Becoming Cécile Again: Cécile Perrin-Lemasson
A chat with Cécile Perrin-Lemasson of Loir-et-Cher natural wine bar - and village tobacconist - La Plage.
Cécile Perrin-Lemasson is the proprietor, since November 2020, of La Plage, a natural wine bar and village tobacconist situated just beside the river in Candé-sur-Beuvron, fifteen minutes’ drive outside Blois. A native of Rennes, Perrin-Lemasson worked as a journalist for many years, until her employer went out of business during France’s first COVID lockdown. At the outset of the second COVID lockdown, she opened La Plage, featuring, alongside the classic PMU staples of cigarettes, lottery cards, and tabloids, the celebrated natural wines of the surrounding Loir-et-Cher winemaking community, including those of her late partner, Olivier Lemasson.
Lemasson’s own wines as Les Vins Contés have, since his suicide in June 2021, mostly disappeared from La Plage. But the bar remains stocked with the wines of the couple’s many vigneron friends, including Clos du Tue-Boeuf, Jeremy Quastana, Christian Venier, Jeff Coutelou, Christian Binner, and Clos Fantine. Snickers and Mars bars are arrayed at the entry, but beyond them, a chalkboard offers local goat cheeses and charcuterie. Between passing cyclists, local retirees, and neighboring vignerons and vineyard workers, La Plage is a lifeline to many.
Like, I suspect, many of the Lemassons’ distant friends and fans in the wake of Olivier’s passing, I found myself, for a long time, unable to relay condolences or show my concern, for fear of just making things worse. When I learned there would be a natural wine salon on Oct. 26th-27th named for Lemasson’s wine estate and held in his memory in his native Dinan, I was happy for the occasion to reach out to Perrin-Lemasson, to learn more about origins of the event, what became of Les Vins Contés, and how life goes on at La Plage.
CECILE PERRIN-LEMASSON: AN INTERVIEW
How did you wind up running a tobacco shop?
CECILE PERRIN-LEMASSON: It was a decision during the first confinement. I was a journalist, and when Macron announced the confinement of March 17th 2020, we were meant to release a magazine ten days later. And the publisher said, “We’re stopping everything.” He was in a hyper fragile financial situation, so, it was over. It was my main employer, a magazine called Objectif Metropoles de France.
I’d known the media crisis of 2008, and the recovery from that was long and fastidious. I didn’t see myself doing that again. I knew this was for sale, so I figured I could do a wine bar, one minute away from my home. So that’s how La Plage was born. I thought about it during the first confinement, and we opened during the second. We were able to open during confinement because I sold tobacco.