As a wine buyer for Gracious Hospitality Management, the restaurant group behind the Michelin-starred Korean steakhouses COTE with locations in New York and Miami, plus a wine club, I’m fortunate that I make my way over to France at least a few times a year. My job is to lead and empower our incredible team of sommeliers, buy millions of dollars worth of wine for our restaurants, and visit wineries to negotiate the best deals for our guests. Sometimes I even get to bring others along for it—like this coming autumn, I’ll be leading a tour in Champagne with Bon Appétit.
I always find myself flying in and out of Paris, and I often tack on a day or two to check out what my French counterparts are up to. Over the past decade I’ve compiled a running list of hundreds of wine bars but have whittled that down to just a few quintessential spots. They aren’t necessarily the fanciest places or the ones with the longest lists, just where I feel a sommelier—or any wine lover—would want to drink.
La Cagouille / Ilya Kagan
I regretted telling a sommelier friend about this place in the 14th arrondissement after he told me that he had “drank all of their cheap Raveneau”—as in Domaine François Raveneau, one of the most strictly allocated producers in the world. I can attest to the fact, however, that La Cagouille still has a solid wine list focused on incredible white Burgundy. I’ve turned into one of those people that pretty much exclusively drinks Chardonnay—in the form of Burgundy and Champagne—so this is my dream list. La Cagouille also seems to be low key consistently peppered with celebrities. I once pretended I had to go to the bathroom seven times during a meal just so I could walk by Wes Anderson and Adrien Brody’s table over and over again.
Many sommeliers say they hate Sauvignon Blanc, categorizing it as too “basic,” and to that, I argue: Well then, you’ve never been in love in Paris and ordered a cold glass of Sancerre and a warm goat cheese salad at this Saint-Germain-des-Prés wine bar. Yes, there are a plethora of hipper and grodier natty wine bars in Paris these days, but this is a bite-size version of what I imagine it would be like to drink wine in the city a hundred years ago. No producers are listed on the Loire-Valley-focused wine menu and the food consists mostly of simple casse-croûtes—the little sandwiches or cold food items that vignerons, or French winemakers and farmers, give their harvest workers in the vines. What makes these dishes so special is that they’re served on the best bread in the world (Poilâne) with cheese from my favorite fromagerie (Barthélemy). Both shops are blocks away, which is really a problem, since after a few glasses of Loire wine, you’re likely to find yourself as I did on a recent trip—loading up on an irresponsible amount of provisions for the weekend.