Cellar's Market

Food and Wine

This December the historic La Tour d’Argent will auction 18,000 bottles of unbelievably good wine. Paddles at the ready, says Margaret Kemp

THE CELLARS OF La Tour d’Argent restaurant, founded in 1582 (the year William Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway), run for miles beneath its left-bank location. Those lucky enough to be invited down there are met by a blue-uniformed flunky and escorted, through double-locked iron gates, into the dark, damp, musty warren of alleyways where 450,000 bottles of the rarest and costliest French vintages lie.

A fascinating glimpse into the cellars is available in December, when French auction house Piasa put 18,000 bottles under the hammer. Estimates vary from several hundred to several thousand euros per lot; the sale is expected to fetch north of €1 million. Throughout an evening and four daytime auction sessions, the wines and spirits, selected by chef sommelier David Ridgway, will go under the (metaphorical) hammer.

Ridgway, the British-born wine guru, has been at La Tour d’Argent since 1981, when the cellars were half the size they are today. ‘The wines not only celebrate the unequalled breadth of Tour d’Argent’s cellars but also pay homage to France’s profoundly diversified and rich wine tradition,’ he says.

‘Bottles from famous châteaux are offered alongside wines from excellent but far less well-known origins. All carry the Tour d’Argent stamp, and none has ever been offered to the market.’ He is talking me through the sale in his tiny subterranean office just off the labyrinthine cellars, the walls decorated with wooden wine boxes. It was bricked up during World War II to save the contents from Hitler.

Why is La Tour d’Argent selling its wine? ‘Well, the collection is a bit like me: it’s getting too weighty. The wine list weighs nine kilos,’ grins Ridgway, patting his embonpoint. ‘When I started here almost 30 years ago people used to drink a lot more wine; I’d say we used to sell 25,000 bottles a year and were open every day. Now we’re shut in August, two weeks in February, Sunday and Monday, so 450,000 bottles is too much wine. Some may say it’s the straitened times, but we’d be auctioning anyway: we’ve duplicates in the cellars and need to keep our volumes down.

‘Just like vines need pruning in order to grow stronger, presenting this selection for auction will enable us to strengthen the business and introduce new growers, new regions. Thirty years ago there was only Bordeaux and Burgundy; today there’s Alsace, Côtes du Rhône, Languedoc-Roussillon, Loire Valley, Provence, Corsica, the South West to choose from,’ Ridgway reflects. ‘The sale’s about gems you’ll find nowhere else, some from small growers, all aged and kept here — many offered at the prices we paid,’ he adds.

AMONG THE BORDEAUX highlights of the sale are Château Latour (1975, 1982, 1985, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1994), Château Lafite Rothschild (1970, 1982, 1997), Château Cheval Blanc (1928, 1949, 1966) and Château Margaux (1970, 1990). From the Burgundy region come Meursault Clos de la Barre Lafon (2004), Puligny Montrachet Referts Sauzet (1992), Volnay Santenots Leroy (1969) and Vosne-Romanée Jayer (1988).

Ridgway highly recommends six magnums of Puligny Montrachet ‘Combettes’ Boillot 1992, as well as Quinta do Noval Porto Vintage ‘Nacional’ 1963 and, from the Loire Valley, Vouvray ‘Le Haut Lieu’ Huet 1919. The spirits section offers the oldest bottle in the sale, Fine Champagne Clos du Griffier (1788), the proceeds of which will be donated to the children’s charity ‘L’Association Petits Princes’.

La Tour d’Argent was a high-society address from the start, with Louis XIV, Mme de Sévigné, Philippe d’Orléans and the Duke of Richelieu having their favourite tables by the windows. In 1890, chef Frederic Delair created the recipe for Duck Tour d’Argent and decided to number each bird, a terrific marketing ploy. Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, ate No 328 that first year. In 1921, Thomas Rockefeller had No 51,327, and more recently Bill Gates No 1,079,006. The millionth duck was eaten in 2003, the year Claude Terrail’s son André took over the restaurant.

The ground floor is now a museum, the main exhibit a table beautifully set as it was in 1867, when Tsar Alexander II and the King of Prussia dined together. Elsewhere are cabinets spilling over with memorabilia and walls of photographs, including a charming one of the Queen (then Princess Elizabeth) and Prince Philip (duck No 185,397) leaving the restaurant in May 1948.

The marriage between André Terrail (who took over the restaurant in 1910) and August Burdel (the daughter of the owner of the très chic Café Anglais) created a new chapter in the restaurant’s history. At the time, it was seen as the union between the quais and the boulevards, refreshing La Tour d’Argent for a new generation.

By 1947 André Terrail was ready to hand over the silver keys to his son, the tall and elegant polo-playing Claude, whose signature blue cornflower buttonhole matched his eyes. Claude, born on the fourth floor of La Tour in 1917, launched a second restaurant in Tokyo’s New Otani hotel, still thriving today, and saw La Tour celebrate its 400th anniversary in 1982. He died in 2006, having run the restaurant for 60 glorious years.

A HANDSOME, INTENSE young man, Claude’s son André shut the restaurant for three months and gave it a £3 million facelift. ‘We concentrated on the kitchens, the offices and re-designing the menus with chef Stéphane Haissant. We feel that what goes on in the coulisses [backstage] is just as important as the front of house,’ he explains.

The animated movie Ratatouille is based loosely on La Tour d’Argent. It tells the story of a Paris sewer rat who takes up residence in a once great restaurant (La Tour d’Argent has lost two of its three Michelin stars) and inspires the kitchen to greatness. Haissant, at the restaurant since 1996, sees the irony. Now executive chef, he is determined to inspire his team of 45 to recover the missing stars.

André Terrail sees his work as fine-tuning the restaurant to the needs of an ever-evolving clientele, working closely with Ridgway and Haissant. ‘People definitely come here for the wine, sometimes arriving long before lunch or dinner to taste. Each week Mr Ridgway selects about 21 wines he thinks will be interesting matches with the dishes. These days people tend to order just one white or red wine, although the other day a couple got very excited and ordered four bottles because they were so eager to taste. At La Tour we serve wines that are full symphonies: there’s no lift music here!’

And what would Claude Terrail think of the wine auction? ‘We don’t think he would be too pleased: he would have asked me why I bought so much in the first place!’ says Ridgway. I ask him to divulge his favourite wine. ‘The one I’m tasting tomorrow. Wine is really just a product made for drinking — we mustn’t make a religion of it,’ he says, grinning.

Pictures from top: Chef sommelier David Ridgway; the famed cellars of La Tour d'Argent; owner and manager André Terrail. Photographs by Xavier Defaix (c) Piasa - La Tour d'Argent