taste more expensive, more painstaking and riskier to make, and thus are a threat to the average local producer who has no trouble approving a wine with a whiff of rot, for example, on the theory that "it could happen to me," or "he's my neighbor."

Late last summer, 15 members of Vignerons dans nos Appellations challenged the obligatory tastings in a meeting with Rene Renou, the president of the INAO, and Jacques Berthomeau, a consultant appointed by the Minister of Agriculture. The group has been meeting with government officials in an effort to reform the law.

Many lovely wines are made strictly by the book. "But this group represents something totally new," Mr. Berthomeau told me. "Up to now, the combat was to get people who made bad wine up to a norm of quality. What's new is the battle has become one between different levels of quality. These producers are very visible. If things don't change within the INAO and these people continue making wines that are rejected by the tasting committees," he said, "it will cultivate the idea around the world that the AOCs exist only to put a stamp of approval on mediocre wine, and that the good vignerons find the appellation controlee system irrelevant."

According to Marc Parce, "We don't want to kill appellation controlee. We want to save the system if we can. What makes an appellation is diversity, not uniformity. If the appellations are to be dynamic, we must let people experiment. There must be zones of liberty."

The INAO doesn't make the rules governing each appellation; it merely adopts the recommendations of local growers' unions that define the characteristics of their wine. By adding the word "dry" to its regulations, for example, the growers' union of Clesse-Vire in the Macon region of Burgundy effectively ostracized Jean Thevenet, whose late-harvested Chardonnay vines produce luscious sweet wines.

"People like me or Thevenet are minorities within our regions," Mr. Parce noted. "We can't depend on the growers' unions. We need a centralized force like the INAO to act."

As to the future, he cautions that, "Within 10 years, if nothing changes, the AOC will die. It will be our friends in California who, in 15, will tell us what an appellation controlee is."

Ms. Friedrich last wrote for the Journal on Bordeaux wines.

At a Trade Show,
Mediterranean Vintners Shine
Eye on France
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH
April 25, 2002 12:05 a.m.

"It's a simple little wine, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption." So goes the caption of a classic cartoon in which a pot-bellied wine snob pours a glass for a guest. That cartoon came to mind during the three days I spent at Vinisud, a showcase for the wines and spirits of the Mediterranean held every two years in Montpellier.

An increasingly influential trade fair, Vinisud has grown from 400 exhibitors and 4,000 visitors in 1994 (the year of its début) to nearly 1,200 exhibitors and more than 15,000 visitors in 2002. The fair encompasses producers from throughout southern France to destinations as far-flung as Morocco, Cyprus, Greece and Croatia. It is hosted by the southwestern French regions of Languedoc and Roussillon, whose producers represent 58% of the exhibitors. And, as these are two of the most dynamic and quickly evolving wine regions in France, I find I spend all of my time going from one to the next of their 600 different stands, marveling not only at the presumption of "simple" wines from such unrenowned appellations as Picpoul de Pinet and Faugères, but at the steady emergence of really good wine in unexpected places.

The Languedoc, which some refer to as Provence West, spreads over three French departments, the Hérault, the Gard and the Aude. The Roussillon begins at the Corbìères Massif and continues to the Pyrénées and the Spanish border. For the past year they -- or the Languedoc in particular -- have suffered the kind of publicity no wine region wants: bands of grape growers demonstrating, at times violently, over low prices. It's sad but true, however, that these disgruntled growers are a dying breed of Languedoc-Roussillon winemaker, the producers of plonk to be sold at bargain basement prices or sent to the distillery as overproduction. Today's Languedoc-Roussillon is more accurately represented by the ambitious vintners at Vinisud, who lobby not for government bailouts but to win ever more precise appellations for their land, carving up the vast stretch of Languedoc vineyards into a bevy of small, distinct zones.

Traditional grape varieties here range from those barely known by the average wine lover -- grenache, carignan -- to the downright obscure such as macabeu, piquepoul, rolle and bourboulenc. In an effort to enhance quality, growers are increasingly planting respected Rhone varietals such as syrah, mourvedre and viognier. To the dismay of antihomogenization diehards, there has been an exponential increase in the planting of such internationally popular varieties as chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, cabernet and merlot.

"We're the furthest north and the coldest zone in the Languedoc," Jean Benoît Cavalier of Château Lascaux told me. "Our vineyards are on the foothills of the Massif Central. They're 150 to 200 meters high. The night temperatures are very cold. There's enormous variation between day and night. A September morning can dawn at five degrees Celsius; by afternoon, it's 35."

Chateau Lascaux is located in the area of Pic St. Loup, a privileged zone within the Coteaux du Languedoc which may soon become an independent appellation. The coolness of the microclimate here is what Mr. Cavalier credits for the freshness and elegance of his wines. Indeed, his 2000 "Les Nobles Pierres," from Pic St. Loup, was a fine-grained red, essentially syrah, with compact tannins and delightfully juicy fruit.

Cavalier is a relative old-timer in Coteaux-du-Languedoc terms; he's been making wine here for a decade. Fabien Raboul began making wine at his Château de Valflaunes in 1998, and Jean-Christophe Granier, of Domaine les Grands Costes, started with the 2000 vintage. Both make delectable, spicy, mineral-rich reds -- presumptuously serious little wines -- and are clearly vignerons to follow. I spent a good hour at the stand of another group of promising young producers, these from St. Chinian, an appellation lying northwest of the city of Béziers. The group, which consists of the domaines Borie la Vitarelle, G. Moulinier and Canet-Valette, calls itself Les Tontons Zingueurs -- a play on Les Tontons Flingueurs (Pistol Packing Uncles), a popular '50s-era French film, and the zinc countertop of wine bars. And the grenache-syrah-mourvedre-based reds these fellows make are just the type of wines I like to find in wine bars -- generous, sometimes a bit rustic, but always honest and, of course, presumptuous.

Some are distinctly better than that -- the rich, seductive '99 Borie la Vitarelle "Les Crés," for example, or the '99 Canet Valette "Le Vin Maghani," which was so intense it seemed to have eaten the sun. La Madura, another young St. Chinian winery, makes equally characterful wines while fine-tuning them into something downright elegant.

Minervois and the slightly more restrictive Minervois La Livinière abut the southwest corner of St. Chinian. I spent a good two hours at this collective stand, tasting intriguing reds, whites and roses at the booths of Domaine des Aires Hautes, Domaine Piccinini and Domaine Pierre Cros, whose 100% Carignan made from vines planted in 1905 was as quirky and original as it was seductive. It was also extremely presumptuous -- as was every single one of the deliciously mineral wines from Château Bonhomme and the bistro-ready reds from Château d'Oupia. And there were plenty of wines presumptuous enough to take on some of the big shots from Bordeaux, the 2000 Chateau des Estanilles Grand Cuvée, for example, a deep, dense, sapid red made from pure syrah from the Faugères appellation, which lies directly east of St. Chinian.

Bordeaux came in for quite a beating at Vinisud, particularly as a scandal broke on the opening day of the fair: an unscrupulous Charentais broker was on trial for selling bulk wine from the Languedoc-Roussillon as Bordeaux. Much of the wine in question came from Cabardès, which lies to the west of St. Chinian and Minervois and gained appellation controlée status in 1999.

