‘The wine list first please’
At this restaurant in Paris, diners select the drinks and then the chefs create food to match it.
Plenty of wine lovers peruse the wine list before the menu when dining out, but L’Ecrin at Hotel de Crillon in Paris may be the only place where that is obligatory. In the Michelin-star, 36-seat restaurant within the beautiful hotel where Marie-Antoinette once took piano lessons, the head sommelier, Xavier Thuizat, has achieved his professional dream: making people decide on their wine before their food.
Wine, in a sense, is his birthright. In 1985 the medieval Hospices de Beaune building — now known for the annual charity auction of fine wine from its vineyards — was in transition from hospital (it was founded in 1443 to care for the poor) to museum. There was still a tiny maternity unit with seven beds and little Xavier came into the world in one of them.
Almost four decades later he is at L’Ecrin, where the restaurant tables have no place settings — only a large wineglass with a stem but no foot: the hedonistic Marie-Antoinette’s preference, apparently, because guests’ inability to set them down made for quicker drinking. Thuizat fills mine with Pol Roger, explaining that it is the “years of contact between the yeast and the wine, giving rich roasted flavours” that make this champagne so satisfying. (Maybe that’s why Winston Churchill is rumoured to have drunk two bottles of Pol a day.)
Thuizat, who has just won the 2024 Michelin Sommelier award, keeps reappearing at the table with beautiful wines. “The kitchen don’t know what they are making until I call and say, ‘This is what the guests are drinking,’ ” he says. “Everything starts with the flavours, acidity, tannin and alcohol in the wine. From that we create the menu.” Lots of tannins calls for red meat; a pure, elegant chenin blanc or a young chardonnay without oak both work with the delicate texture of sea bass.
Of course, there are risks: “Some people want sauternes throughout the meal. I love sauternes so I’m happy with that, but I do feel sorry for the kitchen.” Mostly, though, he says, the chefs love the challenge — and given his many awards, including France’s best sommelier and Meilleur Ouvrier de France (an artisans’ honour so prestigious that you have to be invited to apply), it’s safe to conclude that he does too.
On Thuizat’s list there are 2300 wines from 13 countries, and in the famous appellations he prefers to showcase lesser-known talent. Guests can order classic fine wines, “But more and more”, he says, “they are willing to try things”. It helps that he has visited every maker. “If there’s someone you expect to see and don’t, it is because I don’t know the winemaker personally,” he says. He tries about 4000 wines a year and buys 300 of them. Adventurous diners can plunder the exceptional range — from Corsica to the Languedoc and Spain — by the glass.
The food and drink are exquisite but, perhaps more importantly, fun: for instance, my lemon, bread and ginger-snap pudding was baked in a clay pot that was smashed open at the table. It came with a serving of Château Climens 2012 from a magnum. Marie-Antoinette could not have come up with a pairing more decadently delicious.
What excites Thuizat is young talent: Domaine Pierre Girardin, “Burgundy’s rising star”; Mariette Veyssiere of Chateau Quintus, “the new hidden gem of Saint-Emilion”. He oversees wine for Rosewood hotels in Europe (the list at Castiglion del Bosco in Tuscany is stupendous), although each property has its own head sommelier, and he has taken charge of Schloss Fuschl in Salzburg, to open in summer with an all-Austrian list.
Can his unlikely birthplace somehow have infused him with a passion for wine? His grandfather did have a vineyard, sold after the war when nobody was buying wine. It was an acre of Batard-Montrachet, a grand cru that today would be worth millions of euros. But Thuizat is philosophical; he likes his job, and “now I buy wine from that vineyard for the restaurant”. Surely the best outcome for the rest of us.
THE TIMES
In the know
A bespoke menu created around wine at L’Ecrin is €215 ($348) for five courses and €265 for seven courses.
Hotel de Crillon is at 10 Place de la Concorde.
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