485: Robert Vifian and Stories from the Tan Dinh Wine Cellar

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[00:01:05] Ill Drink to That where we get behind the scenes of the beverage business. I'm Levi Dalton. I'm Erin Scala. And here's our show today. Before the pandemic, I met with chef Robert Viffian at Tandin, his restaurant located near

[00:01:35] the Eiffel Tower and the Rodin Museum in Paris. Tandin, a Vietnamese restaurant in the cultural center of France has operated for over 50 years and was originally opened by Robert's mother in 1968. Robert joined her in the kitchen in the early 1970s when he was still a young man

[00:01:55] in his 20s and then took over the restaurant full time as chef owner in 1978. Before then, he made a movie, played bass guitar and survived the Tet Offensive while living in Saigon. Robert was born in Vietnam in 1948 and lived there as a child. When we recorded this interview,

[00:02:16] he was approaching the age of 70 and planning his first ever return visit to the country of his childhood. Beginning around the 1980s, Tandin became a restaurant frequented by actors and artists. People like Marguerite de Ross, Bertrand Tavernier, may he rest in peace, and quite a few

[00:02:35] Americans in Paris like Owen Wilson and Andy McDowell. It's a small restaurant, the kind where the owner both cooks your meal and opens your bottles of wine. And I do say bottles and not

[00:02:48] bateaux because Tandin is a place of pilgrimage for many wine aficionados and no one would go there to try just one wine. The restaurant wine cellar, which I was lucky enough to visit with Robert's brother Freddy, is absolutely and completely packed with bottles in every possible

[00:03:05] place and direction. And it is in fact the only cellar I have ever been in where you actually have to walk on top of cases of wine to get inside. In the cellar are vintage after vintage

[00:03:17] of Cochderie, Ligny, Rumier and many Bordeaux Chateaux as well as surprisingly, because this is France, some classic California wines. We discussed all of these and more in the interview. Chef Robert and I recorded in the dining room of Tandin in the morning before a service and occasionally

[00:03:36] you can discern the noises of a restaurant opening its doors to the public in the background of our conversation, which you will hear soon. But before we get there, I want to play for you a remembrance from Stephen Spurrier who recently passed away. Robert and Stephen were friends

[00:03:54] and Robert taught wine classes for a while at a school that Stephen co-founded. Here is Stephen talking about the origins of that wine school. The Place La Concorde was full of the American law firms

[00:04:07] and people like that. They used to just come by in the evening, not every evening, but they used to make it Thursday evenings. So I said, okay Stephen, what's new? And then that was the beginning of the

[00:04:19] idea of l'Académie du Vin because I was giving them the wine tastings and of course talking them through the wines and one of them said, you know, if you could ever put this on in a

[00:04:32] structured way, we'd love to do a wine course. We don't know anything about wine. And so that got into my mind and then prior to that I'd met with John Winroth who was the wine correspondent

[00:04:47] on the Herald Tribune and I kept on sending him bottles that I liked of the notes saying this is Stephen Spurrier, I hope you like this wine. I knew that this should interest him. He'd not reply to

[00:05:00] any of the wines I sent him. And so instead of just sending it, I went to the Herald Tribune offices in the Rue de Berry in the 8th and I got in a tiny lift. I asked the desk where John Winroth worked.

[00:05:13] He said he's on the third floor. So I got out of the lift on the third floor and there was a tall, thin gentleman going into the lift and I said, sorry to bother you but where can I find John

[00:05:24] Winroth? He said, I'm John Winroth. I said, well I'm Stephen Spurrier. Oh, you're the guy who's sending me all these damn bottles. And I said, I've got another one for you. He said, well put it on my desk and

[00:05:34] I'm going out to lunch. Let's go out to lunch. And so we went to a brasserie and John and I stayed there two hours or so drinking Beaujolais and got on like a house on fire and he was teaching

[00:05:47] junior year students, American junior year students about wine in the back of cafes. And I said, look John, if I can find a premises, I think we could open a wine school together because you've got this junior year abroad program. You speak fluent French, therefore we can do

[00:06:06] courses in French. I've got this American, English, Anglo-Saxon clientele. We have the clientele and since we're starting from nothing, we can create what we're going to teach. He said, brilliant idea. And then another bit of luck, the premises next door to the Carver-Madeleine came up

[00:06:26] for sale. It was a locksmith and they had a big ground floor premises and a big office upstairs. And I was already expanding. This was October 72 and the locksmith shop went out for auction.

[00:06:43] No one was really bidding. We bought it. And so I took over the locksmith shop, had it entirely renovated and cleaned out and opened L'Académie du Vin, the first private wine school in France, opened by an Englishman and an American. John Bronier, who had been born

[00:06:59] in Greece, was in the habit of using his middle name, Winroth, for the publication of the many wine articles he wrote while living in France. In 1972, he co-founded the wine school with Stephen Spurrier and Patricia Gallagher. But the next year in 1973, Winroth became severely ill

[00:07:20] and was diagnosed with a serious kidney condition. When I spoke with her, exporter Becky Wasserman recalled that period of time and her friendship with John Winroth. The bottles I remember have to do with the circumstance. And John Winroth, who did do this wonderful article in

[00:07:40] the Herald Tribune years and years ago, was a man who died of a genetic kidney condition. And when he came and told me about it, I mean, I hadn't bought any wines. I went into Bart's cellar and

[00:07:54] pulled out a latache and we sat in the back on the lawn there and we drank it together. I will never forget that bottle because I remember John told me, which meant, you know,

[00:08:03] I am going to die one of these days and so on. So I remember that. By maintaining careful treatment for his disease, Winroth would go on to live for multiple decades after his initial diagnosis.

[00:08:16] He continued to write about wine until his retirement in the year 2000, including in a book entitled Wine As You Like It that was published in 1981. John Winroth passed away in 2006. I talk to winemakers all the time and something they tell me is that oxygen management is a key

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[00:09:41] the lifespan of your wines? Go to dm-closures.com forward slash idtt to learn more. That's d-i-a-m dash closures with an s dot com forward slash idtt for more information. You were born in 1948? Yes. And you were born in Saigon? I was born in Saigon. I came very early

[00:10:22] in France when I was 18 months. I left when I was five and I went back when I was 20 minus one day. What was Saigon like as a kid? Fantastic. Even when we were attacked during the Tet Offensive

[00:10:39] in 68. But the funny thing is that you don't realize things are actually dangerous before it came to your door. You live with it, you adjust to what is around. And I made a lot of American friends playing music with them and so on, being a bass guitarist,

[00:11:02] playing rather simple music like The Beatles, The Kings. And I was not such a big fan of Elvis Presley because I think Presley is just a singer. Well, of course he's a big social influence and

[00:11:16] so on, but he's not a songwriter. Yeah, Dylan's a songwriter. Exactly. Roy Orbison is a fantastic songwriter. Johnny Cash is a songwriter. He didn't write that much, but he was a good songwriter.

