But Seriously, Who's the Best Caviste?

Dishing my own favorites, in the wake of an award from Le Fooding. Plus: Jean-Yves Péron on Piemontese grape varieties. And Fabio Gea's dinosaur wines.

Nov 27, 2025

Auvergne chef Harry Lester accepting the award for “Meilleur Comptoir” at Le Fooding’s award ceremony, Nov. 17th. He’s meilleur everything, in my book.

On November 17th, I was as surprised as anyone to learn that French culinary media outlet Le Fooding named my tiny cave-à-manger in Chagny the Meilleur Caviste (tr.: Best Wine Retailer) of France of 2025. The news was published online slightly in advance of its announcement by the host of the awards event, which took place at the Paris City Hall and which doubled as the launch party for Le Fooding’s 25th annual guide.

I had a few moments to mentally prepare acknowledgements to several far more experienced cavistes who were also attending the event, notably Le Verre Volé’s Cyril Bordarier and Auvergne restaurateur Harry Lester. But each of the eighteen awards-winners of the evening was allotted only about twenty seconds to speak, which is to say, barely enough time for me to thank the Native Companion.1 Thankfully, everyone in attendance already seemed to know just what Le Fooding generally means by “Best.” (“Newest.”)

I have, in the past, had a lot of fun mocking Le Fooding, particularly for its jarring launch of an English website back in 2014. Nowadays, I guess I’m a grown-up with a business to run, since I accepted the award, and the free caviar, with gratitude.2

Anyway, the award seems like a nice occasion to share my own highly subjective list of Meilleur Cavistes - the ones whose examples taught me everything I know about selling natural wine in a cave-à-manger. The unpaywalled list is appended to the end of this post, just scroll down.

For subscribers, some new material at last!

A new INTERVIEW with SAVOIE maestro JEAN-YVES PERON, on his takeaways from almost a DECADE of vinifying PIEMONTESE GRAPE VARIETIES. Read here.
A new INTERVIEW with LANGHE visionary FABIO GEA, whose LABORIOUS, MADCAP vinification experiments often result in MAJESTIC PIEMONTESE MASTERPIECES. Read here.

That’s all for now. Astute readers may have noticed a certain dip in my frequency of posting of late. I’ve just been stretched very thin between La Cave du Centre and the two-year-old at home. There is hope around the corner: I’ll be shortening the cave’s opening hours in the weeks to come, and I’ll be hiring a part-time helper. In short, you’ll be hearing more from me. In the meantime, please accept my heartfelt thanks for sticking with me throughout this transition period!

Yours sincerely,

Aaron, the Greatest Caviste of the Universe And All Time

THE BEST CAVISTES OF FRANCE

As the profession’s name implies, a caviste is someone who takes care of a cellar, or cave. The work of a caviste consists of amassing a cellar of wine and distributing it to clients, ideally according to the maturity of the individual wines, rather than the imperatives of commerce. (These latter, of course, necessarily affect the buying habits of even the best cavistes.)

Distribution is invariably an act of salesmanship, because few are the cavistes who conduct their business without competition. The work of the caviste thus involves maintaining a balance between satisfying the desires of the clientele (for the rarest or the cheapest wines), satisfying the desires of the caviste’s providers (for the sales of wines at optimum maturity, or merely for the greatest sales, as the case may be), and the satisfaction of the caviste him or herself (for the maintenance of the greatest wine selection, for the greatest professional renown, and / or merely for the greatest sales, as the case may be).

So what makes a great caviste?

I tend to apply the same litmus test to cavistes as I do to any other profession. Most aesthetic divides, in most professions, are not merely aesthetic: there is almost always one position that is, you might say, subsidized by reality. One position that is incentivized by the prevailing norms of contemporary society, while its opposite works against them. You might find yourself without preference when it comes to choosing between the wines of famous regions like Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy, and the wines of the less-renowned places like the South-West, the Languedoc, or Aveyron. But almost everyone would agree that it easier to make more money, faster, by specializing in the wines of the famous regions. You might find yourself agnostic vis-à-vis conventional versus natural wines, but almost everyone would agree that it is easier to make more money, faster, with the former. Reality just bears this stuff out. This is why my heart belongs to cavistes who work against this reality.

I don’t see much point in doing anything - let alone such a sedentary, unsexy profession as caviste - unless one is also fighting for something greater than oneself.

The ten cavistes on the list below all have all staked out contrarian positions in this regard. All of them began their careers at a time when natural wine was unknown to mass consumers, before it had any whiff of the zeitgeist about it. Half of those cited on the list below run (or ran) hybrid establishments known as caves-à-manger, literally “wine shops where you can eat.” These are places where you buy a bottle at retail margins, plus a nominal corkage fee, and drink it with your meal. It’s a format that was popular in Paris and several other cities throughout France in the 2000s and early 2010s, before most of its foremost practitioners realized that demand had increased to an extent that permitted them to simply charge normal restaurant mark-ups on wine. (Cf. Le Verre Volé in Paris, La Dilettante in Beaune, etc.)

On some level, the caviste is a metropolitan invention. (In a bygone era, country dwellers made their own wine, or sought it directly from neighbors.) If the greatest buying power in France remains situated among Paris cavistes, the true work of the caviste - aging wine until its good - is today most perceptible in certain locations outside the capital, places where sales occur at a slower pace - closer to the rhythms of wine itself.

MY CAVISTE HALL OF FAME

In alphabetical order.

