A Report From Wine Explorer Diego Samper
Paris, France
By the end of the night at Bouillon Racine, we were the last table, and the waiters were laughing with us. Fair enough. We’d eaten like the French: every course, in order, no shortcuts. We’d left like Argentines, which is to say not really at all.
Pato had invited me. He’s an Argentine wine importer in Paris who works with small wineries and gets their bottles, Torrontés among them, onto French tables. It’s more or less what I do too: find wines worth carrying a long way from home and put them in front of new people.
The evening started with beers at a pub with a group of his old friends. I didn’t know anyone, and nobody seemed to mind. One was heading back to Buenos Aires after six years in Paris; others were visiting. Most of them worked in finance, though that barely came up. There was enough to talk about that a nine-thirty dinner reservation felt early.
Walking into an established group isn’t easy. There are years of stories behind every name, and you’ve missed most of the chapters. They pulled me in anyway, and before long we were all heading to dinner together.
I’d been reading about manners lately, and about the small courtesies that seem obvious until you notice you’ve stopped practising them. Inviting someone along is one. Making the new person feel like part of the table is another. Pato and his friends did both without making a thing of it.
Another friend, not the one leaving, told me it had taken him about six years to really get France. He’d since bought a house just outside Paris. He had a dog, and finally room for a barbecue.
I loved that. Six years of figuring out how another country works, and what he ends up with is space to do the most Argentine thing there is: light a fire and have people over.
The French Art of Taking Your Time
At Bouillon Racine, in the 6th, we started with escargots. I had the steak tartare; the others went for duck or steak. Red all night: Mâcon, then Rhône, then Bordeaux.
I’ve grown fond of how the French build a meal. The full version starts with an apéritif, then the entrée, which here means the starter. Then the main, cheese, dessert, coffee, and maybe a digestif.
Cheese comes before dessert and gets its own turn, and I have a lot of respect for that. You’ve finished your main, you’re comfortable, and someone hands you a reason not to move.
I don’t do the whole ceremony at home every night. But when there’s an occasion, I’m all for it. Each course buys the evening a little more time. Someone starts another story. You ask the question you’d never get to over a quick lunch. Dinner stops being something you fit in and becomes the main event.
The wine surprised me a bit. Escargots, tartare, duck, steak, then cheese, and we drank red the whole way through. Different plates, the same bottles. Nobody was taking notes or matching a glass to every order. We were just having a good time, and I’d do it again tomorrow.
That’s worth keeping in mind when you open a bottle at home. Drink it with whatever you were going to cook anyway. Save a little for the cheese and see how it changes. Your own kitchen table is as good a place as any to work out what you like.
A Little French Tradition, A Little Argentine Spirit
It’s also why I like bringing wines across borders. Pato puts Argentine bottles in front of French drinkers. We bring wines from elsewhere to you. Someone opens one with friends, and a taste of another country turns up on an ordinary Tuesday.
We were still a table of Argentines. We did the French meal properly, cheese and dessert and all, and then we did our part: the sobremesa, the long talk after the plates are gone, when nobody follows them out.
The French had given us every reason to stay.
I keep thinking about that friend outside Paris with his house, his dog and his barbecue. Six years into life in France, he’d made room for something he’d always loved. Take what’s good from wherever you are, and keep what you came in with. The mix makes us richer.
So yes, steal from the French. Steal the part where dinner gets to be the whole evening.
Our French collection is next at Bonner Private Wines, and there’s still time to sign up. Open a bottle, put out some cheese before dessert, and see how long everyone stays.
Diego Samper
Wine Explorer