[00:11:31] Johnny Cash can be affecting with few words. This is really his gift, I think. Yes. What were the members of your family like at that time? Did you have a large family? No, by Vietnamese standard,

[00:11:43] you know, just my brother and I. My father left Vietnam in 57, my mother in 61, my elder brother in 55, and then myself in 68. There must have been a wave of Vietnamese immigration around the same

[00:12:00] time or a little later. Well, the big wave came after 75, you know, but our case was totally different because we've been French for three generations. So I had to come to France in order

[00:12:13] to go on with my studies because it was very difficult for us to get into Vietnamese universities. I see. And what did you study in France? English civilization. I'm a big fan of English music, English literature. And I even wrote 250 pages on gastronomy in the British Isles.

[00:12:34] That was my MA. And I tried to do my PhD on, you know, the gastronomy in France. And finally, the professor didn't like, you know, the subject. He wanted me to help him on his own

[00:12:50] works. And I said, okay, I'm dropping out. So you started to see the culinary arts as part of the culture. It's enormously important because I do not think that anything enters your body except beverage and food. How do you think you came to that conclusion?

[00:13:07] I just enjoy eating and drinking. So this is why I decided to be a chef. And I got interested in wines, you know, in 68 because of the restaurant. And my father was very angry because there's no

[00:13:22] point in studying if you want to be a chef. He said to me, pass all your exams. And after that, you do what you want. So I passed my exam. And each time I was passing my exam, he was giving me

[00:13:37] a reward. And I say, if I'm getting grades, do I get more? He said yes. So I work hard in order to get more money. And the money was buying record and wine. Was cooking something that allowed you

[00:13:52] to spend more time with your mother? Probably because she taught me. So I was, yes, constantly with her. And I was much closer to my mother when I was young than my father. It evolved after her

[00:14:04] death. And I feel like you've made explicit at times the connections even in Vietnam between what we think of as Vietnamese classic dishes and French cuisine. There was a back and forth

[00:14:17] that you realized. Yes, the back and forth I was not conscious of. The aim was to make what I thought was actual genuine Vietnamese cooking. And because my mother always said to me

[00:14:33] when we're eating out, this recipe is not correct. So I said to her, you know, in Vietnam, we have almost no culinary books. How can you know it is right or not? I said, you know, we've been doing

[00:14:47] it. My mother's doing it this way and it has to be this way. I said to her, maybe it doesn't work like that. So I asked many friends the same recipe. And I tried to get many generations,

[00:15:00] as many generations as possible. So for me, it was a kind of archeologic research for the recipes. And after that, I said, I was trimming things that I thought was added by families. So you get

[00:15:15] the central core, which for me was the actual cooking, the actual recipe. Did you in the back of your mind think that you may not be able to return to Vietnam and you wanted to preserve some

[00:15:25] of that? No, because in fact, when I arrived in Paris, my aim was to go back to Vietnam. And it didn't happen because I met my wife and things became a bit more, I would say,

[00:15:41] fascinating in France because of course of wine and food and so many things. I have not been back yet. Since you left, how old are you today? I'll be 17 September. Were you embraced by the

[00:15:58] Paris chefs? Did they find camaraderie with you? Yes, a lot. And strangely with no Chinese or Vietnamese chef. I'm very close to a lot of French chefs. Probably because of wine.

[00:16:15] I'm very close to the Poirot and people like that. Yes. What were wine tastings like in the 70s in Paris? Almost nothing because the trade was not aware of the fact that they needed to sell wine

[00:16:31] and so there was no tasting organized. So what I was doing is that I was buying the wine myself. So I needed money. So this is why I was trying to get grades. Did your dad Leon like wine? He's

[00:16:45] interested in wine but he says it's too complicated and he was weird because he was drinking wine with ice cubes. It hurt me. But you know, he's my father so I think it's not right but

[00:17:00] I do whatever you want. He probably picked that habit up in Vietnam because the climate's warmer. Yes, the climate is warm. But you have to realize at that time wine was not that often drank in

[00:17:11] Vietnam which was expensive. But he used to drink a lot of hard liquor, whiskey. So whiskey they drank with a lot of ice cubes. So I think he preferred at that time hard liquor to diluted

[00:17:23] somewhat. But your younger brother really liked wine? No, Freddy's the elder brother. I'm the younger one. He liked wine so this is how I convinced him to give his pocket money to me

[00:17:33] to buy wine together. And you used to do tastings together? Yes and since wine was not expensive, it was expensive for students because students you need money to go to discotheques

[00:17:48] in the weekend to pick up girls and so on. So we bought a whole bottle. I split it in half, I cooked it right away with the actual cook and we were drinking the other half.

[00:18:02] So it allowed us to taste the same wine twice. So I was writing on the etiquette the wine and the date. I still have some that I forgot. And some wines are really weird now.

[00:18:14] Really? What were some of them? We could buy very expensive wines at that time. A bottle of Premier Cru Sauternes was 59, great vintage. Retail at Nicolas 10 francs. Oh wow. It means a euro and a half. Petrus, very rare. You can find it occasionally but

[00:18:37] in other shops it was something like 35 francs. Ikem was 35. The Premier Grand Cru was around 30, 35. So my pocket money was weekly 50. With my brother we had 100. So of course we were not drinking Premier Cru just for Christmas or things like that because Nicolas during Christmas time

[00:19:01] was opening the rare wines cellar. So I bought my first Romain de Conti thanks to Nicolas but they were only selling one bottle per person. So we cheated, we went to different shops in order to buy two or three more. I remember buying something like 25 francs Musigny 49, Vosguet.

[00:19:22] So we picked up 20 bottles of it in different shops, some of them in the suburbs. So you had to take the trouble to do it. When did you meet Stephen Spurrier?

[00:19:35] I met Stephen Spurrier, he came to dinner and we became friends because it's easy at that time with not so many people interested and seriously passionate about wine. I think it was around 73

[00:19:50] and after that he told me he was going to do a wine tasting course in English in Paris. I think in the hour of your mind it's a very stupid idea. And he was doing it with John Wynroth

[00:20:04] which was writing for wine in the Herald Tribune. Unfortunately John Wynroth had a very bad kidney disease, he had to have dialysis twice a week. So he left the academy and the academy was very

[00:20:18] successful. I was really surprised. So Stephen asked me, I need a teacher so can you do it for me? So I was teaching for a year and a half. I was studying English in order to be a teacher. Funny thing, I never taught anything but food and wine.

