23rd
Last night, the BF and I attended a Natural Wines Dinner hosted by Jenny & Francois Selections. This label was from our favorite wine of the night, made by Oliver Cousin. After sailing around the world for a year, Oliver decided to take up shop at his grandparents’ vineyard and make wine his life’s work.
Natural wines are more than just wines made with organic grapes. There are 200 ingredients (like sugars and yeasts) that can be added while making regular wines. The wines we drank last night were all made simply with great grapes. Because the process is more handmade, there are lots of pre-industrial methods in play, like bottling with the phases of the moon to keep sediment in check. Oliver happens to till the field with horses, like the Amish!
The food was also beyond stellar and everyone loved to eat. This was no fancy dinner at the Wayne Manor. We picked up fried rabbit with our hands and chomped like it was KFC. We scooped up loose caviar with bread. We licked honey off our fingertips. We devoured raw lamb from a butcher who happened to be sitting at our table.
Now that more and more of our food is resembling the Enterprise’s replicator cuisine, it’s good to eat honest food with the people who made it or brought it to your table and talk them about their vineyards, their philosophies and their lives.
Jenny & Francois have a slew of their French winemakers in the city this week, so they’re doing a lot of events around the city. Check them out!