The climate here, influenced by the Atlantic ocean, is milder than in most of the Languedoc, which explains the presence of grapes suitable to maritime climates -- cabernet, merlot and malbec, for example, in addition to the more prevalent Rhône and Mediterranean varietals. And tasting the excellent reds from Vignobles Lorgeril, an important family domain with three properties in Cabardès and one in Minervois la Livinière, I understood what might have prompted this latest instance of Bordelais cupidity: Lorgeril's '99 Esprit de Pennautier, for example, a barrel-aged Cabardès made from syrah and merlot, was a generous, supple red, with the satisfying complexity of a good fifth growth from the Medoc.

Wines from the Corbierès appellation were also said to have been trucked to Bordeaux. Corbierès is the largest of the Languedoc appellations, and there was a time, just a bit over a decade ago, when the idea of an extensive Corbières tasting provoked side-splitting hilarity. Not true anymore. At least if the Domaine du Grand Crès is any proof of what Corbières can do. The '99 Cuvée Majeure, a blend of Syrah and Grenache, was an elegant, fine-grained wine with subtle mineral undertones. Of course, the winemaker here is Herve Leferrer, who spent five years in the cellars of La Romanée-Conti before buying his own property in Corbières in 1989.

Hervé Bizeul, another high-profile wine maven, has also created a winery in the south. Voted best sommelier in France in 1981, Mr. Bizeul owned wine bars in Paris and wrote about wine before moving to the Roussillon and developing his Domaine Clos des Fées. "We debark the base of the vines to rid the plants of mold build-up," he told me, giving an example of how he's reinventing the wheel in viticulture. Whatever he does, it works.

2001, a Very Good Year for Whites
Eye on Bordeaux
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH
May 23, 2002
( This article was written following the tasting of the 2001 vintage 'en primeur.' As it turns out, 2001 was seriously underestimated. The reds, while not as stupendous as 2000 or 2005, are very fine.)

"In August, we never imagined we'd have this level of quality," said Yves Glories, professor at the Faculte d'Oenologie of the University of Bordeaux and a respected observer of the region's wines. Prof. Glories was speaking specifically of the superb 2001 Sauternes and Barsacs, the sweet whites, or vins liquoreux, of Bordeaux.

Justice is at work here. Sauternes and Barsac missed out on the euphoria of the grand 2000 vintage; the millennium year was fair to middling, at best, for the sweets. But in 2001, the vins liquoreux are the clear stars of the vintage, as I and other members of the wine press and trade learned late in March during a week of tastings organized at wineries in the major wine-producing regions of the Bordelais, to give wine professionals an early fix on the vintage. Heavy rainfall the weekend of the 22nd and 23rd of September last year, followed by a beautiful Indian summer -- warm, sunny days, cool nights and steady winds -- favored a uniform outbreak of botrytis, the "noble rot" that shrivels the sauvignon blanc and semillon grapes, concentrating the juice and the sugars.

The very best wines are simply stunning. They have everything going for them -- exquisite balance, power, elegance, creamy texture. They are richly honeyed yet fresh, promising as much complexity as Guerlain's finest perfume. Into this category I'd put Chateaux Rieussec, Suduiraut, Sigalas Rabaud and Clos Haut Peyraguey. Chateau Lafaurie Peyraguey, the color of brushed gold, follows close behind, as do Chateaux Doisy Daene, Guiraud, Nairac, La Tour Blanche, Filhot (with a nose that curiously recalled an off-dry Mosel) and Rabaud Promis. (Traditionally Chateau d'Yquem declines to present its newest vintage at such an early date. One could safely hazard the guess, however, that it will be a monument.) And 2001 was such a exceptional vintage for the nectarlike Sauternes and Barsacs that even less distinguished chateaux made lovely wine.

Examples I'd be happy to sip as an aperitif or pair with a mellow blue cheese include d'Arche, Myrat, Bastor Lamontagne, Caillou, de Malle, Rayne Vigneau, Suau and Lamothe Despujols. (Some of these are also likely to be good bargains.) The successes of 2001 are not limited to the liquoreux; the dry whites from Pessac-Leognan are also excellent, with good acidity, powerful aromas and rich, ripe fruit. Though some tasters found them crisper and drier than usual, I'm pretty confident that the best of these wines will flesh out beautifully with a bit of time. At the top of my list I put an already elegant Chateau Pape Clement, followed by Chateaux Fieuzal and Carbonnieux. I also admired the bracing Chateau Bouscaut as well as Chateaux la Louviere, Malartic-Lagraviere, Larrivet-Haut-Brion and Olivier, all from the Pessac-Leognan appellation.

The reds -- though there are some very lovely ones -- are a decidedly mixed lot. Not only did they have the poor luck to follow the great 2000s, they had a difficult growing season, marked by heavy spring rains that gorged the soils with water, and a cool July, which led to uneven ripening come September, particularly for cabernet sauvignon.

Many wines are marked by a distinct herbaceousness; some also display an astringency due to unripe seed tannins. In the words of Prof. Glories and his colleague, Pascal Ribereau-Gayon, everything depended on vineyard management. Producers who kept yields low by pruning short and by cluster thinning made some very fine Bordeaux -- deeply colored and fragrant, with plush fruit and palate-tickling acidity. Among the tried-and-true, Chateaux Latour, Palmer, Leoville-Barton, Pontet-Canet and Pape Clement made wines of great freshness, breed and elegance. There were some pleasant surprises from established houses: The 2001 Cantenac Brown was the best I've ever tasted from this domaine, and Pichon-Longueville stood out in a flight of Pauillacs. I also liked Chateaux d'Angludet, Brane Cantenac, du Tertre, Talbot and Rausan Segla -- and found a slew of tasty Bordeaux for drinking in the near-term from the Moulis, Medoc and Haut-Medoc appellations, among them Chateaux Chasse Spleen, La Lagune and La Tour de By. These last are likely to be good value in both shops and restaurants.

High-profile newcomers also made impressive wines. The 2001 Chateau Valandraud, a Saint-Emilion, and the 2001 Marojallia, a Margaux, were very sensual wines with intense fruit and sweet spice flavors. Ditto for the deep purple St. Emilions from Chateau Faugeres. And there were some nice surprises. The 2001 Chateau la Girolate, for example, was the début wine from a young winery in the very broad, usually very boring Bordeaux appellation. The product of extremely low yields (about a ton per acre, compared with five to six tons per acre in the broad Bordeaux appelation) and a highly unusual (for a red wine) fermentation in barrel, la Girolate tasted like a liqueur made of merlot. This is too much concentration for my tastes, but the seriousness of the work behind the wine puts la Girolate firmly on my "to follow" list for future vintages -- no matter how good or bad the growing season.

On Scansano's Hillsides,
Vines Now Vie With Sheep
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH
January 31, 2002 10:10 p.m.

We sometimes come to like new wines in curious ways. Morellino di Scansano, for example, excited my interest when I was entertaining Italian friends on my home turf in the Loire Valley very far in miles and vinous spirit from Morellino di Scansano's home between Rome and Siena. I had taken my friends to the wine cellars of Bernard Baudry, one of my favorite producers of our local wine, Chinon, which, in Mr. Baudry's hands, is a coolly elegant, highly defined red with luscious flavors of black cherries and raspberries. But they found it confusing, discussing it among themselves in an effort to locate a point of reference. Finally Franco settled on Morellino di Scansano, a wine about which I knew nothing, except that it came from Tuscany and that, for want of something more judicious to say, unimaginative critics often referred to it as the poor man's Brunello di Montalcino.

