侍酒师游览法国卢瓦尔谷

“我知道在这里某个地方,”雅克Thorel说, clicking through photos on his computer screen. We're huddled around a desk on the third floor of the chef's house, surrounded by his vast library of antiquarian cookbooks; anyone wanting a 17th-century edition of La Varenne'sLe Cuisinier Françoisor a 1935 menu from La Pyramide signed by Fernand Point will find it here. But that's not what we're looking for. "Ah!" he says, pointing. The photo is a 14-year-old snapshot, now digitized, of a young woman in a suit, dark hair pulled back, black glasses, somehow smiling and looking serious at the same time. Her name is Pascaline Lepeltier. "We're very happy for her," says madame Solange Thorel. "And very proud."

站在我旁边的Lepeltier也在研究自己的照片，他回应了一种高卢pff, waving the praise away. But she looks pleased.

有很多值得骄傲的人。在2018年，Lepeltier是有史以来第一位接受Meilleur Ouvrier de France（MOF）认可为侍酒师的女性，这是一个非凡的荣誉。那一年，尽管住在纽约市，但她还在纽约市的联合德拉·索梅梅利（Union De La Sommellerie）赢得了法国最佳侍酒师德国的头衔，在那里她在拉西斯餐厅（Racines Restaurant）经营世界一流的葡萄酒计划。亚搏电竞她是一位侍酒师大师，世界上只有256人​​拥有该学位。但是，在厨师托雷尔（Thorel）的计算机上那张照片时，她才刚刚开始在餐馆工作。她对他说：“那是我第一次去波尔多的旅行。

"Lobster with carrots and spring peas cookedinYquem!" Thorel leans back and mimes pouring a magnum of Yquem—a wine that costs hundreds of dollars a bottle—directly into a pot. "Glug glug glug!It's true!"

Out the third-floor windows the night is dark, but there's a shimmer through the trees of the waters of the Loire. We're near the river's mouth, where it rolls into the gray Atlantic. Here, the Loire, is where Lepeltier was born.

Traveling through the Loire with Pascaline Lepeltier is an education in wine, but even more than that, it's an education in people: her people, specifically—the vignerons she has known for years. After dinner at the Thorels', the next morning found us standing amidst a stubby forest of clay amphorae in the cellar at Domaine de l'Ecu, in Muscadet. Nine a.m. on a rainy Tuesday. Lepeltier has long been a proponent of natural wines, and L'Ecu's owners, Fred and Claire Niger, whom she's known for over a decade, work in that mode: organic viticulture, no additions of any kind in the cellar, no chemicals, no sulfites, and, lately, lots of experimentation with the ancient approach of making wine in big clay urns. Since Fred was in Germany at a trade show, Claire guided us through the wines. Among them was a Chenin Blanc—not a grape the region is known for—from a tiny plot the Nigers refer to as "Pascaline's parcel." As Lepeltier swished the wine in her mouth, Claire joked, "No pressure for us!" and mimed talking on her phone: "Oh, Fred? She didn't like it. Cancel the order for amphorae; we're throwing the Chenin away!"

“几个两栖动物？”勒皮尔蒂尔问。

“你有三个，亲爱的。”

Lepeltier赢得了双倍的拇指，并以胜利举起手臂。

在南部中部的一所学校对面的一家小酒馆的莱斯·普里斯（Les Chants d'Avril），这是黑客最喜欢的一所学校，窗户上的冷雨床单，但是布里奇（Bric-a-Ar-Brac）充满的房间温暖而舒适，而厨师ChristopheFrançois'Cooking'是崇高的。一个丰富的caramelized mango and apple tarte Tatin我们离开之前以某种方式召唤了太阳。勒皮尔蒂尔（Lepeltier）随便指出：“塔丁·塔丁（Tarte Tatin）是在卢瓦尔（Loire）发明的。”“由塔丁姐妹。

