The Future of Tontons
Pepita del Rosario on the future of Le Comptoir des Tontons, the Beaune natural wine institution she founded in 1996 with her husband Richard Grocat, who ended his life in December 2021.
I enrolled in the BPREA program at the Lycée Viticole de Beaune1 in early 2021, an inauspicious time, as France was still under a 7pm curfew. During those oppressed weeks in Beaune under curfew, I subsisted on the sterling selection of conserves, charcuteries, cheeses, and natural wine on offer at Le Comptoir des Tontons, the cosy épicerie and cave-à-manger run since 1996 by Richard Grocat and Pepita del Rosario. When curfew ended, and the couple reopened for restaurant service, I subsisted on their kindness and warm welcome, since by that time it had dawned on me that my friends in Burgundy all had children and were rarely free to hang out. (Pepita also took a shine to my dog.)
The Gard vigneron Valentin Vallès once remarked of Richard and Pepita, “For historical buyers, they’re really fresh.” You’d never fail to pick them out in their dazzling technicolor wardrobe at the natural wine tastings of France, always on the hunt for new talent to support.
Since Richard’s suicide in December 2021, clients and vignerons alike have been concerned for Pepita and the future of Le Comptoir des Tontons. So I was relieved to encounter her at the La Beaujoloise tasting in the Beaujolais in early April. I joined her for coffee in Beaune later that month, and found her determined to uphold Richard’s legacy at Le Comptoir des Tontons.
Quick Facts
Self-taught chef Pepita del Rosario co-founded Beaune natural wine institution Le Comptoir des Tontons in 1996 with her companion Richard Grocat. The establishment became renowned for the couple’s sublime product sourcing, their colorful attire, and their deep cellar, the result of years of unflagging support of great natural vignerons.
Grocat, suffering from exhaustion and a recent case of COVID, ended his life in December 2021. It came as a shock to France’s natural wine community, already reeling from multiple suicides among vignerons that year (notably Pascal Clairet, Olivier Lemasson, and Dominique Belluard).
As of late March, Pepita del Rosario has reopened Le Comptoir des Tontons as an épicerie and wine shop. She does not plan to offer restaurant service.
She has not yet officially updated the establishment’s hours, but generally the shop is open for business on weekdays until about 7pm.
Go see her and buy some wine. (Not just the famous bottles.)
PEPITA DEL ROSARIO: AN INTERVIEW
The following interview was conducted on April 20th 2022. It has been condensed and edited for clarity.
Well. How are things going?
PEPITA DEL ROSARIO: We’re slowly putting the cellar back together. It’s a lot of work. It’s enormous, with all the administrative things, plus everything that concerns Richard. I really do as I can. I still manage to sell wine. I have requests from the internet. I don’t have a commercial website, but people see the wine list, and they send me emails.
Even setting aside the emotional considerations, it must be a big job taking over management of such a renowned cellar.
I don’t have a problem with the wines, as such. I know the wines, and I know the vignerons, because Richard and I always went everywhere together. It’s simply a question of putting the whole machine back in order. The cellar was in the hands of Richard. He was the only one who knew the organization. I didn’t know it at all.
This cellar isn’t small, but there’s so much wine, that even if he tried to arrange things in a rational way, at a certain point it can no longer be rational, because you end up lacking space.
Will you hire someone to help with it all?
For now, no. For the simple reason that, until I’ve put the structure back in order, I just can’t. I have to retype the whole wine list, I have to look at all the appellations, look at all the prices, I have to look at the dossiers of invoices from a given year… It’s important, with our way of working, to know everything well. To have prices in your head, and the names of cuvées. It’s not an anonymous place, where people come in randomly looking for whatever.
For now, I have one of my vigneron friends who comes from time to time to help me. He starts to know the cellar, so we start to put it more in order. Plus he has a good notion of space. His nephew is a carpenter, and we’re putting shelves in, on his advice.
Do you have plans to restart dining service ?
No. Even if Richard had held on, we wouldn’t have reopened the kitchen. We had planned to close the 15th January - 15th February 2022, because we were so tired. And as we waited for that, we decided we’d add Tuesdays off each week, to help us hang on until the 15th January. We did that first week of December, then I got COVID. It was like having the flu. Then Richard got it. And then the following week, he committed suicide.