Several months later I took advantage of a trip to Siena to find out more about the wine, making an appointment with Elisabetta Geppetti of Le Pupille. She is the person responsible, along with Erik Banti, another visonary producer, for bringing Morellino di Scansano to public attention.

"In 1978, when Morellino di Scansano got its DOC [denominazione d'origine controllata], there was very little of it. Maybe 100 to 150 hectares," said Mrs. Geppetti, a 36-year old Catherine Deneuve look-alike, after picking me up at the train station of Grosseto, a drab industrial town at the southern bounds of Tuscany, not far from Le Pupille. "The main activity around here was raising sheep for pecorino cheese production. As recently as the end of the 1980s, Morellino was a hard sell. People thought this part of Tuscany wasn't good for wine. But by the beginning of the '90s things started changing -- for me and the region. Today there are 2,000 hectares within the appellation, and every bit of it is planted. There are 35 producers. At Le Pupille we started with nine hectares of vines. Now we have 65, 45 of which are devoted to making Morellino di Scansano."

The wine is made on a strip of well-exposed hillsides in Grosseto province, in and around the commune of Scansano. Sangiovese, locally called morellino, is the principal grape. It may be used exclusively or blended with up to 15% of a number of other red grapes, including alicante (grenache), cabernet, merlot and syrah. "Our Morellino is a modern wine -- fruity, warm. It's a wine for young people, a California-style wine," said Mrs. Geppetti, as we walked through her spotless cellars.

These are usually words that make the traditionalist in me cringe. But the proof is in the tasting, and Le Pupille's 2000 Morellino di Scansano, with its bright cherry aromas, lissome structure and brilliantly fresh fruit flavors, while easy to love, also expressed the site-specificity that makes for a unique rather than a generic "New World" wine. In other words, here was an extremely pretty wine that would charm all levels of wine lovers.

Like many of her counterparts in other Tuscan zones, however, Ms. Geppetti made her mark not with her ancestral Morellino di Scansano but with an iconoclastic blend called Saffreddi -- a wine singled out by Robert Parker in the Wine Advocate. A blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot and alicante, Saffreddi is not entitled to the Morellino di Scansano DOC. Until the Maremma Toscana Indicazione Geografica Tipica (IGT) appellation (a step down from DOC, or the equivalent of France's Vin de Pays) was created in 1995, Saffreddi was sold as a lowly vino di tavola (table wine). At roughly $90 a bottle, however, it is Le Pupille's most expensive wine, and well within the category of high-priced, hand-crafted, unconventional wines called Supertuscans, of which the Bordeaux-like blend Sassicaia is one of the most famous examples.

Indeed, it's the concentration of Supertuscans that seems to have made the Maremma the hottest wine-growing spot in Italy. A formerly boggy coastal region of Tuscany, whose southern boundary consists of the Morellino di Scansano zone, the area is best known for its fierce, all-white sheep guard dogs -- and also for horses, which locals call morello, leading some to believe the wine was named for them.

New wine denominaziones seem to be created here every growing season -- the last being Ansonica Costa dell'Argentario, a white wine made from the Ansonica grape. The price of grapes has multiplied by five. Investments are pouring in, largely from top producers in Chianti and Brunello di Montalcino, such as Cecchi, the Mazzeis of Fonterutoli and Jacopo Biondi-Santi, though Napa's Robert Mondavi and Piedmont's Angelo Gaja are also said to have bought land in the area. And producers like Mrs. Geppetti are making the most of what they've got.

Le Pupille's new cellars, with temperature-controlled, stainless-steel tanks and new French oak casks, were completed for the 2001 harvest. Its product line has expanded to include Micante, a sangiovese-cabernet blend and a dry and sweet white, both blends of sauvignon blanc, semillon and gewürtztraminer. All are sold as IGT Maremma Toscana.

Predictably, I prefer the time-honored Morellinos to the wines made with an eye to New World modes and markets. All of Le Pupille's wines are characterized by their elegance as well as a fineness of grain and clarity of expression. And the '99 Saffreddi impressed me with its generosity and power. Nevertheless, I preferred Ms. Geppetti's top-of-the line Morellino di Scansano, from the single vineyard Poggio Valente, which, at $40, costs less than half the price of the Supertuscan. The '99, pure sangiovese, aged in new French barrels, was fragrant and firm, with a jewel-like precision. Gorgeous and distinctive, it was like no other wine in the world. But it did, indeed, remind me of a great Chinon.

In France, a Vintners Revolt
Born in the Garage
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH
November 8, 2001

No wine region presents a façade more serene or self-satisfied than Bordeaux. Here, it seems, the truths about making great wine have been understood for eons, needing only an occasional tweaking to allow for technological advances such as stainless steel and temperature-controlled fermentation tanks. Yet recently a handful of vintners has been challenging the status quo of this most status-conscious of viticultural areas. The minuscule quantities of hand-crafted wines these upstarts release have been getting better reviews and are commanding prices as high -- and sometimes higher -- than those from the aristocratic châteaux that produce classified growths, the same domaines that have monopolized the playing field for as long as anyone can remember.

Or at least since 1855. That's the year the Medoc classification system -- which established a five-tiered system of "growths" or "crus classés" -- was established. Châteaux Latour and Margaux, for example, are first growths; Beychevelle is a fourth growth, and so on down the ladder. St. Emilion has its own classification system, last revised in 1996, with Châteaux Ausone and Cheval Blanc, both Premiers Grands Crus Classés "A", at the top. And, by tradition, a wine entitled only to the generic St. Emilion classification would never try to best a Premier Grand Cru, either in quality or price.

Thus, when the '92 Chateau de Valandraud, a new name in St. Emilion, got an 88 from Robert Parker (one of the highest scores the Wine Advocate's wine-rating guru gave for that vintage) and won first prize at the prestigious Foire de Paris, as well as a coup de coeur (an expression indicating instant infatuation) from Michel Bettane, France's premier wine critic, it came as an unpleasant wake-up call to the complacent chatelains of historic properties. Worse for them, at a Sotheby's auction in '96, six-bottle lots of Valandraud (vintages '92, '93 and '94) outsold 12-bottle lots of '82 Latour, '86 Lafite-Rothschild and '89 Mouton-Rothschild.

Valandraud's owners, Jean-Luc Thunevin and Murielle Andraud, are an unlikely couple in a Bordeaux wine scene in which the legendary domaines are owned by jet-setting dynasties or huge insurance companies. Mr. Thunevin, 50, is a former bank employee, and Ms. Andraud, 45, was a nurse's aide. In the mid-'80s they bought a small house in St. Emilion, and Mr. Thunevin opened a wine bar. Soon he owned several wine bars and shops and began a wine brokerage firm. Gradually he sold everything except one shop and the brokerage, which currently represents some 400 domaines, mostly in Bordeaux.

In 1990, he bought a couple of rows of vines on the outskirts of town. When he began making his own wine, Mr. Thunevin had no money for equipment, so he destemmed and later pressed the grapes by hand and used the time-honored, if now somewhat quaint, technique of stomping the grapes by foot. With no cellar, he made the wine in his garage, with the assistance of Alain Vauthier, his best friend and owner of the venerable Château Ausone, and Michel Rolland, currently Bordeaux's most sought-after consultant.