[00:20:38] What was your approach to teaching? You show them the most typical wine of that area, you tell them vaguely how it's made and about the terroir. You taste the wine and you discuss it. But most of the time

[00:20:53] you did all the talking because people are not that inquisitive. I'm surprised but maybe because the lesson was something like an hour, an hour and a half and people would rather learn than ask questions because questions take time. Sometimes I think people are afraid to be

[00:21:11] embarrassed by asking the wrong question. Yes and sometimes when they're beginners they rather listen. What was your approach to tasting? What kind of taster were you? I've always been extremely meticulous. I always took notes, much less now because I have less time

[00:21:29] and the tasting now are so huge. Sometimes how can you take notes, serious notes when you have 300 wines to taste in three hours? So now I rely on my memory. I just put a few. In fact,

[00:21:44] I like taking notes when I have the time because it allows me to breathe. And I think breathing is very important because otherwise you breathe alcohol all the time. You need to breathe some

[00:21:56] oxygen to detox your lung for a few seconds. Did you always have a good memory? It seems to me you have a good memory. Well, a little bit less now because I'm getting old. I don't think so. You're

[00:22:07] pretty sharp. Well, let's see. But was it an advantage you had in school? Could you just remember things well? Yes, but I've been the serious type of student. Always underlining, taking notes. But wine is more fun because it's really actual. You taste so you have the

[00:22:25] pleasure. It's not just words or figures. What was Spurrier like back then? Spurrier, he was very close to me tasting wise. He's serious and yeah, he was very like me. He was a close friend. I asked

[00:22:43] him to be best man at my wedding and what was accepted, unfortunately he slipped the disc. So I replaced him by Alain Dutonnier. So it's good to have someone who can walk be your best man,

[00:22:54] right? Yes, but we were very close. We were going to Burgundy together because Stephen was less keen on Burgundy than I was and he said to me that was very nice and he knew Sopho,

[00:23:07] so come. So I was coming with him. But it was really interesting because he knew many more people than I did because he opened a wine shop and I only was at that time the

[00:23:22] restaurant was not buying enormous quantities of wine. But anyway, a wine retailer and a wine restaurateur, there was two persons that people wanted to meet because for them it's selling. He introduced me to Lafon in fact. I came down with Lafon with Serge Fichon who was

[00:23:42] representing Lafon at that time and we met the father. CB. René. René, yes. And after that I met Dominique and Dominique was working at a certain time, maybe for more than a year for Becky Wasserman when I met him. And when he took over the domain,

[00:24:01] it was with his brother Bruno. And Bruno was working at the same time for the one. And after that, you know, funnily enough, I think there was not enough money for them to make

[00:24:14] from the property for two persons. So Bruno left and did something else. I think he got involved in jewelry or... CB. What was the difference between René's wines and Dominique's wines that you started to see?

[00:24:28] RG. Dominique wines, especially, I think I told him when I first tasted it, I thought that the challenge was to make the Moixe better than the rest, seriously better than the rest. He succeeded and he made much better reds than the father.

[00:24:46] CB. His reds are really good for a white wine maker, you know what I mean? Because it's not often that people are good at both. RG. Yes, yes. But he makes, always make powerful wines.

[00:24:56] He's not capable of making a Meunier's wine. CB. What was René like back then? RG. Funny. Because he was an engineer and he was teaching at Arrêt Métiers in Paris,

[00:25:11] and he was interested in winemaking and not at all by the culture. So this is why most, I think all of the, well, not all, but most of the vineyards was farmed by people like Pierre

[00:25:25] Moret. And sometimes I bought a Moixaché from Pierre Moret and the Moixaché from Lafond was comparing them since it was very precise, since they're pressing the juice and they take 50% each, so it's the actual same juice. And the wines are incredibly different,

[00:25:48] were incredibly different because I do not have any left from Pierre Moret. Pierre Moret had, well, I think he also had part of the Clos de la Barre. CB. I didn't know that. That makes sense though as Métiers.

[00:26:00] RG. Yes, because the Métiers and Dominique after that had to take back all the Métiers, and it was difficult. But he said with Pierre it was totally fine, Pierre was a gentleman.

[00:26:13] Because of course, you know, for most of the farmers it's a loss of money. And Dominique made a fantastic quality leap for the viticulture because he's buying emissions and so on. It's fantastic. CB. And you did harvest at Jacques Brier?

[00:26:29] RG. Yes, because they always invite us to harvest the Moixaché, it never happened. We're always harvesting something else, sometimes under the rain. But we always had a fantastic lunch at the top of the Moixaché. It's been great fun.

[00:26:47] CB. Who else were you close to in Burgundy? RG. Well, more or less Rumier, the Koch, but Koch is a very special person. Jean-François, he's a nice person, but he's not congenial. So I remember the first time we went down tasting, he was taking the pipette,

[00:27:08] pouring some wine to us, and after that he went topping the other barrels. He didn't care at all of our comments, didn't trust him. I had that impression. But he was very nice to me since sometimes he was driving me to other vintages and so on.

[00:27:29] CB. The first vintage of Koch you had was 1981? RG. The first vintage I bought was 1981, but not from him. I bought from London because you couldn't find the wine in the shops.

[00:27:45] So I met Simon Taylor Gill, I don't know if you know about him, but he was teaching in France and he is a great taster. He knew a lot about wine and he was exporting to England, Rouleau,

[00:28:01] Lafon, I think, and Koch. So I bought Koch from him. It was very funny because I didn't know Koch at that time. And I remember there was outside his house a barrel with a bottle and

[00:28:14] it was a sign saying, we sell wine. CB. I don't think that barrel's there anymore. RG. Yeah, no, not anymore. CB. What were the wines like at that time? RG. Very close to what they are now. CB. Is that true? In the 80s they were similar?

[00:28:28] RG. Yes. And he had his special style of winemaking, so it's fun. CB. What did you attribute that to? RG. I think it's the combination of a lot of lees and sulfur plus, you know, the very good oak.

[00:28:43] CB. What is a Koch that's young smell like to you? RG. For me, it's a funny smell, but it stinks a little bit. It's interesting bad odor and it's easy to recognize in the blind tasting. So I remember when I was making blind tasting,

[00:29:03] I always put a Merceau or a Bouligny against Merceau. I put a Koch, so I say, you know, here's Koch. The other one should be like this, like this, and like this. But I always compared,

[00:29:14] you know, the stinkiness of the Koch wine to the mold on Marilyn's cheek. CB. A beauty mark. RG. Yes, a beauty mark. CB. A friend of mine thinks Koch of that era smells like curry leaf.

[00:29:26] RG. For me, it's more like durian. Well, it's not exactly durian, but that kind of nasty but good. CB. And I think you visited almost every year, Koch, since that time? RG. Yes. Not every year. It depends

[00:29:40] because I do not like bothering them, you know. But sometime I went down with Steve Tanzer because I enjoy tasting a lot with Steve. He's very good for Burgundies, and he's a very good taster.

[00:29:53] CB. He's also a very deliberate taster, and I think that you may be as well. RG. Yes. But he's not a marathon taster like, you know, Bob Meron or myself. He likes tasting few wines. I like, I want to taste as much as possible.

[00:30:09] CB. And you became fairly knowledgeable about the different crews of Koch. RG. Yes. CB. So if you were to run through that with me so I could learn more, because it's a weak point for me, what would you tell me?

[00:30:21] RG. The Perriere and the Rougeau are the most interesting wines for me, especially the Rougeau, price-wise, is incredibly. It's probably the wine I would advise people to buy before the Perriere because the Perriere is really... And Charlemagne, for me, is probably because of the price in

[00:30:42] secondary markets. I think, you know, it's disproportionate when you compare it to the Perriere. But now I've noticed that the Perriere is getting more and more expensive and getting closer to Charlemagne. In the old days, it was double. CB. Is his Perriere parcel next to Rouleau's

[00:31:00] parcel? RG. These are very good parcels. Yes. The parcels are probably better than the parcel from Lafon. And strangely, with Lafon, I'm always enamored with the Charm because he has such a big surface compared to, you know, proportionally to Burgundy that he can pick the best ones.

