Monday, September 29, 2008

Punk plonk (& good stuff, too)


Here's one to go with pizza. Especially pizza at Pink Flamingo, the Canal Saint-Martin's little pocket of heaven. Especially the Basquiat, with prosciutto and gorgonzola. Or any of them, really. They all rock.

I wanted to cry, nearly. Hadn't been back in ages to the PF, whose delivery fellows on bicycles will deliver canalside in the warmer months, after one has been given a balloon to identify one as having placed an order. And since Le Verre Volé is just up the street, takeout wine and pizza delivery assure a delightful, rustic evening as the deep and filthy water flows by and night starts to fall over random merriment.

But this weekend it wasn't so warm as all that, so refuge was found within the PF. Along with a bottle of On S'en Bat les Couilles, 2006 version. Now, as its label suggests, the wine's name does indeed mean something along the lines of Never Mind the Bollocks (literally: we don't give a toss). But the wine is in no way simply, well, tossed off. It's actually a brilliant little funky gem of "nature" winemaking.

From old-vine gamay in the Touraine-Mesland area of the Loire valley, made by a renegade vigneron with the strangely Corsican-sounding name of Pascal Simonutti, this bottling is totally delicious and totally impudent. The pizzaiolo – probably called Jean-Luc, but never mind – popped it and glugged it into a big magnum carafe, swinging it around to loosen the carbon dioxide, which ushered out. The first glass or so was a bit frizzy, but after that it smoothed and was just a heady, good gamay de Touraine. Deep purple, fruit and bite.

Satisfying stuff.

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