Today you can't spend five minutes in the Bordelais without someone broaching the subject of Mr. Thunevin, who some wag has nicknamed "Tue-le-Vin" (kill the wine). The criticisms aimed at his wines basically boil down to the following: They are not traditional; they are New World and Parkeresque; they won't age; they are too expensive. Yet many of those who claimed Mr. Thunevin would have no effect on the overall Bordeaux wine scene are adopting the very techniques that make his wines so tasty. And a number of other wineries, particularly in St. Emilion, have began making Valandraud-inspired wines. A movement, dubbed vins de garage (garage wines), was born; its practitioners were called garagistes.

Mr. Thunevin speaks rapidly and has an impish sense of humor that belies a rock-solid business savvy. And he is on his way to becoming a major player in Bordeaux -- with a new state-of-the-art wine cellar, 20 hectares of vines in St. Emilion and consulting contracts with a half-dozen wineries throughout Bordeaux, including properties in St. Estephe and Margaux.

Before he would show me his vines and cellars, Mr. Thunevin conducted a whirlwind tour of the domaines of four other garagistes, noting, "We're now almost as numerous as the classified growths." That's a bit of an exaggeration, but he's spot on when he observes that many different types of people are making garage wines. Tasting samples of 2000 as well as earlier vintages at each of these stops, a distinct flavor profile of the garage wines emerged. They are deeply colored, with rich saturation. Elegant and hugely inviting, they are sumptuous, with plush flavors of ripe fruit. Their texture is fine-grained, with some velvety and others more like silk. Of course, the same words might apply to quite a few traditional Bordeaux -- Châteaux Ausone and Cheval Blanc, to name merely two neighbors of Valandraud. But Mr. Thunevin certainly has a point when he says that the word "tradition" has too often been used as an alibi for thin, vegetal wines made from unripe grapes. "The essence of garage wines," he said to me, "is lower yields and a riper harvest."

Behind those simple words lies a painstaking approach to viticulture and winemaking, involving, for example, multiple passes through the vineyards to remove, by hand, excessive foliage to improve the aeration of the grape bunches, to thin grape clusters to lower yields and, at harvest time, to hand sort the grapes to remove anything unripe or tainted by rot.
Eye on Bordeaux
Wine

"We've invented nothing," Thunevin tells me, noting that viticulture at Valandraud is essentially organic. "These practices were once common but they disappeared. We reintroduced them, and now more and more châteaux are following our example."

Some of Mr. Thunevin's techniques are so experimental and controversial they get him in trouble with the law. Last year part of his production -- as well as a percentage of the wine from several other high-profile châteaux that conducted similar experiments -- was declassified by the Institute National des Appellations d'Origine Controlée, the government body that regulates production of French appellation-of-origin wine, because Mr. Thunevin had spread plastic sheeting between his vines at the end of the growing season. If it rained heavily, the sheeting might prevent water from reaching the vine roots, swelling the grapes (which dilutes the juice) and possibly spreading vine maladies. The wines made from these grapes can only be sold now as lowly Vin de Pays.

But it seemed to me that the secret behind the lushness of Valandraud's wines had most to do with the influence of Muriel Andraud's parents, professional gardeners who specialize in growing chrysanthemums for All Saint's Day. When I visited Valandraud on a sweltering morning in July, Ms. Andraud was in the vines with a team of workers who had been clipping leaves since 6:30 a.m. Ms. Andraud strolled along the rows of vines -- now snipping a wisp of excessive growth called an aile (a wing), now pushing an errant vine behind the training wire.

This, as Mr. Thunevin says, is haute couture. Not every château can afford to do it. But it is axiomatic that the quality of the wine depends upon the quality of the harvest. And you instinctively know that grapes pampered as they are under Ms. Andraud's tutelage are bound to produce very special wine. All of which made me think that the moniker vin de garage, while catchy, was no longer true and never did get to the heart of the wines. These wines are, in essence, vins de jardinier, gardener's wines, and it Valandraud's most significant influence in the Bordelais may just be to make other domaines reflect on the way they cultivate their own gardens.

September 12, 2004
CHOICE TABLES
Menus That Look Beyond Dutch Borders
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH

LIKE many travelers, I could sum up my image of the Dutch culinary scene in one word: rijsttafel, the multidish Indonesian rice table. Thus, on a recent visit to Amsterdam with my buddy Joyce, I expected that we'd have our share. Not so. Our Dutch friends prefer The Hague for rijsttafel and steered us instead toward traditional French.

There is plenty of that in Amsterdam, including a half dozen restaurants with Michelin stars. Regrettably, our only Michelin experience, the two-star Vermeer, was disappointing. Our clear favorites fell into one of three categories: country or bistro French, Asian-inspired fusion and what I think of as personalized cooking based on solid technique. The freewheeling creativity of Amsterdam's best chefs reminded me of America: with no deeply rooted culinary traditions of their own, they borrow liberally from France, Italy, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan. I felt pretty much at home.

Dutch dining hours, however, surprised me. Restaurants begin dinner service as early as 6 p.m., and, with the exception of hotel restaurants, few of the ambitious places are open for lunch. When noon rolls around, the best options for a light meal are the terrific fresh herring sold at stands around town; bitterballen (essentially fried meatballs) and beer with a chaser of genever (think local gin) in one of the city's traditional brown cafes, like Hoppe or De Reiger; or a club sandwich at one of the casual lunch spots, such as Lust and Singel 404.

Most menus are printed in English as well as Dutch; if not, there is usually a staff member who can translate. Wine lists tend to be global and overpriced. We found service universally attentive and friendly.

Halvemaan

Perhaps Amsterdam's leading exponent of personalized cooking, John Halvemaan is a resolute man who refuses to be listed in the Michelin. His restaurant, in a pleasant park on the outskirts of the city, is shaped like a half moon (Halvemaan means half moon). The spacious second-floor dining room looks out over the park. It is comfortably contemporary, with local art on display and potted orchids on each table.

A warm washcloth is the first thing offered. Then comes an amuse-bouche - smoked salmon on guacamole cream, served in an elaborate silver spoon with amuse spelled out in its bowl. And you'd have to be quite a grouch not to enjoy Mr. Halvemaan's reinterpretation of the classic Burgundian oeufs en meurette - a large poached egg covered by foie gras, sitting on a rich gravy flavored by shallots, wine and bacon. His Beemster cheese appetizer was absurdly simple though equally tasty - a pile of rough shavings of flavorful aged-cheese-covered sliced potatoes, the whole scented with truffle oil.

Normally I'm a lobster purist, accepting nothing more than drawn butter, but Mr. Halvemaan won me over to his lobster and curry with a perfectly cooked crustacean whose buttery sweetness was not masked by its delicate coconut-curry sauce. In addition to wonderful fresh spinach, the dish came with a bowl of crispy noodles mixed with paletta ham, tiny Dutch shrimp, coriander and shallots. It recalled Indonesian bami, and was so toothsome it could have been served on its own.

Desserts were delicious and as comforting as a down quilt. The bread and butter pudding was, essentially, French toast, but the bread seemed to have been poached in butter, then glazed with apricot jam until caramelized. Then there was an airy mini éclair filled with tart lemon cream, and caramel-cinnamon ice cream. Heaven.