我正在学习的卢瓦尔山谷（Loire Valley）是 - 除了是苹果蛋tar的原始来源。从穆斯卡特（Muscadet）来源的南特（Nantes）附近的地区，距卢瓦尔（Loire）最东道的重大称谓250英里。麻风病人长大的愤怒在介于两者之间。葡萄藤无处不在，其中185,000英亩，遍布87个称呼。果园（苹果，梨和樱桃）以及朝鲜蓟和向日葵的田地也是如此。勒佩尔蒂尔（Lepeltier）说：“人们称卢瓦尔（Loire）为法国花园。”

蒂埃里日尔曼,经营者,迎接Lepeltieras though she were a much-loved family member just returned from an ocean voyage of many years—basically, the same way everyone we met greeted her. Within moments of our arrival, we were bouncing along in his Jeep as he and Lepeltier animatedly discussed alcohol levels (Germain: "Cabernet Franc after 14 degrees alcohol is no good; the terroir is gone"), the geology of Saumur (Lepeltier: "The ground under Saumur is like a honeycomb, full of galleries, from all the limestone quarrying"), and the evils of sulfur additions (Germain: "Added sulfur is what keeps conventional wines alive; minerality and acidity are what keep real wines alive"). We walked through Germain's 100-plus-year-old Les Mémoires vineyard, the ancient Cabernet Franc vines knotted and gnarled, a fresh wind biting at us. Later, tasting the wine, the immense personality of the place came through: a coiled intensity, layers of flavor.

Talking about biodynamics and its founder Rudolf Steiner, Germain said, "For me, his main thrust is really inspired byThe Metamorphosis of Plantsby Goethe. Goethe really makes things concrete; I want people who come to this estate to understand that biodynamics is concrete." I was reminded that prior to going into wine, Lepeltier received a master's in philosophy at the University of Nantes. I'd find again and again on this trip that she, and many of the winemakers she loves best, have a fiercely intellectual relationship with wine.

I pondered this a bit further over a plate of Loire eel at La Route du Sel, where chef Marie Monmousseau roasts them over hay, a traditional preparation. A bite proved smoky, faintly grassy, a little chewy, sweet-fleshed; not particularly enlightening in regard to Goethe, but perhaps that's too much to ask. Loire eels, Lepeltier explained as we ate, are born in the Sargasso Sea, cross the Atlantic to grow up in the Loire, then return to the Sargasso to spawn—unless, of course, they become lunch. I considered my eel with newfound respect. But even so, I preferred chef Monmousseau's gorgeousSaumurois蛋t，上面放着闪闪发光的深色樱桃。And Lepeltier skipped the eel entirely and had a salad.

The lazy afternoon sun sparkled on the water as we drove westward along the riverbank back toward Savennières and Domaine aux Moines, its 18th-century château surrounded by the great Roche aux Moines vineyard. Winemaker Tessa Laroche came out to meet us, preceded by two absurd big black dogs, Nelson and Nestor. The dogs growled fiercely for about 20 seconds then flopped over in the driveway and started to scratch, clearly satisfied they had scared us silly. Between vineyard rows, Laroche and Lepeltier talked geology, Laroche picking up a 10-pound chunk of schist and demonstrating how easily it would split into layers: She pulled off palm-size chips as easily as one might pull apart an orange. Later, in the cellar, tasting Domaine aux Moine's 2017 Savennières, Lepeltier made a fist: "Such a great, powerful wine ... 2017 was no crop, super dense, and hot. It's not possible to make a light wine in '17." Laroche remarked dryly that she'd been lucky to make wine at all: "We lost 70% of our grapes in 2017 to frost."

Frost, mildew, frost again—making wine in the Loire is never simple. But the wines can be glorious. And for all her erudition and the seriousness with which she takes her job, that's what you get, tasting with Lepeltier: When a wine is great, her exuberance bursts out. The reaction is visceral, filled with a kind of punching-the-air joy at both the pleasure of the wine and happiness for the friend who made it. I saw that at La Grange Tiphaine, watching her taste Damien Delecheneau's terrific 2018s from the barrels with kid-in-a-candy-store delight. Her reactions to people can be equally heartfelt. About Vincent Gaudry in Sancerre, she said, "He's not tattooed, he's not a wild man, and he's so shy, so he's never been the sommelier flavor of the day, but he's absolutely brilliant."