[00:31:22] CB. Right. RG. And he can discard a few of them. CB. And with Cochise, he used to use a basket press, right? RG. Oh yes. I'm wondering if he hasn't bought one from Louis Picamello, you know, the best

[00:31:36] bubblies from Burgundy. CB. And he used a bottle with a fountain direct from the barrel? RG. I'm not sure because I think the wines are quite homogeneous. So it means that he cannot

[00:31:48] do it like Jallier was doing in a barrel of a barrel. So he is not filtering. I have noticed that on the new labels, he was mentioning no filtration. In the old label, it was

[00:31:58] « Ce vin n'a pas été filtré ». CB. Did you ever talk to him about filtering or fining? RG. Like most people, I think, you know, Burgundy lover, we thought that not filtering was good. I'm not that sure now because I did something worse in 93 with Maurice Ecker for the

[00:32:19] Serpentier and my barrel was unfined and unfiltered. So no collage. And when it started, it was better than the one that has not been fined and was much better than the wine that

[00:32:34] has been fined and filtered. I do not have any bottle left of the regular bottling from Louis Ecker, Maurice Ecker. Louis or Maurice? I can't remember. Probably Maurice. But I have the impression now that my wine that has not been collé is slightly less precise. And maybe

[00:32:55] the bacteria are doing something that is less fine. But you can like it. It's getting slightly more animal and less, you know, floral, less floral fruity. CB. And so when you would visit

[00:33:09] Koos, what was he like as a person besides not listening to you? What was he like? RG. Well, now it has changed a lot. But that was the first time we went. And he looks so much like

[00:33:22] a priest. And he's very serious. But he's a very nice person. CB. What do you think he was aiming to achieve? Did he ever share that with you? RG. I think he was aiming to achieve the best white

[00:33:34] wine possible because I think that he told me one that his father was not interested in white wine. And that was his challenge. And Koos made irregular red wines. The son is now making

[00:33:49] great red wines. CB. When was your first visit to Christophe? RG. In the 70s. But at that time, I think it was Jean-Marie, his father. I met Jean-Marie who was very nice. And at that time,

[00:34:04] it was very easy to taste the wines. And you can taste the wine. I said, you know, okay, I'm not very rich. I can only buy one or two bottles of Mueslini. And of course, I could

[00:34:14] buy the rest. But it was simple. And now to get a bottle of Mueslini, it's impossible. CB. How do you think it's the same or different how he interprets the Chambord Cru versus the Maurice

[00:34:26] Saint-Denis Cru? RG. Well, it's very faithful to the terroir. Since I think the Maurice Saint-Denis tastes like the Maurice Saint-Denis. The tannins are less, I would say, less refined. And the Chambord village is stunning for a Chambord village. And are the Rue Chaute that much

[00:34:46] different from a Bonne-Marre sometimes? Yes, but I'm not 100% sure I'd pick them out in the blind tasting. CB. Did you try the Bonne-Marre red soil, white soil comparison? RG. Yes, often. So it

[00:35:01] depends on vintage. I prefer, you know, the red or the white, yes. I think, you know, the Assemblage is better. CB. Better together. RG. Because some years into the tannins are harsher and some with

[00:35:14] the red sometimes less. It's not as easy. It is different, but not that dramatically different. So I think the good idea is the Assemblage. CB. And what do you think Christophe's strengths are

[00:35:29] as a domain owner? RG. He does everything right, but I always have impression he can do better. That's strange. I taste, you know, almost every year at the domain and I come out, I think,

[00:35:43] no, it's great. And in the early stage, ones are great. If you have the opportunity to come to taste, you know, at the kind of association with Domaine Familiaux as they call it,

[00:35:57] and it's normally in March at Le Dwayin, and they give always bottle wine. And you can taste them side by side. You have Meaux, Griveaux, you have Ravennaud, you have the Rouen, you have,

[00:36:10] so you can taste Rousseau, you can taste them side by side. And most of the time, I think that Rumier, Beaumar, is the best wine of the whole tasting. And when I taste the old wine, sometimes

[00:36:22] I say not as good as I hoped. And same for, you know, the part that owned by really one of my best friends, Michel Bonfant, who owns the Ruchotte. I love the Ruchotte. It's not aging as

[00:36:37] well as I want, which is a shame. But I tasted a few 78 recently and they are stunning. So it's always maybe a fantasy of mine that I wanted to be better. What were some of the key Burgundy

[00:36:52] domains that you really became familiar with that don't exist anymore? What were real standouts from old bottles that have disappeared? The obvious one is Henri Jalliet. And I think Henri Jalliet was a master because it was such a harmony between the viticulture, the winemaking,

[00:37:13] the élevage, the bottling, and even the marketing. Because each time you meet him, you say, what a lovely person. Very simple, clear. He can explain things that are in extremely clever and intelligent way. Very easy to understand what he says. He doesn't try to fool people.

[00:37:37] He was a great guy. And the thing is that, is it better than the Compti? Is the RC winemaking better than the... Or the Roi better at winemaking because they are... They insist more on

[00:37:51] leaving the stems and not Jalliet. Jalliet was totally... I think he never made wine with stems. And I have a tendency to be more into the de-stemming. You like that? Yes, because being a tea drinker, I know about extractions and I can see the harshness of certain things.

[00:38:14] So that's a problem. And when I see that the cheap teas have, well not stem, but they have the end of it, which is harder and very few leaves, you can see the difference. So this is why I do not like certain grape varieties that are over-tannic.

[00:38:32] Davey And what did you see as the difference between the crews that Jalliet vinified? Henri Well, the hierarchy is totally weird at Jalliet because normally the Richebourg should be the best, the Echeveau should be second,

[00:38:46] the Cro-Parenteau third and then the Brûlée, the Meurget and so on. For the three best, which means Cro-Parenteau, Echeveau and Richebourg, none of them is winning constantly when you put

[00:39:02] them side by side. And I think it is due to the fact that it was bottling barrel by barrel. So it's complicated. The last time we did it, and I'm not sure we'll do it again because you have to find the wines, we did Richebourg, Echeveau and Cro-Parenteau 78,

[00:39:23] the Echeveau was the best. The Cro-Parenteau was the least interesting of the three. Strange. Davey What do you think Cro-Parenteau expresses at its best? What are the characteristics of it? Which is the characteristic of Jalliet in general? Extremely pure fruit, extremely good oak,

[00:39:41] sweet wines, civilized tannins and always kept a florality to it. But it's almost with all this wine when you compare it to, you put it side by side with other growers. Which is the most intense?

[00:39:57] The most intense wine for me is still the Richebourg. And after that I would say the Cro and after that the Echeveau. But maybe Echeveau is more interesting now for us because I think

[00:40:10] most of the, I would say, Bulimic tasters now are going from heavily extracted Burgundy to much lighter. Davey Did you visit Domaine Le Fleuve? Yes, I used to visit more than I do. And in fact, I love going tasting at Domaine Le Fleuve with

[00:40:27] Steve Tanzer because Steve Tanzer is allowed to taste the Moix Echeveau. So when I'm with him, I'm allowed to taste the Moix Echeveau. I was close to Anne-Claude. I remember when we had

[00:40:42] tasting at Le Doyen or for the Domaine Privé, she was around and often we went upstairs to eat at the restaurants and she's a very nice person. She was a very nice person. What do you remember about her?