From a typically overpriced wine list, I chose a 2002 Grüner Veltliner Steinhaus, Summerer, at a reasonable $33.75. An Austrian white, it was floral, mineral and ever so slightly off-dry.

Bordewijk

The rapidly gentrifying Jordaan neighborhood is often compared to SoHo or the Lower East Side. And one of its most popular spots for seeing and being seen is this casual, engaging and extremely noisy restaurant. The loftlike space looks as if it has been fitted out for a party, with crayon-colored letters spelling out the restaurant's name on the windowed facade, and wavy wall partitions painted a bright green inside.

With the exception of the typically Dutch salt-cod fritters I ordered as an appetizer, the cooking at Bordewijk is essentially of the hearty French variety, full-flavored and forthright. Irish beef roasted on sea salt was served with a scrumptious béarnaise sauce. The best of the main courses, however, was duck from Challans, a town in the Vendée region of France. First came slices of meaty, perfectly cooked duck breast on a bed of crispy butter-drenched cabbage and sautéed potatoes; then came a succulent confit of the leg, as good as that French country classic ever gets.

Desserts included a commendable crème brûlée, lovely French toast made from Frisian sweet bread and spiked with a rum cream that recalled eggnog, and a refreshing salad of blood oranges with very good stracciatella (chocolate chip ice cream).

Bordewijk also has the best and best-priced wine list I came across. We reveled in a regal '99 Riesling Beblenheim from Marcel Deiss, $43.75, and the '99 Côtes de Nuits Villages, Les Vignottes from Confuron, $53, a truly lovely Burgundy.

Blakes

The British designer Anouska Hempel made quite a splash in 1999 when she took over an ancient hospice and turned it into a stylish boutique hotel. The handsome dining room, in the hospice's former bakery, continues the black-and-white scheme and makes use of the original brick walls and iron ovens. With large mirrors at both ends and an entire wall looking out on an enclosed courtyard, the room seems larger than it is. And everything from the slate slab for butter to the porcelain cachepots used as candleholders is a design statement.

While the kitchen serves what it calls traditional Thai, Japanese and French dishes, aside from a nod or two to Italy the prevailing influence seems to be pan-Asian. It's all very good, fresh and fashionable.

Unlike dinner, which is à la carte, lunch at Blakes is structured around the four-compartment bento box. We tried two of the three versions offered. In each, the soups were stupendous: the pea-green wasabi soup had vivid flavors of coconut and horseradish, and the prawn dumplings were succulence itself; the artichoke and truffle soup was a heavenly transformation of very earthy things. The best of the rest included seared tuna sushi, asparagus with a tasty wasabi-spiked hollandaise, wok-tossed soft-shelled crab topped with shaved scallions, and slices of honey-glazed duck on a slaw of mint, coriander, scallion and cucumber.

Dessert, too, is presented in bento form. Of four pretty confections, my favorites were the refreshing apple cardamom sorbet and the chocolate comma, a swirl of dark chocolate encasing suave chocolate mousse. On the overpriced wine list, the light, fresh 2002 pinot grigio from Alois Lageder, $44, was a relative bargain.

Beddington's

Jean Beddington, the chef and owner, had a devoted local following before taking a couple of years off for knee surgery. She resurfaced on the Amsterdam culinary scene last November with this sleek little restaurant, which looks like Blakes on an Ikea budget: all black and white, with minimalist flower arrangements and comfortable charcoal gray banquettes.

Ms. Beddington's cooking, like Mr. Halvemaan's, is zesty and distinctly personal. The menu (in Dutch only) is brief: five starters, four main courses. Everything is prepared in an open kitchen, so that the sizzles and smells are very much part of the perceptibly food-loving ambience.

Not everything works. A rösti of zucchini and pistachio served as garnish to a main course, for example, and a dessert of green tea crème brûlée were better on paper than on the plate. But most of what comes out of the kitchen is a sheer pleasure to eat. I loved her appetizer of spicy lamb meatballs covered with slivered carrots and served in a bowl-shaped papadum, and grilled veal tongue on a bed of lentils dressed with a tangy caper sauce.

Guinea hen was irreproachable but less than scintillating. It was scattered with pomegranate seeds - a nice touch - and served with rösti and a scrumptious Chinese-style ravioli filled with sautéed liver. Pike-perch wrapped in pancetta on a bed of mashed potatoes mixed with watercress was accompanied by a zingy mustard-accented sauce - a compelling combination of flavors and textures.

Rhubarb crumble was a lovely dessert with its gravy boat of thick crème anglaise and scoop of praline and black pepper ice cream. From a short wine list, we were more than happy with the 2001 Carmenere Reserve Santa Inés, Legado de Armida, a warm Chilean red ($35).

Zuid Zeeland

My guess is that this is the kind of restaurant most people want to eat in most of the time. No culinary fireworks, no orchestrated presentations, just really nice food, a relaxing but vibrant setting, and some of the most welcoming service I've seen.

We arrived at 9:30 on a Saturday night without a reservation. Because of a rebellious stomach, I'd canceled reservations made at another restaurant across town and thought we'd find something near our hotel. Out of scores of possibilities, this was the only place that tempted by its brief but attractive menu, its clean, contemporary setting in a long room with a canal out front, a courtyard and an extravagance of tulips from the flower market nearby.

The place was full and buzzing. The owner, Gijsbert Bianchi, who radiates an infectious joie de vivre, said a table might open up in a half hour. When we returned, it was almost ready and he offered us a glass of Champagne on the house at the service bar: Dom Ruinart Blanc de Blancs. I'll wait for a table here anytime. Once seated we immediately received a basket of green olive bread and a bowl of mild hummus. Later there would be a tasty ceviche as an amuse-bouche and a refreshing mango parfait as a predessert.

I wanted homey food, and that's what I got, starting with robust onion soup; then nicely braised rabbit with diced pumpkin and mashed potatoes, followed by a fudgy Valrhona brownie with mascarpone ice cream. Joyce's meal was every bit as satisfying - delicately marinated swordfish, nicely seasoned and dressed with deep-fried onions and capers; tender lamb shanks with baby corn and steamed potatoes; and to finish, a slab of Port-spiked Stilton, scooped from the belly of the huge cheese.

Although pricier than the one at Bordewijk, the restaurant's wine list is less expensive and more tempting than most. We happily polished off a 2000 Hautes Côtes de Nuits "Dames Huguettes," a suave Burgundy from Marc Rougeot for $49.40.

Restaurant Information

Estimated prices are based on a meal for two, with wine. All of the restaurants accept major credit cards. All allow smoking.

Halvemaan, 320 Van Leijenberghlaan; (31-20) 644-0348, fax (31-20) 644-1777. Lunch and dinner, Monday to Friday. Prix fixe menus: $40 and $46.25 (lunch); $75, $85 and $94 (dinner). Meal for two: about $225.

Bordewijk, 7 Noordermarkt; (31-20) 624-3899, fax (31-20) 420-6603. Dinner only. Closed Monday. Menus at $46.25, $56.25, $61.25. About $200.

Blakes, 384 Keizersgracht; (31-20) 530-2010, fax (31-20) 530-2030. Lunch and dinner Monday to Friday; dinner Saturday; brunch and tea Sunday. Bento lunch, $35; dessert bento, $15. About $225 (for lunch).

