Bonjour, ça va ?
It’s February and still cold and grey. La misère! I realise that my last newsletter may have given the impression that I while away the winter days shuffling from light source to light source and turning to Pineau d’Aunis when la lumière just doesn’t cut it. But truly ça va—I’m not that sad/SAD.
Aside from my various light contraptions, one of my favourite ways to combat the winter blues is by visiting luxury hotel bars. They are these little nooks of opulence where anyone can go to feel like five stars for an evening, without the price tag of sleeping in the hotel. Everyone is just so childishly happy to be there; the positivity sticks.
Bar Hemingway
So on my first weekend back in Paris, I headed to Bar Hemingway, a pocket-sized bar tucked in the back corner of The Ritz Hotel and named in honour of the well-tippled American author. It’s a peculiar Parisian institution because in no way is it French. With its oak panelled walls and plush leather trimmings, the interior feels like an Ivy League gentleman’s club—complete with sporting paraphernalia. Its award-winning head bartender Colin Field hails from the UK. And I’d estimate that 95% of the clientele are foreign. Nevertheless, it remains one of the most storied bars of the capital.
Legend has it that the bar was named after Ernest Hemingway’s attempt to liberate The Ritz from the Germans. He supposedly spent most of his time on the frontline in Normandy lamenting the fact that he wasn’t drunk at the palatial Parisian hotel—“When I dream of afterlife in heaven, the action always takes place at the Paris Ritz,”—so he decided to take matters into his own hands. On August 25 1944, he arrived in uniform in a military jeep accompanied by a group of soldiers with the hopes of personally freeing the hotel. He was a little too late—the Germans had already evacuated the premises—but he hit the bar anyway, racking up a bill for a staggering 51 dry martinis. In 1979, the hotel renamed a bar in his honor.
Luxury hotels can be intimidating in their decadence, but Bar Hemingway feels snug and safe and special all at the same time. Colin, the bartender, is infectiously jolly and loves to banter with everyone and anyone. Bar snacks are, thankfully, replenished bountifully because at 35€ a cocktail the truffled cashews double as my dinner. And the crowd is always as colourful as Colin’s cocktails.
That night we were seated next to a young couple, no older than 20, on a date. Noticeably intimated by everything around them, the girl timidly asked the waitress if a dry martini was a strong drink—she didn’t like alcohol too much. They settled on ordering a serve of sliders instead. Opposite sat a robust American couple who, I correctly guessed, were from the South. After three martinis, the husband loosened his necktie to free his reddening jowl whilst his wife ordered a fourth.
I wonder what stories they made of us, shoving bowl after bowl of chippies down our throats…
Be sure to arrive just before bar opening at 6 pm to get a seat (or else head there around 8 pm) and use the restrooms—you’ll never want to wash your hands from anything other than a spouting gold swan after.
Storied Bars of Paris:
Harry’s New York Bar – the birthplace of the Bloody Mary!
Bar de L’Entracte – claims to be the first bar in Paris, dating back to 1614
Word (disease!) on the grapevine: Phylloxera
Bar Hemmingway boasts the “first most expensive cocktail in the world” (a mouthful of a claim): The Ritz Side Car. At 1500€, this lavish libation uses pre-phylloxera Ritz Grande Champagne Cognac, thus justifying its hefty price tag.
Most wine drinkers will have heard of phylloxera, but I think few people realise just how significantly this tiny yellow louse changed the course of viticultural history.
Phylloxera is an insect pest, native to the US, that was accidentally introduced to Europe in the 19th Century by a group of (foolish!) English botanists who brought home some vine clippings from their travels to America. It was first discovered in England in 1863, and then in the Southern Rhone and Languedoc regions of France in 1866. From there, it went on to ravage an estimated two-thirds (some count as high as nine-tenths) of all European vineyards. It was the Rona of the vine world.
Phylloxera feasts on the root of the vine and once it attacks, there is no other option than to rip up the entire vine. Towards the end of the 1800s, French wine production was down by 50% and many a winemaker fled their vineyards (and the country) in depression. Desperate to save the country’s viticulture, the French government offered a 300,000-Franc reward to whoever could solve the epidemic. I don’t know how those botanists could sleep at night.
But the solution came from the very source of the problem: the USA. Over time native American vines had become resistant to phylloxera so from 1878 French winemakers started grafting their vines onto American rootstock (the top half of the plant is European, the bottom half American). This worked for some regions, but in others such as Cognac, the rootstock didn’t prove resistant.
So in comes a plant-loving Texan by the name of Thomas Volney Munson to save the day. Munson noticed that the soils in his neck-of-the-woods closely matched the limestone soils in French vineyards, and was able to match an ultra-resistant native Texan rootstock to the French vines. So important was Munson’s discovery that he received France’s highest honour, the Chevalier de Mérite Agricole—only the second American to receive it after Thomas Edison.
These days virtually every vine in Europe has been grafted to an American rootstock. There are some new world regions that have yet to be touched (like South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia, and Chile), but most winemakers won’t take the risk with ungrafted cuttings any more—the economic consequences can be ruinous.
We can only wonder, what would wine have been if Phylloxera had never made it to Europe? How would ungrafted French wine taste?
There are a few parcels of ungrafted vines dotted about Europe, either in sandy soiled regions like Mount Etna (phylloxera does not like sand!) or closed vineyards like champagne house Bollinger’s prized pre-phylloxera Vielles Vignes Françaises—but to taste these wines is costly. (A quick Google search showed that Bollinger’s Vielles Vignes Françaises goes for around €1300 a bottle.)
Tasting Notes
I’m not going to recommend any pre-phylloxera wines because they are rare and expensive but I was just in Venice so I’ll leave you with some of my favourite wines from the region. If you’re having seafood, give one of these a go—the salty, mineral notes make it the perfect pairing.
La Biancara Angiolino Maule - A crisp white 85% Garganena/15% Trebbiano, perfect pairing with seafood. We shared a bottle of the Sassaia at the infamous
Osteria alle Testiere, crisp white blend of 85% Garganena/15% Trebbiano. Apparently it’s imported to Australia via the Godot Group. Annandale Cellars seem to have had some in stock recently.
Zidarich - Located in the Carso, a narrow plateau that crosses Italy and Slovenia, Zidarich’s vines are packed between the hills and the sea. Limestone is the name of the game here and mineral, lively wines are what you get. I haven’t seen it available in Australia (yet!) but I’ve had these wines at both Deviant and Vivant in Paris.
Venissa - more than anything this is a show wine as the vineyards are located on the Venetian island of Mazzorbo (you’ll pass the vineyards on the ferry to Burano). The wines are made from some of the only surviving vines of Dorona, a grape native to the Venetian lagoon and that was considered lost to the great floods of 1966 until winemaker Gianluca Bisol discovered 88 vine plants in 2002.
A la prochaine !