A quarter of a century ago, when I was living on the Île St.-Louis, I would stop by a wine shop just over the Pont Marie on the Rue St.-Paul. It was a wine shop from the past. It had no name other than a sign over the door that read "Vins du Sud-Ouest." Inside, a counter reached from one wall to the other. Behind it were four metered pumps, much like the ones at an old country gas station. Three of the pumps, for the reds, had a number: 11 on the first, 11.5 on the second, and 12 on the third, representing the alcohol content. Nowhere was there any mention of vintage, provenance, or grape variety.
The customers, mostly women, didn't seem to mind. They arrived with their own bottles or plastic jugs and ordered, say, three liters of 11, or perhaps two of 11.5. It was Zola's Paris, intact. The wines, wherever they came from, were not much, not even the most expensive, the douze, with its extra kick and high price of 50 cents a liter. I'd buy a little of the white wine, which had a pump of its own, and lug it home in my plastic jug to make moules marinière. It was exciting to discover this backstreet gem because, even in the 1970s, so much of the old wine scene in Paris had disappeared. Gone, for example, were Nicolas's little three-wheeled motorcycle trucks that, until the 1960s, scurried around the city delivering wine the way we used to deliver milk in this country. Housewives or cooks would leave a wire bottleholder full of empties at the back door or in the courtyard, and the Nicolas man would replace them with 12 full bottles. Just about every week, usually.
Gone, too, were the old wine sheds at Bercy and Jussieu, at the eastern end of the city, where, long before the railroads arrived in the 19th century, wine came up the river by barge to be blended and bottled. By the time I got to Paris, most of the wine sheds at Jussieu had been replaced by a grim-looking extension of the University of Paris. Bercy also stood empty, its wine sheds and cellars crumbling, until the early 1990s, when the city turned the place into a park. There's a small vineyard there now, probably to remind Parisians where their wine comes from. At Moissonnier, a bistro across the street from Jussieu, they still serve wine in a 40-centiliter pot, just as they did 100 years ago, when the wine merchants dined there with their customers. Nicolas stores were everywhere in Paris in the 1970s, as they are today, but a lot of people-and restaurants-preferred to buy directly from the producers.
So did we. One day, in my office, someone produced a catalog from a well-known Beaujolais shipper. Half a dozen of us chipped in and sent off for 30 or so cases. Two days later, I came home from work to find the wine sitting on a pallet in my courtyard, in the rain. Others would send off for a barrel of Beaujolais and then bottle it themselves to save money.
Champagne producers were just as eager to ship to us as the Beaujolais makers. But we preferred the 90-mile Champagne run. It required a car, a convivial group of three or four, some orders from a few friends, and a day off. We would avoid the big houses like Mumm and Mercier. Small producers like Bonnaire, in Cramant, and Ricciuti-Révolte, in Avenay, were always happy to offer a "tasting" to visitors intent on loading up a car. A bottle or two would appear on the kitchen table and be quickly finished off and, of course, pronounced superb.
Parisians, like most of the French 25 years ago, took wine for granted. It commanded little more attention than the baguettes they ate at every meal. Expensive wines—Bordeaux or Burgundy—were for special occasions and rare dinners out. No one read wine books; no one took wine courses. Instead, they depended on wine merchants. There were good ones around, people who knew their wine, unlike the current breed, who meekly run critics' ratings in their advertising. Two favorites were Lucien Legrande, near the Place des Victoires, and Jean-Baptiste Besse, in the Latin Quarter. Both were épiciers who sold coffee, tea, exotic foodstuffs, and beer and liquor as well as wine. But both had an encyclopedic knowledge of wine.
Lucien Legrande was proud to be the third generation in his family to sell wine. Even as a youth he often spent his weekly day off visiting growers in the Loire, sometimes driving all night to get there. His cellars in the Rue de la Banque actually belonged to an old abbey. He not only stored his wine there but bottled much of it himself. Legrande would sell you a famous Bordeaux if you insisted, but he often suggested something at a third the price, saying, "Try this. It's just as good."
Jean-Baptiste Besse was an ancient but rugged little peasant from the hardscrabble Corrèze region of France. Like Legrande, he had a passion for wine. He bought his wines in barrels, bottling half and selling the rest directly from the spigot. His 17th-century cellars on the Rue de la Montagne Ste.—Geneviève were chaotic—chock-full of bottles, many piled precariously on the floor, ready to fall upon and crush anyone foolish enough to venture among them. Besse shrugged off complaints. "I have a photographic memory," he'd say. "I know where every bottle is."
Restaurateurs, too, had a different relationship with wine. How vividly I remember the Sancerre at Allard. The bistro's list of Burgundies was impressive, but the signature wine was the Sancerre, cold, sharp, and green-gold in color. Who supplied it, I never knew; there were no labels, no promotional materials, just an endless succession of icy green bottles.
Allard was a friendly place. Once I watched a young American couple order half a bottle of Sancerre and then protest when the waiter brought a full bottle. "We only serve full bottles," the waiter said. "Just drink half." At the end of the meal, the couple admitted sheepishly that they'd finished the entire bottle. "Good for you," said the waiter. "A full bottle for half price." Allard is still there on the Rue St.—André-des-Arts, but after Madame Allard sold the place, all the old waiters, who knew everybody in Paris by name or face, quit.
Those were thrilling times for wine lovers in Paris. On the Rue du Marché St.-Honoré, old Léon Gouin was serving such good Beaujolais at Le Rubis that the lunchtime throngs—bankers, firemen, saleswomen—clustered around upturned barrels on the sidewalk outside the café to enjoy a plate of charcuterie and a ballon of Juliénas. Gouin would survey the crowd. An imperceptible nod to the bartender meant that a regular was up for a refill on the house.
I remember in 1976 when a young Englishman named Steven Spurrier startled the wine world with his famous Académie du Vin tasting, at which a group of prominent French wine figures judged several California wines to be superior to some of the most famous Bordeaux names. The Académie du Vin, along with Spurrier's wine shop, Les Caves de la Madeleine, and his delightful restaurant, Le Moulin du Village, was in a little street called the Cité Berryer, just off the Place de la Madeleine. With its outdoor market and absence of motor traffic, the Cité Berryer was an astonishing bit of old Paris that managed to survive almost into the 21st century. Almost, but not quite. Developers found it, stole its soul, and rendered it banal at great expense.
To savor each day and still revel in the past is a rare talent. Except in Paris. Sitting at one of my favorite cafés, like Le Viaduc, on the Avenue Daumesnil, or even back at Le Rubis—still there, even if it's not the same without Gouin—I can pull it off with ease. Every time.