Beddington's, 141 Utrechtsedwarsstraat; (31-20) 620-7393, fax (31-20) 620-0190. Dinner only. Closed Sunday and Monday. Menus at $53 and $60. About $190.

Zuid Zeeland, 413 Herengracht; (31-20) 624-3154, fax (31-20) 428-3171. Dinner daily. Closed for lunch on Saturday and Sunday. Menus at $37 and $43. About $140.

JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH, who lives in Paris, is writing a guide to French wines.

CHOICE TABLES; In Salzburg, Light As a Feather
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH
Published: July 25, 2004

Note that there is an additional restaurant here. It was to have been published as a sidebar but there was no room!

HAS the term nouvelle disappeared from our culinary vocabulary? This is a question I asked myself in between some surprisingly fine meals on a trip to Salzburg in April. I found myself describing meals as ''nouvelle Austrian,'' wondering at the same time if anyone used that expression anymore, if the concept hadn't died sometime in the 80's.

These questions never came to mind during an eating trip to Vienna several years ago. There, the food at fine restaurants was resolutely French, even when cooked by Austrian chefs. And Austrian food was generally heavy, even in the hands of creative cooks.

In Salzburg, however, I found much of the cooking exciting and elegant. Using the staple foods of the country such as game, freshwater fish, seasonal fruits and vegetables -- white asparagus was in season while I was there -- local chefs created streamlined versions of traditional dishes, making even stick-to-the-ribs dumplings seem almost ethereal.

I should note that my friend Joyce and I didn't eat in the touristic center of Salzburg but, for the most part, in residential and day-to-day business-oriented neighborhoods. Based on our experience, Salzburg has more to boast about than its music festivals -- the most prestigious, the Salzburg Festival, runs July 24 to Aug. 31; its restaurants provide year-round delights for food lovers.

Obauer

A number of Austria's best restaurants are in the hilltop villages within a 45-mile radius of Salzburg. Obauer is one of them. We took a late-morning train ride from the city one Sunday, then walked a short way from the Werfen station to a main street lined with pretty two- and three-story shops and guest houses. Obauer was already filled with residents who had settled in for a long lunch.

With a garden in back and windows looking out to the mountains and an ancient fortress, Obauer is a comfortable place, effortlessly joining the old (beamed ceilings and stone walls) with the new (an unusual but appealing color scheme of terra cotta and lavender, for example). Sustenance arrives immediately: little pots of butter and chicken liver mousse; a platter of canapés, including a slice of delicious dried sausage that seemed like a ritzy beef jerky, a terrine of venison, pickled quail's eggs and a fabulous ham made from venison.

Now this is where I started thinking nouvelle Austrian. Take, for instance, an appetizer shaped like one of the tennis-ball-sized dumplings you see in the markets. It was strudel pastry encasing a duxelle of mushrooms, a hash of delicate lake trout, and a forcemeat of that trout, served with a delicate white-wine cream sauce infused with mushroom flavor. Absolutely superb.

Or ravioli stuffed with cheese and caramelized radicchio and scented with Austrian apple-balsamic vinegar. Again superb. Simple elegance reigned where main courses were concerned: fine Werfen lamb with its pan juices, buttery Swiss chard and an onion stuffed with white polenta, for example, or gorgeous leg of herbed venison, topped with smoky wild mushrooms and accompanied by three different compotes (cranberry, Rowan berry and box cedar berry), and a celestial celeriac purée.

Both dishes married perfectly with our '99 Blaufränkisch from Weingut Prieler ($76, at $1.26 to the euro), a cool, streamlined red.

Desserts were the least interesting part of the meal, with the exception of prunes soaked in Banyuls, a Port-like wine, and topped with ganache -- downright decadent. Next time, I'd opt for a glass of 2002 Beerenauslese from Alois Kracher ($11), a honeyed dessert wine clear as a waterfall, and the sweets that come with coffee.

Paris Lodron

Herbert Schmidhofer is a rising star in Austria's culinary galaxy. Mr. Schmidhofer, who is 30, runs the kitchen of this deluxe little restaurant in Hotel Schloss Mönchstein, a small castle-hotel on the hillside that looms over Salzburg. We went for lunch one beautiful day and, passing through the small jewel box of a dining room with high ceilings and starched white linen, sat outside, on a terrace overlooking the city.

We immediately ordered a lovely, fresh white wine, the 2003 Grüner Veltliner Federspiel-Kreutles from Weingut Knoll ($44), and were thus ideally prepared to savor the stellar meal we were about to have. Mr. Schmidhofer's cooking, which I would define as nouvelle Austrian, is all about finesse, mastery and good sense, starting with ''welcomes'' -- the charming term used instead of amuse-bouche or amuse-gueule -- of a taste of foamy cream of asparagus soup and a bite of smoked salmon over a mousse of white asparagus.

Appetizers were wonderful, and main courses were even better. We started with steamed filet of char, a meaty pink lake fish, which was served with diced steamed potatoes in a cream-based sauce and with scrumptious potato ravioli filled with leeks and chives. Slices of tasty braised calf's tongue had been layered over a lip-smacking purée of potatoes and horseradish, the whole resting on a bed of rosti potatoes.

Most Salzburg restaurants offer at least one vegetarian dish. Mr. Schmidhofer's was brilliant -- white asparagus baked in crepelike phyllo pastry, served on a classic sauce Béarnaise. He poached local lake trout in a court bouillon and served it with homemade egg noodles tossed with a truffle cream sauce. Every element was terrific by itself and extraordinary as an ensemble. I'm still dreaming about it.

A nod to tradition came with his dessert of Salzburger nockerl. Served for two, this soufflé of soufflés could easily feed four. Flavored gently with cranberries, it was sublime, as was the panna cotta ice cream accompanying it. It was easily the best dessert of the entire trip.

Riedenburg

Silk screens of Marilyn Monroe and Mick Jagger at the entrance. Uh-oh, I thought, we're in for hipper-than-thou Attitude. Well, not at all. The restaurant, in a freestanding house about a 15-minute walk from the center of town, could not have been more welcoming, though we seemed to be the only nonregulars in the dinner crowd. The two medium-sized wood-paneled rooms with striped grosgrain shades on the windows were as homey as a lodge, and the decibel level spoke of good cheer.

The food was fun, too. It was good, and creative, starting with welcomes of a nugget of fried kid on potato salad and a taste of red pepper mousse with avocado cream.

You can't go wrong with the local freshwater fish, whether it's the light, pan-fried trout on nicely dressed arugula, the whole resting on sublime white asparagus, or excellent grilled pike-perch served with red pepper risotto, and creamy cucumbers topped with crayfish. Earthier options are no less appealing. The sheep's milk tart, really a pizzette, with molten cheese, olives and red and yellow peppers, could not have been more appetizing. Saddle of venison was both gamey and tender. It came with lavender-flavored gnocchi, a mistake in my book, but also with big, fat morels, which were exquisite, particularly with the Port-infused sauce.

Desserts, such as a frozen chocolate and orange terrine, were ambitious but disappointingly bland. But it's fair to say that we steered away from the more daring choices, like asparagus and saffron ice cream. No matter. I'd come back here for the wine list alone. There's so much temptation even in the by-the-glass possibilities. The night we visited, they were pouring a Ridge Lytton Springs Zinfandel, among other things, and after taking note of our interest, the very considerate waiter gave us a taste. This nicely bridged the gap between a fragrant and mellow 2000 Grüner Veltliner Smaragd Weingarten Alzinger Loibner, $44, and a '99 Blaufranisch Hochberg, H. Igler, $43, a suave red. Yes, we left a bit tipsy.