[00:41:00] She was extremely keen on biodynamics and very early. And she was right. I remember she always wanted to prove it to us when she started doing the Clavoyant, we always taste the Clavoyant with special vines and not special vines. And the difference was startling.

[00:41:22] What did you see as that difference? More depth. In the biodynamic? Yes, and slightly more acidity or the impression of acidity because you can be fooled by the taste and when you see the figures and you say, oh, that's not different. And her father Vincent,

[00:41:43] he's an ex from Vietnam. So he came very often. So we talk a lot and I remember I always had easily allocation and even when I sometimes I forgot because maybe I didn't like the vintage,

[00:41:58] but I didn't say that I didn't like the vintage. I didn't buy the wine. I could get back my allocation. What do you think some of the keys were to those wines in terms of understanding them?

[00:42:10] The Flev wine for me are puzzling because they are less fleshy than the wines from Lafon or Koch. They are more steely, doesn't prevent them to have free moxes and they are more heavily sulfur. It doesn't prevent them to be oxidized. Have you had the 15s?

[00:42:31] Yes, I received it. So it's funny because one of my close Belgian friend, we tasted together at the Domaine Familio and he said, this is a wine not to be bought from the Le Flev 15. I tasted the

[00:42:51] wine. I didn't say to him, you're damn wrong. The wine is fantastic. So I wrote a letter saying, I want my allocation. If you could get more, it's better. And this friend, he's a good taster, but he probably was influenced by people.

[00:43:10] What are some of your favorite vintages of Domaine Le Flev? 96. She sold it to me and she said, no, don't sell it. Please keep it at least 10 years. I still have very few bottles left and they are stunning. I believe that you follow Hubert Ligny pretty closely.

[00:43:28] Well, yes, I buy every year from him. Shame that Romain died. He was a very nice person and very talented. Laurent is the more congenial person. Let's hope he'll be as talented as... Well, we'll see. I buy wine every year. Maybe I shouldn't make a vertical tasting.

[00:43:49] What have you seen change in the Burgundy market since the seventies? I mean, it must be a striking difference. It's striking different and the prices are up, up, up. I understand in the Cézanne Vintage

[00:44:03] that they have to raise the price because their harvest was so small. And now, there's too much demand for it. Well, normally they should raise much more because the demand is there,

[00:44:17] but it's dangerous. And you see, Koch is not doing it. The prices direct from Koch are very soft. So I think that's a way to do it, but you cannot satisfy the demand, the world demand.

[00:44:33] And you can see the price of Koch now in the second market there are soared up incredibly. And it's more or less deserved since he didn't have Primoxes and most of the other are having Primoxes. Did it surprise you how popular Burgundy ended up getting from

[00:44:53] the perspective of being there in the seventies and eighties? Has it been surprising? It's totally amazing. I thought that people would get away from Burgundy. I was hoping so. It didn't happen. And strangely enough, the Asians are keen on Burgundy, which

[00:45:10] I think is really surprising because the marketing of Bordeaux was so fantastic. And especially the smaller Bordeaux has lost a lot of interest from people. And now they're more interested in Burgundy. And finally now, what is the American wine press now

[00:45:31] is keen on Burgundy. They used not to because who was actually buying a lot of Burgundies in the old time? Very few people, except for the DRC, Vauguevay, the really, I would say famous and

[00:45:45] expensive ones. And now things are changing probably thanks to DRC and Jaillet and Koch, that's the three magic names for them. And how did you find that Burgundy interacted with your cuisine? You know, pairing wine and food is much more complicated than one thing.

[00:46:04] You know, I wrote a few articles about it, but it's extremely personal. People do not chew than drink the same way. Some people are chewing very quickly, swallowing and drinking right away. Some people leave a few seconds. And when you leave a few seconds, it's always easier.

[00:46:24] And you have to take into concentration something that is not very interesting or pretty to hear, but nobody has the same dental cavities. So it means that dental cavities, when they are deeper or larger, you have more residues of the food, of the solid food.

[00:46:47] And they stay in the cavities. So it means that they are present for a very long time. And the wine just, you swallow the wine, you drink it and you swallow it very quickly.

[00:46:57] So the time of the contact between the wine and the food is totally disproportionate. So this is how, for me, people do not feel that the pairing of food and wine is the same for... When you take

[00:47:12] it, you think, oh, this goes well. For me, it doesn't go so well. It's one of the answers for me. Adamus We've spoken a fair amount about Burgundy, but I know that you spend a lot of time in Bordeaux as well. David Yeah, especially, especially

[00:47:26] Pomerol, since I was nicknamed Monsieur Pomerol by L'Amateur des Vins de Bordeaux. Adamus And how did you see the different terroirs of Pomerol? David Well, when you speak about Chateau, which are brands, it's more complicated because I remember at a certain time I went down with a map,

[00:47:44] a very detailed map of Pomerol. And I wanted the growers to show me where are their parcels. And sometimes they are really space over. It's not one stuff, it's the parcel all over the appellation. So it means that the wines are not as terroir telling as Burgundy.

[00:48:07] Well, Burgundy, of course, they can have a different plot all over the appellation, but it's more precise in Burgundy. So the terroir, of course, we all know that the grave and the clay are the two most important things in Pomerol. And the strange thing

[00:48:29] at Pomerol is that, you know, a little bit like Puy-les-Nimours-Achers, it's very difficult to have cellars because they have water. You dig, you get water right away. And have you noticed that at Puy-les-Nimours-Achers, there are no cellars? They cannot dig. Adamus For you, what's the difference between the

[00:48:49] clay expression of Pomerol? David Yes, because clay and Merlot is almost a perfect match, at least so far. The upper part of Pomerol are heavily with special clay, are more quality driven. And after that you have, you know,

[00:49:08] the assemblage, you have assemblage of course of grape varieties and of plots. And the grape variety is very interesting. Pomerol is almost 100%, Petrus is almost 100% Merlot. And a lot of people are trying to emulate that. Le Pin is 100% Merlot. And some of the

[00:49:27] Saint-Emilion are becoming 100% Merlot. They're going back to Cabernet Franc now. I remember in the old days, people were always saying to me, Medoc is Cabernet Sauvignon, Pomerol is Merlot, and Cabernet Franc is Saint-Emilion, which is less and less true. Even the Merlot is gaining ground.

