Secrets of a Paris Wine Cellar

Aug 22, 2011 by Darla Worden

In Paris, the key to good living is very simple: cheese, cafés, pastries and wine. C’est tout.  Thanks to an adventure that began with one 60,000-mile airline reward ticket more than a couple of years ago, I finished up my now annual month of residence in the City of Lights with a grand finale perfect for its ability to capture the complex textures, scents and tastes of France in a single place—a wineglass.

On my final night I attended the “Tour de France of Wine” tasting at O Chateau along with about 50 other Americans from Chicago, Colorado, and California along with Canadians and Australians.  Our sommelier Olivier Magny—the founder and “O” of O Chateau—toured us around the Champagne, Loire, Burgundy, South West, Bordeaux and Rhone areas in France all from the comfort of a wine cellar near the Louvre.  We learned about the concept of “terroir“—or how the soil contributes to the final grape and how that is one way that America is deficient in grape growing.

In France, it seems grape vines grow down into the ground as much as 30 meters to obtain nutrients, creating a complex flavor in a grape.  In the US, many vineyards use drip irrigation, which causes the vine roots to grow horizontally along the surface instead of vertically into the earth so the flavors are not as complex.

We learned about identifying the many flavors found in wine, like fruit, berries, citrus, or sometimes stranger flavors like dirt, mushroom, or as one woman yelled, “cheese!”

“Um, I think it would be better to say buttery, not cheese,” our French sommelier said gravely.

The French use a much lighter touch when it comes to oak in Chardonnay. As Olivier pointed out:  “Eet keels everything, because eet is too much.”

Facts that I found amazing:

• 97 percent of wine purchased in the US is consumed within 24 hours.
• 3.61 Euros is the average price of a bottle of wine in France.
• Since 1980 French wine production has been divided by two—Olivier blames this on French women who do not drink enough wine because they want to be skinny (not that wine would make one fat but French women just don’t care about wine!).
• Only 45 percent of French women drink wine on a regular basis.
• France has 150,000 wineries that produce about 15,000 bottles per year; Gallo, however, makes 4 million bottles PER DAY.
• 5 percent of all wine is corked, developed from a bacteria in the cork. (This is the wine that when the waiter pours it in the glass, you sample and spit on the floor—not really!  You would simply send the bottle back.)
• There are so many wineries in France that it has hard to find the same bottle twice—you could buy a bottle you like in one shop but when you try to buy the same bottle across town it would be impossible.
• Rose is the popular choice of wines from May-September in France.  The best roses are from the Cote de Provence.
• Yellowtail (Australia) sells 22 percent of the world’s wine, more than all French wines together.
• Hangovers are usually caused from dehydration not the wine itself.

Olivier is writing a book about terroir and has a blog called Stuff Parisians Like.

His book also titled “Stuff Parisians Like” will be published in November—as Olivier points out, an excellent Christmas present.

Olivier also notes that we should support the people who produce wines independently.  They are true artists who produce wine because of the tradition and the desire to produce the best wine in the world. I left the wine tasting wondering why anyone would ever buy anything other than French wine—and ready to put my new knowledge to use on both sides of the pond.

A bona fide Francophile who has spent time working and living in Paris, Darla Worden hosts the summer Left Bank Writers Retreat and writes about her French-flavored adventures in the 60,000 Mile Ticket to Paris blog.