Our trip came to an end at Momento, a sparkling new restaurant in the tiny town of Bué owned by Mariana Mateos Jacquet and Thomas Jacquet, who worked with Lepeltier at Racines back in New York. As we lunched on Mariana's absurdly tender confit lamb shoulder, three young winemakers who'd heard Lepeltier was in town appeared out of nowhere and semi-apologetically asked if we might mind tasting a bottle or two. We said of course. Bottles began appearing, and "a bottle or two" quickly became about 15. Was I surprised? No.

In the end, no wine anywhere, not one single bottle, would exist without people; there's no extricating one from the other. So the moment on our journey that most captured what being with Lepeltier in the Loire was like isn't a specific bottle or a distinctive taste. We were at Domaine de la Chevalerie in Bourgueil, walking down into the estate's 11th-century limestone cellars with Stéphanie Caslot, whose family has owned the property since 1640. "It's like a birthday party," Caslot was saying. "We see each other once a year. We're like sisters."

"But you're from Touraine, and I'm from Anjou. It's like New Jersey and New York," Lepeltier said.

“你当心，帕斯卡林！”卡斯洛特笑着回答。

我们冒险越陷越深了地窖,自由进出ning older and older bottles at each stop. Soon we were sitting on rocks in the limestone heart of the place, 150 feet below the surface, our glasses filled with 30-year-old Loire Cabernet Franc. "Wait—I used to do this as a child," Caslot said. She got up and switched off the lights. Utter, absolute, pitch-black darkness. We sat there not speaking, sipping glasses of a wine that smelled of the earth and of green plants grasping dirt, until, unprovoked, because this is what being home and seeing people you love and drinking wine does to you, Caslot and Lepeltier couldn't help but start laughing, just as other friends must have done here hundreds of years before.

“咸芳香学！”Lepeltier说，品尝了这个基准的Muscadet。在艰难的2017年葡萄酒之后，2018年是一个缓慢：完美的天气导致了丰收。

酿酒师Thierry Germain在与Lepeltier品尝时指出：“我们同意Chenin是世界上最伟大的葡萄品种。”亚搏电竞很公平。这种姜味的，生动的酸白色促使两个人之间的五个高五。

由于2017年开花期间的冰雹，但没有太多的酒，但要亚搏电竞寻找什么。它非常美味，新鲜的柑橘和绿色苹果水果以脆弱的味道结尾。

正如Lepeltier所说，鼻子上的花朵和淡淡的蜂蜜味，然后是质地丰富和“很多kumquat”，描述了天然葡萄酒界最好的生产商之一的这种基于Chenin的白色。亚搏电竞

这种结晶的白色含有明亮的柑橘和瓜味是一种令人兴奋的香，是对经常在商店货架上的沉闷，大生产的Sancerres多余的解毒剂。

凯西斯（Cassis）和烟草，地球和香料 - 雪佛兰（Chevalerie）葡萄园（Chevalerie's Vineyards）一部分的赤霞珠弗朗（Cabernet Franc）是新鲜而诱人的。它的味道就像历史：卡斯洛特家族已经耕种了这个庄园14代。

Ultra-local ingredients from chef Christophe François in the heart of Nantes.leschantsdavril.fr

In addition to her confit lamb shoulder (below), don't miss chef Mariana Mateos Jacquet's superb desserts.facebook.com/momento.sancerre

厨师GérardBossé将以本月的新型，更休闲的形式重新开放他的一星级米其林餐厅Une®。une-ile.fr

Fresh fish and, yes, local eel served in a charming old house by the banks of the Loire River.authoure.fr