[00:49:45] And Saint-Emilion, Cabernet Franc is making a big comeback. Adamus How have you seen structural differences like that between the 70s and now in Bordeaux? The technique has evolved a lot. Well, the culture a lot also because some of them,

[00:50:01] few, but are going to biodynamics and it's becoming more and more precise because in the old days there was no second wines. Everything that was harvested was in the Premier Vin. And now you have first, second wine and you have four wines sometimes. I think what has Chateau

[00:50:23] Latour, Le Grand Vin, Les Fonds de Latour, Pauillac and they probably have a wine that they sell in bulk. So we've got four hierarchies of wine. So I think it is the important point, selections,

[00:50:37] and now the biodynamics or culture that are much more well done than the other days. The yields are probably lower. The vinification has changed a lot, much more, I would say, but extraction. And now some of them do not want to call it extraction anymore. They want

[00:50:58] to call it infusion. And in my opinion, the best quality price ratio now is in Bordeaux. And especially the Bordeaux Superior and Premier Côte, Côte de Blay, Côte de Fonds,

[00:51:13] so I think the quality is incredible for the price. And they cannot sell as easily as they want. So it's totally unfair. And if you make blind tastings with a lot of wines, with the Cru Classé, the difference now is minimal and the price is much higher.

[00:51:35] I think people should go back to Bordeaux. They deserve it and the wines are actually fantastic, reliable. I remember 20 years ago I was tasting for Cuisine et Vin de France. That was one of

[00:51:48] the most fascinating tastings, plural. We did it for a few years. Supermarket wines. So it means that Carine Valentin, who was the head of that tasting, she was buying wines from the supermarket, bottle wines. And you have Côte d'Uron, you have Bordeaux, Burgundy. Bordeaux was very reliable.

[00:52:10] Sud, Le Sud, it was Languedoc-Roussillon, was rather reliable. The worst was Burgundy. The Burgundy that you found in the supermarket was filthy. And it happened much more in Burgundy. I was really surprised, but over 20 years ago. When we return from the break, an important figure

[00:52:30] in the history of Bordeaux enters into Robert's life and becomes a key mentor for him. When did you first meet Jean-Claude Barraway? In the late 70s. That's coming up right after this. It's not enough to make great wine. You also have to reach the consumer that appreciates

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[00:53:50] needs of your wine brand. As the technical director of establishments Jean-Pierre Moillet X, Jean-Claude Barraway oversaw the winemaking for famed Bordeaux properties Chateau Petrus, Chateau Trottenois, and several others. But Barraway was not the obvious choice for the job

[00:54:10] that he would end up holding for over 40 years. When he was originally hired by Jean-Pierre Moillet X, Barraway was still a young man and the chance to make Chateau Petrus initially came to him as a

[00:54:23] bit of a shock. This is how Jean-Pierre's son, Christian Moillet X, recalled that period of time. Christian and Jean-Claude Barraway would end up working together at Petrus and at other properties for about four decades. Jean-Claude Barraway was met first by my father as a trainee. He was 22

[00:54:46] in 1964 and he met my father and he kind of, at his own surprise, I mean Jean-Claude Barraway's surprise, my father said, why don't you come and work for us? His approach, almost philosophical

[00:55:05] and which fits so well my father's approach, was wine is for drinking, you see. So clearly he would love the wines and Merlot was such a fit for him to be gentle, to be pleasant,

[00:55:20] to give pleasure. It was a new era for Petrus when Barraway took over the winemaking in 1964 as the previous owner, Madame Loubout, had passed away in 1961. Christian Moillet X joined Barraway at Petrus in 1970 and when you hear about the vintages of Petrus from around that time,

[00:55:40] it can sound like they were striving for an understated interpretation of a terroir that tended to give powerful wines. Rather than playing for even more power and even more alcohol, they elected to do the opposite. Petrus was always higher in alcohol than its neighbors,

[00:56:00] even in those weak vintages of the 70s, we were always at 13. There's a natural richness. What is so special about Petrus, it is a wine with great character, I would say. Complexité is a word which is abused, but there's of course a complexity in any great wine.

[00:56:22] But character, you know, it stands by itself. It's worth emphasizing here that Petrus, amongst Pomerol wines, can stand out for how powerful it is. As a wine from Pomerol, Petrus is not typical and that is something many people have noted as a complement of that wine.

[00:56:42] Among the Pomerols, which as I said are so approachable in their youth, that will not apply to Petrus. Petrus has a natural structure. I would not say tannic structure, but a structure which makes it a little, how could I say, hautain in French,

[00:57:05] that dignité means that here I am, I am what I am and that's it, you see. So then it softens with age, but that natural structure, I would say is a man who is convinced of not of his

[00:57:22] quality but of his strength, you see. You can grasp here the juxtaposition of Barroway style, which privileged drinkability instead of extraction, with the terroir of Petrus, which tended to give wines of strength and structure. I have never spoken to Jean-Claude

[00:57:39] Barroway about this or even asked him this question, but it seems to me from this vantage point that he was playing a bit against type when it came to Petrus, probably because he did not

[00:57:50] want the wines to become overblown or made into a caricature of themselves. He was producing Petrus in a more understated way without going for a super ripe result. Now the important thing to understand is that as the 1980s moved into the 1990s, Chateau Petrus was acknowledged and widely

[00:58:10] praised as one of the very greatest wines in the entire world. Both the 1989 and 1990 vintages of Petrus received 100 point scores from the influential wine critic Robert Parker, scores that indicated that they were perfect wines. But by the time the early 2000s had come along,

[00:58:29] Jean-Claude Barroway was somewhat taken to task by that same wine critic, and Parker labeled Barroway's approach as ultra conservative in multiple editions of his books. When applying that label, Parker probably had in mind as a contrast the higher ripeness levels associated

[00:58:49] with another right bank winemaker, Michel Roland. Barroway was often contrasted with Roland around that time. Barroway, for his part, rejected the trend towards what he termed a standard taste or what might be referred to as Parkerization these days. And here it is worth keeping in mind that

[00:59:10] wines from the same grape varieties, as they move towards over ripeness, tend to taste more and more alike. These discussions about ripeness weren't always entirely amicable at the time, and they were not academic either. Parker's opinions had large ramifications in the wine buying market.

[00:59:30] Christian Moyax, when I brought up the question of ripeness, said that that subject had always been a tricky one between himself, Parker, and Jean-Claude Barroway. And Barroway, for his part, was quoted in the Washington Post in 2006 as saying, a wine should tell you the story of

[00:59:47] the place it came from. If I'm a conductor playing Mozart, can I add notes to it? Pretentious men do this. Which sounds pretty steadfast about his own approach. But it seems clear that the criticism of

[01:00:03] that approach was also on his mind when he further remarked in that same interview, you need to be realistic and the day you can't make a living, you have to change. Jean-Claude Barroway would retire from establishment Jean-Pierre Moyax the very next year,

[01:00:21] in 2007. The man who had originally hired him to make Petrusse, Jean-Pierre Moyax, had already passed away back in 2003. Christian Moyax would note in his remarks about Barroway that Barroway had always favored elegance over extraction. But it's worth noting that Christian

[01:00:40] Moyax, when I interviewed him, discussed his own shift towards preferring a riper style of wine in more recent years. Since I left Petrusse, it's a fascinating experience. It's a second youth for

[01:00:54] me or the third career, I don't know, to give to the other chateaus, specifically La Flotte Petrusse, Trotanois. The right amount of concentration I like and probably the recent vintages I have made are a little richer, a little more concentration, a little higher level of tannins as well.