Culinarium

Literally on the other side of the tracks from the historic center of Salzburg, this engaging restaurant occupies part of the ground floor of a modern high-rise. From the outside, individuality is the last thing you'd expect. But that's exactly what you find. The décor is a cheerful mishmash, combining a small open kitchen situated behind the bar, a half-dozen or so tables, mini-Murano-style chandeliers and shelves of conserves and wine bottles. The bar itself is worth examining. Its underside is a tangle of wrought-iron work as worthy of inspection as a street sculpture; its countertop is crowded with bottles of eau de vie, except for the far end, housing a laptop and a teddy bear.

The caring service is provided by Alexandra Stieglbauer, co-owner, who alternately pampers guests, washes dishes and works at her laptop. The cooking is full-throated and honest.

We arrived on a quiet Saturday night (weekdays are busier) and settled into a large, curved leather banquette. Farmhouse butter and homemade pumpkin-seed bread were put on the table -- a great start. Then came a welcome from the kitchen in the form of a lusty tomato-infused fish soup. I chose another soup as an appetizer, a creamy, foamy broth of spring garlic sprinkled with Parmesan. Then came a juicy rack of kid on a bed of buttery, ultrafresh spinach for me and, for Joyce, an uncommonly tender and flavorful chicken breast accompanied by a delectable asparagus risotto.

Both were just fine with the sturdy red, a 2001 Blaufränkisch Ried Gmärd from Weingut Triebaumer, $36, selected from the good wine list. For dessert we shared mascarpone mousse over strawberries. Served in a small mason jar, it tasted liked whipped triple cream. Delicious.

Die Weisse

If you're looking for an old-fashioned beer garden with traditional, back-to-the-source Austrian food, your search ends here, in this sprawling restaurant-cum-brewery. It was raining on the Saturday afternoon when we visited, so we sat inside at one of many long wooden tables, surrounded by families and a group of jolly men who had settled in for a daylong card game. The table was set with a big crock holding knives, forks and paper napkins. There was also a large basket of various types of very good bread, including honest-to-God pretzels, for a minimal extra charge, which seemed to cry out for a glass of the house draft beer. Beer comes in half-liter glasses and the lightest version, which I had, is fresh, malty and good.

You can come for a snack or a full meal, but even the most modest nosh will satisfy a trencherman. Portions are huge. We started with a mixed plate of sausages, roast pork, sliced dumplings, ham, Liptauer cheese flavored with paprika, and gherkins, as well as a preparation that I called Austrian rillettes -- cold lard and cracklings spread on dark bread. Then came a plate-sized slab of deftly breaded Wiener schnitzel with cranberry sauce, salad and potatoes, and small Pinzgauer cheese dumplings. The size of gnocchi, the dumplings were served in their frying pan, and oozed with very tangy cheese.

Delicious as they were, there was enough for four. I got a doggie bag and finished them at home in Paris.

Bill of fare: terrines, duxelles, purées

Most of the restaurants below have menus only in German. Even when there is an English menu, the translation is often misleading; however, there is usually someone in each establishment who can speak English. All accept major credit cards. Estimated prices, at $1.26 to the euro, are based on a meal for two with a bottle of wine. Note that during the Salzburg Festival, some restaurants are open on normal closing days or have extended hours; call for details.

Obauer, 46 Markt, Werfen, (43-646) 852120, fax (43-646) 8521212; www.obauer.com. Closed Monday and Tuesday unless a holiday. The restaurant is about 25 miles from Salzburg. A round-trip cab is about $175. The train costs $15.60 a person round trip. There is regular train service between Salzburg and Werfen, and the trip takes little more than a half hour. Five prix fixe menus from $44 to $91. About $250.

Paris/Lodron, in Hotel Schloss Mönchstein, 26 Mönchsberg Park, (43-662) 848 5550, fax (43-662) 848559; online at www.monchstein.at. Open daily. Lunch menus at $25, $33, $41; dinner, $69 to $74. About $220.

Riedenburg, 31 Neutorstrasse, (43-662) 830815, fax (43-662) 843923; www.riedenburg.at. Five menus from $51.50 to $121. Closed Sunday and Monday and Sept. 1 to 8. About $250.

Culinarium, 2 St. Julien Strasse, (43-662) 878885, fax (43-662) 879188; www.restaurant-culinarium.at. Closed Sunday; dinner only Monday. About $125.

Die Weisse, 10 Rupertgasse, (43-662) 872246, fax (43-662) 872 2464; www.die-weisse.at. Open Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 12 a.m. About $65.

BOX: IKARUS
You would think that naming a restaurant Ikarus would be tempting the fates. But this very clubby place, which opened at Salzburg’s airport in 2003, seems to have reached a comfortable cruising altitude without burning its wings. Located on the second floor of Hangar 7, a museum for refurbished vintage airplanes, it attracts a business lunch crowd from the city and has a three-week wait for dinner reservations. (Mayday is the risky name of its cocktail lounge, situated just under the ceiling of the hangar and reached by a vertiginous catwalk.)
Much like the “international soloist” policy that drives Salzburg’s music circuit, the concept behind Ikarus is to invite a different star chef every month. At the time I visited in April Dieter Koschina, an Austrian chef with a 2-Michelin-star restaurant, Vila Joya, in Albufeira, Portugal was at the stoves. Our meal, which included a tuna tartar, tomato “jello” and oscietra caviar served in a martini glass, and rabbit stuffed with blood sausage, was as good as the best we had in Salzburg.
In the comings months the following chefs will make star turns: Lea Linster, Le Restaurant, Frisange, Luxembourg (June); Norbert niederkofler, St. Hubertus at the Hotel Rosa Alpina, San Cassiano,Itlay (July); Thomas Kammeier, Hugos and the Intercontinental, Berlin, (August) and Jean-Georges Vongerichten (September).
Curiously, Ikarus has not anticipated transport between restaurant and airport although the distance between the two is just enough to require some form of locomotion, particularly where suitcases are involved. A cab ride, however, costs only 6 euros.
IKARUS/HANGAR-7, Salzburg Airport, 7 Wilhelm-Sparzier Strasse, 0662/2197; office@hangar-7.com. Open daily. All cards. About $120 for two, with wine.// Note that you can check the current schedule of chefs at the restaurant's site:www.hangar-7.com.)

JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH is the author of ''A Wine and Food Guide to the Loire'' (Holt).

May 2, 2004
CHOICE TABLES
Budapest Chefs Venture Beyond Paprika and Goulash
By JACQUELINE FRIEDRICH

Note: This was the second of two Choice Tables I wrote on Budapest. The mission here was to find new places. The first article focused on classic cooking. I'll try to locate that one and post it too. And nb: Restaurant Baraka has moved.
Note: I've retrieved the earlier article. It follows this one.