Christine Cannac - Chai Christine Cannac (Bédarieux)

The greatest bottle of wine I tasted this year was a magnum of Axel Prüfer’s 2013 “Pas de Côté,” purchase for a song chez Christine Cannac, a veteran wine agent turned retailer in the sleepy Haut Languedoc mining town of Bédarieux. Cannac also maintains an eye-popping cellar of back-vintages of Le Mazel, Bruno Schueller, Hervé Souhaut, Dard and Ribo, and more, which one can enjoy alongside simple conserves and charcuterie on her spacious terrace in the town center.

Pierre Jancou (now a vigneron) - various establishments (Paris and beyond)

Pierre Jancou never ran a proper caviste location as such. His establishments were always well-designed caves-à-manger or flat-out restaurants. The first wine he ever had me taste, back in 2009 or 2010, was a bottle of Le Mazel’s “Cuvée Briand,” which he insisted, correctly, was a great wine, despite residual sugar and loads of CO2. It took me years to catch up. More than anyone else, Jancou taught me the value of saying no to the normie wine establishment. You could, in fact, make a whole career out of saying no. Nowadays Jancou makes wine in the Aude.

Gérard Katz (retired) - La Cave des Papilles (Paris)

It still amazes me that Gérard Katz managed to create one of Paris’ key natural wine institutions in the floridly bourgeois 14ème arrondissement. I never encountered him at the shop itself; instead I’d run into him around Paris during my on-and-off career as a sommelier in the capital. The other day things came full-circle when a regular brought him to lunch at La Cave du Centre. It might just be retirement, but nowadays Katz is the rare ego-free wine guy, happier learning about new vignerons than flaunting his own knowledge. The magnum-packed natural wine shop he built remains a reference to this day, under the stewardship of his successor, Ewan Lemoigne.

Olivier Labarde - La Part des Anges (Nice)

Nice is the second most important natural wine market in France, after Paris, and this is almost entirely thanks to Olivier Labarde, a key player in the band of Repaire de Bacchus refugees who made natural wine happen in France in the 2000s (their ranks also included Troyes caviste Jean-Michel Wilmès, Le Verre Volé’s Cyril Bordarier, and Kris Gauchet of erstwhile Rennes wine bar L’Arsouille). Far from the capital’s competitive atmosphere, Labarde today still helms the kindest, most welcoming marquee natural wine spot in any major city in France.

Michael Lemasle - Crus et Découvertes (Paris)

Little has changed in over two decades at Michael Lemasle’s overstuffed wine shop on rue Paul Bert, arguably the first to begin emphasizing the burgeoning zero-zero wing of the natural wine scene, shortly after opening in 2003. On many evenings, Lemasle quietly holds court for regulars, who sidle around the bar to share bottles and learn from his understated experience.

Michel Moulherat (retired) - La Cave de l’Insolite (Paris)

I owe many of my first impressions of natural wine to Michel Moulherat, who I met through our mutual friend, the former 15ème arrondissement bistrotier Guy Jeu. I spoke little French at the time, and Moulherat was happy to oblige with endearingly Irish-accented English. One never felt rushed or railroaded in his roomy, sparsely-stocked shop - quite the opposite, in fact. It’s only in retrospect that I’ve come to appreciate how radical his selection was, and the work he put in contextualizing the often challenging wines of, say, Catherine and Gilles Vergé, or Rémi Poujol.

Stéphane Planche - Les Jardins de Saint Vincent (Arbois)

For years I knew Planche as the savvy operator behind Arbois’ most radical natural wine boutique. Only relatively recently did I learn he was also a contemporary of Philippe Jambon, working alongside the latter as a sommelier in Switzerland during the era of the influential chef (and early natural wine supporter) Pascal Santailler. In recent years Planche has revealed himself a true natural wine jack-of-all-trades, producing négociant wine in association with Charles Dagand as Karnage.

Olivier Roblin - Les Caves de Panthéon (Paris)

In retrospect, it was a golden age: the period between when Olivier Roblin took over Les Caves de Panthéon (2009) and when his neighbors Benjamin Fourty and Corentin Bucillat sold the neighboring natural wine institution the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie to indifferent new ownership (2018). For almost a decade, Les Caves de Panthéon and the Café de la Nouvelle Mairie together anchored the Left Bank natural wine scene, co-hosting a particularly memorable Beaujolais Nouveau evening in November. Today Roblin’s shop remains a destination for (among many other things) its stellar selection of Beaujolais, notably the wines of the late Fleurie legend Julie Balagny. (Roblin purchased her early stocks when she moved cellars to her final premises in Moulin-à-Vent).

Jean Walch - Au Fil du Vin Libre (Strasbourg)

Like, probably, many wine guys, I usually conspicuously avoid looking at the purchases of other wine guys - call it the anxiety of influence, vinous version. One exception is Strasbourg caviste Jean Walch, whose shop boasts a peerless selection of Alsatian natural wine, and one which aligns very closely with my own tastes in the region. In a profession that generally rewards tight-lipped discretion, Walch is also the rare outspoken straight-talker, unafraid of engaging with controversy when it comes to defending natural wine. (Perhaps that is why our mutual friend Corine Andrieu of Clos Fantine knew we’d get along.)

Jean-Michel Wilmes - Aux Crieurs de Vin (Troyes)

For five years after arriving in Paris I dated a woman from Troyes. Among her many invaluable gifts to me, in the course of our relationship, was an early introduction to Troyes natural wine institution Aux Crieurs de Vin (est. 1998), which remains today the jewel of the cave-à-manger genre. Nowadays seconded by his younger partner Nicolas Urbanowicz, Wilmès was responsible for midwifing into existence the present-day natural-style champagne renaissance of the Aube. Aux Crieurs boasts every Aube champagne one may ever need to know, alongside an encyclopedic selection from the pioneer generations of natural wine - and truly inspirational, impeccably-sourced bistrot cuisine.

NOT DRINKING POISON

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