[01:01:17] That's what I like today. It may be an evolution. When you get older, you need stronger wines. Wines have become kind of an elixir for me and medication almost. And a similar shift also happened for the wines of Chateau Petrusse, where a riper,

[01:01:35] more powerful expression of the wine is made today by Olivier Barroway, who is one of Jean-Claude Barroway's sons. Let's return to Robert Viffian's interview to hear more about his first meeting with Jean-Claude Barroway. When did you first meet Jean-Claude Barroway? In the late 70s.

[01:01:57] I had an appointment. I was supposed to meet Jean-Claude and out of luck, I was having lunch with my wife at Logis de la Cadenne in Saint-Emilion and was sitting in front of it just

[01:02:13] next. And so during the meal, he stood up and he asked me, are you the person I'm going to meet this afternoon? I said, if you are Jean-Claude Barroway, yes. So this is how we connected.

[01:02:29] And after that, we probably shared a few glasses in the restaurant. So we had a night chat together and I learned tremendously from him. Wine tasting and Pommal. What did he tell you?

[01:02:45] About acidity and about sweetness and acidity in the wine. And he said to me, be careful because sometimes you think you had this acidity and it's not totally correct. And he showed me the

[01:02:59] analyzers of the wine, so you see you got this acidity in this wine and the other one. So sometimes it's counterbalanced by a certain kind of richness in the wine or whatever.

[01:03:14] It helped me a lot. To realize the perception and... Yes, there were things that are more complex than the just direct taste of acidity in your mouth. And after that, sometimes I ask, do you have the

[01:03:28] chemical analysis I want to see them for that wine? Some of them do not want. So... And what was the style of Jean-Claude Barroway? Jean-Claude Barroway, I think it's close to Paineux in a way, but he was more interested

[01:03:45] than Paineux with viticulture, which was extremely rare at that time with Bordeaux people, with wine makers in general, especially that they are oenologists. They are not supposed to be, not to tend the vines. But he got interested very early.

[01:04:04] And how did you see the characteristics of the different YX properties? The style of Jean-Claude is, I would say, refined from Émile Paineux plus the cultural stuff. And the style is still... Well, if you want to compare it to Michel Roland, which is

[01:04:25] somebody I like very much, I would say it's almost between Mortay and Meunier. With Mortay being Roland. Exactly. And more extraction, more sweetness. And rightly so. And I do think that the Barroway style is evolving slightly toward Roland style. In some lunches, you know,

[01:04:46] the other lunch with the Pomerol Union, I was eating normally with Roland or the Moix, and I was shifting. And people were saying this was very strange. I'm friends with both of them. This is no problem. We can discuss, you know.

[01:05:02] And you developed a rapport with both Michel Roland and Robert Parker. Yes. Robert Parker was introduced to me by a late friend who was heading something like IDV, you know, Chateau Loudain. And since at that time I was specializing in Pomerol,

[01:05:21] so Bob came over with that person, Martin Bamford. And he wanted me to tell him about the Pomerol. So this is how we became friends. And thanks to him, Michel Roland came to see me,

[01:05:38] and we became very close with Roland. And at that time, it was easy to taste with Parker because Michel was organizing a tasting in Chateau, Chateau in Pomerol when we're tasting the Pomerol. And that afternoon we're tasting the Saint-Emilion, and after that we're tasting,

[01:05:54] you know, the Laissez Appellation in another Chateau. And we're moving like that. And some of the owners were invited. And starting from 1990, Michel decided no, with only the owner of the property himself and Parker. And still I was around, Parker told me,

[01:06:15] okay, Robert, come with us. So we're tasting the four of us, just like that. And it went on for a long time. What did you observe about Parker as a taster? Parker is an extremely reliable taster.

[01:06:30] He can be very good at blind tasting also. When it comes to wine that he likes, he's extremely spontaneous. I'm almost the opposite since I taste according to the Appellation. I do not taste according to my taste. Well, I taste according to my taste, but also according

[01:06:49] to the Appellation. Parker is more closer to his taste. So this is how he can be so reliable. Seemed like a nice guy in person. Parker's a darling. But he can be really interesting because sometimes when we were

[01:07:05] tasting at some Chateaus and I got out of it, I said, you know, I don't like the wine of the owner. And he said to me, me neither. So I said, you know, how can you? He's hosting us. We're having

[01:07:19] lunch with him, you know, tasting old wine and so on. So it would be difficult for me to write it up. For me, no. He said to me, no problem. I'll do it anyway. I think that's great stuff because

[01:07:30] it's so kind and so spontaneous. And sometimes it can be totally impartial. So that's interesting dichotomy. And this is one of the reasons why I do not want to write about it because

[01:07:42] I have friends and it's difficult for me to put them down. And I always try to be not too nasty. So it's not a good way of writing. What else struck you about Parker?

[01:07:53] His appetite. He eats as much as I do. His favorite restaurant is probably Le Milouis. And Le Milouis, his portions are enormous. But I'm eating, well, according also to the appellation.

[01:08:09] When I have to eat a lot, I can eat a lot. When I eat, you know, Japanese food or I can eat very little. But he has enormous appetite and he's a great taster. No doubt about it. I remember,

[01:08:24] he's a few blind tasting with it, picked out the wine easily because at L'Angelus, I remember, he picked out two or three wines. And what did you recognize about Michel Roland as a taster? Because he's famed for being a good blender.

[01:08:38] He's a fantastic taster and he should be better than we are because he knows about the technical aspect of the wines. He knows about the figures, analyzes and so on. And we do not know that much

[01:08:53] about vinification, élevage and so on. And the guy has so much experience, you know, he's vinifying in so many vineyards, so many countries. How many wines do a guy from Bordeaux makes

[01:09:09] when he's just an owner? Just one or two wines. He makes 100 wines a year. So can you imagine, the experience he has gathered? And what is extraordinary about Roland, he's tasting. He's one of the best tasters I know. Adamus Le Moynes Yeah, is that true?

[01:09:27] Roland Le Moyne Yeah. Adamus Le Moyne What is noticeable about that? Roland Le Moyne He tastes very quickly, precisely. I do not see, I've never seen him taking notes because I think he just wants to know what he does with it.

[01:09:39] He's very focused and he probably has an idea in mind each time he's tasting a wine. Adamus Le Moynes So Spurrier gave you a sort of early introduction to California wine. Roland Le Moyne Yes, he was a seminal because I didn't know

[01:09:52] anything about American wine except, you know, the jug wine that you can find in the supermarket. So he made a trip there and he introduced me to all these wines that I think some of them are stunning.

[01:10:06] Adamus Le Moyne And you got to try some of the Paris wines, Paris tasting wines. Roland Le Moyne Yes, when Stephen staged it, he said to me, you know, I need a taster that are our names and you're not well known enough.

[01:10:20] So he called me, he said to me, okay, I cannot invite you to that tasting. You know the reason, but come with me the morning after. We'll taste the leftover. So we tasted the leftovers, just the two of us. Adamus Le Moyne What was that like?

[01:10:35] Roland Le Moyne The results were almost the same. So it was extremely embarrassing for the French wines at that time. And Stephen was blacklisted for a few years in Burgundy because of that tasting. Adamus Le Moyne You ended up buying some California wine for the restaurant.