BUDAPEST'S Central Market is a vast building in the center of town not far from the banks of the Danube. As animated as any market in France or Spain, its stands display all sorts of fruit and vegetables, poultry, fish and, particularly, embroidered linen, sausages and paprika in every stage, from fresh to dried to powdered. On a recent visit, trestle tables were covered with fresh morels and bunched branches of pussy willow. The scene felt unchanged, from time immemorial.
How misleading. The Market only reopened in Budapest in the mid-90's, not even 10 years ago. And today, the city's most ambitious restaurants are equally recent or even more so. Most are French or Italian or some sort of fusion. Indeed, when I visited Budapest in 2000, the publisher of a local wine magazine told me that the best restaurants in town were Lou-Lou (French) and Fausto's (Italian). The trend that existed then has only grown.
On my recent trip, after watching a CNN report on an apparent groundswell of anti-Europeanism in Hungary, I went to dinner at Ristorante Krizia, a popular seven-year-old Italian restaurant with excellent homemade pasta. CNN filmed its report on Hungarian nationalism in a folk-dance club. But at Krizia, all the clients except me were Hungarian. I wondered: Would local culinary traditions suffer the same marginalization as folk dancing? Would goulash, for example, simply disappear from contemporary menus? Would a seeker of a traditional version be limited to a couple of diehard restaurants like Kisbuda Gyonge or Kehli or be condemned to dine with gypsy music? Would goulash have to take on "gourmet' touches before some youngster resuscitated his grandmother's recipe?
The answers appear to be: it's all happening at once. You can find goulash (and other national dishes) in all stages of evolution in Budapest today, and not necessarily in "Hungarian" restaurants, as I found out. And the soup sections of Budapest's supermarkets carry instant versions by both Knorr and Maggi. In other words: Goulash is dead! Long live goulash!
Baraka
Is it going too far to call a restaurant seminal? This small, seductive place, owned by David Seboek, a Hungarian-American and a former New Yorker, will surely influence Budapest restaurants for years to come.
Going entirely against the grain here, its menu is brief - a half dozen appetizers, main courses and desserts - supplemented by several daily specials. The food is a well-conceived fusion of French and Asian. The dÈcor is discreet, black and white, with caramel leather banquettes. Like many of the city's new restaurants, it has a mezzanine, making full use of its high ceilings. There are sprays of birds of paradise and good jazz; clients are mainly Anglophones and the Hungarians who do business with them. Table-hopping happens. The new Budapest is a small world.
Mr. Seboek is a pastry chef. Dinner starts with warm, home-baked bread scented with curry, and diners couldn't seem to get enough. For my part, I couldn't get enough of the plump, excellent mussels in a scrumptious hoisin-ginger sauce. Luckily enough broth was left to be savored as a soup.
I had settled on a main course of wild duck breast in a gingered apple soy sauce with goat cheese risotto until I saw a dish I couldn't resist being added to the specials: boneless saddle of lamb with morels. The lamb was perfectly cooked (rosy), with delicate lamb and snappy pepper flavor. The combs of the morels made delectable pockets for the sauce, a jus sweetened with onion and deepened with red wine.
For dessert, my lifelong prejudice against white chocolate was conquered by Mr. Seboek's stellar parfait of white chocolate, which, combined with a superb raspberry coulis, completely upstaged his textbook tarte Tatin.
While I found the staff friendly and attentive in all the restaurants included here, the service at Baraka was the best I've had in Hungary. As if all this weren't enough, the wine policy is truly enlightened: the staff will open and serve by the glass nearly every wine on the very good list. I started with a 2002 Oremus Mandolas Furmint, ($4.90 a glass, at 214 forints to the dollar), a golden wine, richly dry with hints of tropical fruit; and went on to a '99 Gere and Weninger CuvÈe Phoenix ($8.40 a glass), a smooth red blend of cabernet sauvignon and Kekfrankos.
Tom-George
"It's a nonfiction work about living rough." This snippet of conversation overheard in the lounge area of Tom-George told me I was at the heart of the new, cosmopolitan Budapest. No surprise, then, that prices are listed in both forints and euros. Or that every centimeter of the long concrete and aluminum fitted dining room is a design statement, from the wall hanging made of a patchwork of multicolored squares of shag rugs to the Egyptian- or Polynesian-looking statues of black cat deities holding platters filled with votive candles.
The food has been described as fusion. Actually, the kitchen is more like a culinary three-ring circus. There's a sushi bar with an extensive menu; there are club sandwiches, Caesar salads, curries, mozzarella, carpaccio - and there is goulash.
To get into the spirit of the place, I sampled a little bit of several cuisines, starting with a rather superb avocado and salad handroll. Really fresh, absolutely perfect, it consisted of two thick slices of ripe avocado, Batavia lettuce, wasabi and rice, wrapped in Nori. Soy sauce was delivered in an elegant carafe.
Then, to test my goulash-evolution theory, I had to order that. Very far from the cowboy soup of origin, which was made from meat from the cow's leg, this version was made with tenderloin, rather urbane and not at all spicy. It was still a proper soup, though, and not a stew, with a rich broth and carrots and potatoes. But beef tenderloin was the star. There was enough of the very tender meat to make a main course.
Then came green curry chicken, in an enormous bowl, with four big slices of oven-blistered nan sticking out like wings. An icon on the menu indicated the dish would be spicy. Indeed, it was. Scrumptious too, with rich, balanced flavors of curry, coconut, hot pepper and garlic.
Desserts include the universally popular individual chocolate cake with a molten interior. But I couldn't eat another bite. Instead, I ordered an Irish coffee (state of the art) from an encyclopedic cocktail menu that includes fruit concoctions and milkshakes. The wine list is not quite as ambitious: among its offerings are a dozen so-so wines by the glass. I chose a '97 Tokaji Szaraz Szamorodni from Disznoko ($3.40), which tasted like a pale fino sherry.
Voros es Feher
This restaurant's name means "red and white." In other words, it's a wine bar. And if one of the treasures of the new Hungary is its wine - in my mind there's no doubt about that - Voros es Feher, which opened four years ago, has to be one of the best places to get a fix on the rapid evolution of the country's wine regions.
A sleek but comfortable room that would be at home in London or Paris, it is in the heart of the theater district. The opera is nearby, as is the music conservatory and Franz Liszt Square with its wall-to-wall cafes.
Voros es Feher is a lovely spot for a snack or a full meal. The main menu has lots of attractive nibblies - p‚tÈs, hams, "creams" (dips), alone or as part of combination plates - as well as a range of salads and more substantial main courses. The blackboard lists an attractive array of daily specials.
I started with the cream combination dish, which brought a trio of dips - fresh ewe's-milk cheese blended with chives and sun-dried tomatoes, a Transylvanian eggplant caviar and a smoky paprika salsa. All were very fresh and piquant. A daily special of pan-fried pork chops with fresh morels and squares of polenta, nicely seasoned with fresh rosemary and thyme, was well thought out and well realized. It was also downright wine-encouraging: it would have happily accompanied all of the reds and a good number of the whites.
Now, about that wine. There are roughly 30 by-the-glass offerings, including Vega Sicilia's Valbuena, not really surprising as that top Spanish estate owns Oremus, a winery in Tokaj, whose nectarlike Aszus are also on the list. But most of the wines are Hungarian, and all are interesting. I started with a 2000 Nemeth Harslevelu (a white grape grown in the Tokaj region) at $1.90 a glass. It was deliciously pungent, off-dry, with vivid fruity flavors. Then a 2000 Kekfrankos from Weninger ($4.35 a glass), a stylish oak-aged red that was just great with my pork chops and morels. And I splurged on a '98 Tokaji Aszu 5 puttonyos from Degenfel