Do you think there was a link with COVID? Did he lose his sense of smell?
I don’t have an explanation, because he didn’t leave a message. The only thing I can say is both us were exhausted. We were exhausted physically and psychologically. And Richard couldn’t do it anymore, physically. We never should have reopened in back in June.
We stayed open for more than two years [during COVID restaurant closures], because we didn’t want to [survive on subsidies from] Macron, our dear president. We didn’t want to submit to these COVID diktats… So we took refuge in work. There was a fatigue that came on. And Richard was really eaten away by it, psychologically.
Well. I think everyone in the community is happy to see you continuing Le Comptoir de Tontons.
It’s a bit of an unknown for me. I told myself, when I feel ready, I need to put something on Instagram, to announce that things continue. That it’s no longer Richard, it’s Pepita.
Because, on account of Richard’s death, I’m often hassled about the stock, by these types of predatory dealers. Particularly during the Grands Jours de Bourgogne. It was really awful. On the telephone, by email, at the door. I threw more than one of them out. It’s really detestable.
At those moments, I get my spirits back. I don’t cry. I excoriate them.
There are a lot of vultures in the wine industry.
Oh-la-la. During the Grands Jours de Bourgogne, all these clients who bought wine from Richard, they arrived persuaded that I would just roll over, that I would give away all the Tremblay, Roumier, Selosse… It’s like, well, do you want my panties, too?
I didn’t care. I had such detachment. I told them, “If you come here to take advantage of me, for the Tremblay and so on, don’t bother. I have them. But I won’t sell them to you.” I told them I’d sit on the cases at night. Just to annoy them.
They all said, “Ah, yes, but Richard, but Richard…”
As if we didn’t speak to each other, me and Richard. As if we didn’t build this place together, me and Richard. I said, “Look on the ground. Imagine there’s a big hole. Richard is there, ten meters down. If you want to speak to Richard, say nothing. You think of him, you send him your good thoughts, and that’s it. Now look at me. It’s not Richard, it’s Pepita. And stop taking me for a quiche or a ham.”
They have it in their heads that I’m a woman, who isn’t thinking, who must be in a certain state financially. But I didn’t cede ground. And they still bought some wine. I said if I were to let them have one bottle, I’d be choosing it. And even then, only if they bought other wines.
That’s the Tontons spirit.
There have always been a few emblematic estates like that. But it was just a few, and there weren’t all these social networks. It amplifies things. The auction sites. IDeal wine, etc. It’s a catastrophe. I tell them, these frustrated people, you’ll finish by exhausting it all.
The number of emails that I receive who want the whole listing from us, all the Kagami, etc. I don’t respond, and if they call, I tell them no, no, no. You have to think, we built this collection since so many years, we did so much research, and after all that, you’re not curious about other wines?
Frankly, if wine is nothing but this speculation, I’ll sell it all. It doesn’t interest me. We lose the true human relation, the notion of sharing, the notion of discovery, of speaking and exchanging. That’s what’s interesting.
FIN
Le Comptoir des Tontons
22 Rue du Faubourg Madeleine
21200 BEAUNE
Tel: +33 3 80 24 19 64
FURTHER READING
A November 2021 review of Le Comptoir des Tontons in Le Fooding.
A June 2021 article on the post-COVID reopening of Le Comptoir des Tontons in Le Bien Public.
An October 2020 piece on Le Comptoir des Tontons at JancisRobinson.com by Nick Lander, who cites Richard as “Robert.”
Some nice photos in this December 2010 post on Le Comptoir des Tontons by Gilles Pudlowski.
An April 2009 feature on Le Comptoir des Tontons by François Régis-Gaudry in L’Express.
It’s unclear, at this point, whether I’ll bother to finish the degree. It’s a wee bit cher, and it’s only useful if some day I plan to produce wine on a professional basis. I am anything but professional.
What a wonderful interview. Pepita sounds like a remarkable woman.
I always enjoyed visiting with Richard at Le Comptoir. His enthusiasm was infectious. He was gracious and fun, and he loved offering good bottles. His passing was a real loss, but I'm glad to see Pépita carrying on so admirably. Thanks for the terrific interview, Aaron.