Chefs Who Give A Shit About Wine
Introducing Series V of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast, featuring interviews with chefs Harry Lester, Jonathan Schweizer, and Mateo Breña.
Since the dawn of time, food writers have waxed poetic about the role of wine as an accompaniment to a meal. But it might be simpler just to observe that wine is food, voilà. It is an agricultural product, the qualities of which are determined by the circumstances of its cultivation and transformation.
Few are better positioned to understand this dynamic than chefs, i.e. those who transform foodstuffs on a daily basis.
The chefs in my acquaintance who take a keen interest in winemaking and natural wine culture are the subject of Series V1 of the NOT DRINKING POISON podcast, which is called CHEFS WHO GIVE A SHIT ABOUT WINE.
Kicking off the series are new interviews with:
Influential British chef-restaurateur HARRY LESTER, the founder of the AUBERGE DE CHASSIGNOLES and LE SAINT EUTROPE, whose ambitious new establishment LE COMPTOIR CENTRAL DES BAZARS opened in the AUVERGNE capital of CLERMONT-FERRAND last Thurday. Listen here. (No paywall.)
Paris chef-restaurateur JONATHAN SCHWEIZER, the young Luxemburgish natural wine aficionado behind CAFE LES DEUX GARES and LE GONCOURT. Listen here.
Peripatetic Mexican chef - and HORSE-PLOWING adept - MATEO BRENA, whose career took him from renowned kitchens in Paris and San Sebastien to the hills of BURGENLAND and BURGUNDY. Listen here.
More podcasts to follow in the coming weeks, plus more adventures in Alsace, Auvergne, and the Mâconnais.
Chefs Who Give A Shit About Wine: I guess I titled it this way because such chefs are somewhat rare, despite the manifestly intuitive links between wine and other foodstuffs. Most contemporary restaurateurs relegate wine buying to the front-of-house, probably because the tasks of devising a menu and running a kitchen are sufficiently absorbing in themselves.
Since opening my own small cave-à-manger last December, I can attest it is indeed way harder to source a menu than a wine list. There is never a shortage of friends offering me excellent natural wines to stock at the shop, and the bottles don’t go bad. It is, on the other hand, damnably hard to regularly source organic farm-raised meats, or even certain vegetables. (Fresh horseradish is really hard to find here.)
It is, in fact, quite an ordeal to source a menu with the same rigor as a selection of radical natural wines.
But it seems important to try. If I am prepared to explain to clientele that the wines at my shop are qualitatively different (and occasionally more expensive) than those they can purchase at the supermarket around the corner, well, what makes the menu items any different?
If this natural wine thing carries a greater meaning than, you know, just drinking cool bottles, it is partly because it can incite us to re-examine the nature and the integrity of the other foodstuffs we serve and consume. They’re all confronting the same mass indifference; they’re all under the same onslaught of systematic degradation and corruption in the name of profit.
Happy listening! Et bon appetit!
FURTHER READING & LISTENING
Podcast Series IV: Copenhagen Natural Wine Chronicles, Pt. I
Podcast Series IV: Copenhagen Natural Wine Chronicles, Pt. II
Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part I
Podcast Series III: Les Emigré(e)s - Expat Natural Winemakers in France, Part II
Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part I
Podcast Series II: Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Part II
Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part I
Podcast Series I: Paris Natural Wine Lifers, Part II
Series II, III, and IV of the podcast - Contemporary Paris Natural Wine, Les Emigré(e)s, and Copenhagen Natural Wine Chronicles, respectively - are still on-going, for what it’s worth. More episodes will follow in each series, whenever I assemble a neat trio or quartet of new interviews.
The connection you draw between the care taken with natural wine and the sourcing of quality food is spot on. Really enjoyed the podcast links too – looking forward to listening. It's inspiring to hear about chefs who "give a shit" about wine in this way. Thanks for sharing!