Stock up on wines for Bastille Day with a primer from Berkeley’s Chez Panisse
At the world renowned Chez Panisse Restaurant and Café in Berkeley California, Executive Chef and Owner Alice Waters features a special Bastille Day event on July 14 each year. A celebration of the garlic harvest, liberty, equality, fraternity and sorority, the annual festivities feature the music of the Parisian bal musette dance with accordion accompaniment and a Gallic garlic menu. Cristina Salas-Porras, assistant to Alice Waters, sums Bastille Day up as, “an annual celebration that staff and customers alike look forward to all year long. The restaurant is lively—full of all sorts of sounds and good garlicky aromas.”
The wine list at Chez Panisse changes daily just like the food menu so the restaurant eschews an advance wine-and-food pairing for the holiday menu, preferring instead to match wine and food according to the availability and suitability of both on the day of the meal. Pairing recommendations for Bastille Day menus include rosé and red Bandol wines and other Provençal selections. The menus include garlic-based meats, fish, game and vegetable dishes with garlic accompaniments like aioli, pesto and garlic confit.
Waters opened Chez Panisse in 1971 after graduating from UC Berkeley with a degree in French Cultural Studies, naming it after a character from Marcel Pagnol’s 1930s movie trilogy: Marius, Fannie and Cesar. Her longtime philosophy has been that “cooking and sharing food connects us to the earth and to each other.” For decades, she has sought out restaurant foodstuffs from organic farmers and ranchers, and from the restaurant’s backyard garden. The formal restaurant downstairs has a nightly changing prix-fixe dinner menu, while the café upstairs serves lunch and dinner from a daily changing àla carte menu.
Given the slim odds of securing a Bastille Day reservation at Chez Panisse (Former President Clinton was reportedly turned down for a table), hosting a Bastille Day dinner at home may be the next best thing. Try an aperitif of 2001 Claude Lafond Reuilly Clos des Messiurs, a refreshing Loire Valley Sauvignon Blanc white known locally in Reuilly as Blanc Fumé.
Once you’ve got your preprandial libation, sauté a squid appetizer to dip in aioli and serve with a 2001 Chateau du Rouet Cotes de Provence rosé. The strawberry and raspberry flavors in the wine will complement the calamari and garlic mayo nicely. Consider an entree of simple grilled bavette skirt steak paired with a spicy Provençal 1997 Domaine Bunan Bandol Moulin des Costes red wine, and a simple watercress salad.
One fun French-themed dessert served at Chez Panisse’s event in the café was a bleu–blanc–rouge French flag blueberry compote with white nectarine ice cream and plum sorbet. Sip a sumptuously sweet 1999 Chateau La Passonne Louplac from Bordeaux with that, and you’ve got a bang-up finale to your own Bastille Day celebration, even without the pyrotechnics. À la votre: Cheers to you.
· French reds
· French whites
· More about Bastille Day
· A Frenchman’s recollections of Bastille Day
· Our wine team tours France