[01:10:52] Roland Le Moyne Stephen and I gave a list of wine we wanted from California. He had one that I tasted with him. And a friend of ours, Pamela Mead, imported the wines. At that time it was very cheap.

[01:11:06] So even cheaper than the dollar was at the lowest point compared to the French franc. And we bought a lot of wines from, and unfortunately, I think very few people bought from her. She went bankrupt.

[01:11:22] This is how I have, you know, wine from the mid-70s from the States. And some of them are incredibly good. Adamus Le Moyne What have been standouts for you? Roland Le Moyne Of course, you know, the Heitz, the Mayakamas, Sterling. What else is really good?

[01:11:38] Ridge, of course. Ridge is the closest to Pouillac, to me. I had a vertical tasting of Ridge was spectacular. And it tasted like, well, the young ones are American, but the old ones were French. Adamus Le Moyne I know what you mean by that. Roland Le Moyne Yeah.

[01:11:55] Adamus Le Moyne It takes a second for it to make that switch the way the oak reeds, I think. But they were great. And the Zins are fantastic. Adamus Le Moyne What do they think about Zin in Paris?

[01:12:05] Roland Le Moyne They don't know much about Zin in Paris. I love Zin. What are the Zin from that incredible lady winemaker, Helen something, no? Adamus Le Moyne Helen Terlita Martinelli Zins? Roland Le Moyne Yes. Well, friends brought me the Zin from her. I think they are spectacular.

[01:12:22] They're big wines. But they are what they should be. You expect wine from the States to be strong, not light and delicate. And some of them being in American oak has been better. Adamus Le Moyne And you've made wine a few times. Roland Le Moyne Not exactly making.

[01:12:44] I had one made like I hoped, but I cannot control everything because I'm not on the spot. Yes, I started making special cuvées for myself in 82. The first vintage was 82. It was at some time. It was Domaine de Chastelet. It was a Premier Côte de Bordeaux.

[01:13:05] And at that time, I wanted to have 100% new oak. So I went down to see him. We tasted the 82, which was easy to taste. And I said, how about putting it in 100% new oak? Incredible strike of luck. The guy was an old tonelier. So we made experiments.

[01:13:25] We had 20 different barrels, different oak, different sharing and so on. So we did. And after that, he accepted me to choose my bottling dates. Because when I tasted the wine, it should be kept. It should be bottled or whatever.

[01:13:43] And the oenologist was not very happy because I always asked for extended stay in the barrel. And well, I was right. After that, with his own wine, he did what I did. So I believe your restaurant was quite fashionable and very cool to be in the 80s.

[01:14:02] Is that correct? Yes. Many people came? Yes. And that was when your dad was still alive? Yes. And your dad was Leon? Yes. And he worked for the Citroën car company? Citroën, yes, exactly.

[01:14:14] So long days for him because it was start 9.30 at Citroën, leaving at 7 and coming to the restaurant and helping us out with leaving with us at 12.30. What did he think of the restaurant? He was not interested in the restaurant when it started.

[01:14:32] But when the restaurant became a little bit better known, he took a serious interest in it. And so what was that like in the dining room here? The dining room, which was packed all the time.

[01:14:46] And who were some of the people that you developed a fondness for that would come by? No, there's not too many celebrities. A lot of celebrities are coming, but I'm not actually friends with them. Because most of them are living abroad.

[01:15:02] And strangely enough, even with artists that I like, I rarely develop an actual friendship. There was one that I was very close to, but I realized it was complicated because sometimes you like their works at an early stage that you don't like it anymore.

[01:15:20] So it's always difficult to be close to people and say, you know, I'm not buying a work anymore. But you were friendly with Keith Haring, right? Yes, he came very often. And he brought, you know, George Kondo, Kenny Schaaf, because of him, Jean-Michel Basquiat came.

[01:15:35] But before them, I think it was Schnabel. Schnabel, Salé, Fischl, all these people came. That was really the 80s power generation for art. Yes, and they came and the most faithful was Schnabel. He took a liking to you and the restaurant?

[01:15:52] Yes, he loved the restaurant and I think one of his wife he met here. Did you lose a lot of plates because of that? You know, because he does the broken plates on the canvas. Yes, I do not have a broken plate, which I regret.

[01:16:05] But I didn't buy one because it's heavy to handle. And at that time, I didn't have the money to buy one. I have two works by Schnabel, but not a plate painting.

[01:16:16] When you say to me that it's hard to be friends with someone when you don't like their work and that can affect your relationship, that for me implies that there's like a moral dimension to taste of aesthetic taste. For you, it's wrong.

[01:16:33] Is that true or am I reading too much into it? Yes, it's more or less true because I'd rather not say that to people. Yeah. So it means that most of the time I don't want to get too close to people. I see.

[01:16:45] You wanted to protect your taste. Yes. There are people that I like very much. I guess my problem is if I want to be friends with someone, they have to be unfortunately talented and they have to be good human beings. Yeah. And how did you meet your wife?

[01:17:04] It was my cousin's wedding and she was the best girl. So Christmas 1969, she's a Spanish teacher. She only taught for a few years and after that she came to help me. Strangely enough, she didn't study Vietnamese. She studied Japanese. So she has a BA, yes, in Japanese.

[01:17:28] She also studied after that gemology. She has a diploma. So like you, many interests really. That's true. I feel like that's been a great way for you to keep life exciting for yourself. Is that a fair statement to have many interests?

[01:17:41] It's strange but I do in fact, I have many obsessions and I spend a lot of time for wine, food, art, cinema, a little bit literature but not, and of course a lot about music. What are the things or events that have been happy for you? Many, many.

[01:18:03] Yeah, well that's good. Yes, so I taste so many great wines. I ate so many great food. I read fantastic books. I have very strange stuff about reading because at the same time I didn't read at all. I was just reading, reading things about wine, food, not fiction.

[01:18:25] And I went back to fiction because I read a book that I loaned at the, I spend my time in libraries in fact. I'm borrowing a lot of books because I do not want to buy books because it takes too much room. Exactly.

[01:18:39] So I read them first and when I need them, I buy them. And so it means that sometimes I have to read them twice because I like, you know, underlining, making notes and whatever. Have there been particular disappointments that have happened in your life? Disappointment, not interesting.

[01:18:56] Robert Vivian was always finding something new in a glass of wine. Thank you very much for being here today. All Drink to That is hosted and produced by myself, Levi Dalton. Aaron Scala has contributed original pieces. Editorial assistance has been provided by Bill Kimsey.

[01:19:12] The show music was performed and composed by Rob Moose and Thomas Bartlett. Show artwork by Alicia Tanoian. T-shirts, sweatshirts, coffee mugs and so much more including show stickers, notebooks and even gift wrap are available for sale.

[01:19:25] If you check the show website alldrinktothatpod.com that's I-L-L drink to that P-O-D dot com which is the same place you'd go to sign up for our email list or to make one of the crucially important donations that help keep this show operating.

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[01:20:34] Well, it wins often. La Tache doesn't win that often. Romanée Saint-Vivant is the... especially in the young vintage is stunning.