7 minute read
A Glorious Feast
from Hamilton FW21
Imagine a dinner for four hundred that costs $1,500 per person. And on top of that, you’re asked to bring a bottle or two of your own cherished wine to share with the strangers at your table. If that sounds absurd, now imagine stumbling out of this dinner joyfully tipsy and elated, thinking it some of the best money you’ve ever spent. Such is the paradox of the gala dinner at La Paulée, one of the premier fine wine events in the world.
So, how does a BYOB dinner that expensive manage to sell out year after year? Besides the facts that each course is prepared by a different three-starred Michelin chef, and that (in addition to the wine you brought) countless bottles of truly great wine are poured freely by a platoon of the country’s top sommeliers, the answer can be summed up in one word: Burgundy.
Let me explain. For even the most ardently committed wine lover, “leveling up” in experience can be difficult because at some point, without the proper connections and huge coffers of disposable income, the finest wines and most exclusive wineries are practically impossible for the average oenophile to access. In many cases, even money can’t buy access. No region exemplifies this puzzler better than Burgundy, the planet’s holy ground for pinot noir and chardonnay, which has in recent years become the fine wine world’s hottest commodity, with prices soaring while availability of the most exalted bottles plummets. So how can you truly understand any wine region if you never get to taste its top wines?
Enter La Paulée, a multi-day Burgundy extravaganza that provides access to the wines and education so hard to get otherwise. Actually, it began far more modestly. Created in 2000 by Daniel Johnnes, formerly one of America’s
This page, clockwise from top left: Guests always get their money’s worth of great wine and company at the $1,500-a-seat La Paulée; Daniel Johnnes founded the event in 2000 to show his appreciation for Burgundy wine and the spirit of the region where it’s produced; not just a lavish dinner, La Paulée is an education event as well as a showcase for talented winemakers, chefs and sommeliers; the collective spirit of the dinner’s guests, Johnnes says, can be more moving than the incredible wines; generous guests of the BYOB event bring their favorite Burgundy wines, which are ultimately shared with and appreciated by new friends. Opposite page: Johnnes, first row in middle, teams up some of the best three-starred Michelin chefs with the country’s top sommeliers, who treat some 400 guests to one of the most exclusive gala dinners in the world.
premier sommeliers and wine director for the restaurants in chef Daniel Boulud’s empire, La Paulée draws its name and inspiration from the post-harvest party Burgundian domaine owners throw for their harvest workers. Johnnes’ Paulée is inspired by the famous Paulée de Meursault, the legendary bash in which the vintners of the entire village convene for a banquet that, by the time it concludes, becomes a drunken bacchanal. All guests bring bottles, and the wine flows as freely as fountains at a water park.
When Johnnes first attended the Paulée de Meursault as a guest, he found himself more moved by the collective spirit than even by the wines. “I had never seen anything like it,” he recalls. “Some of the greatest producers of wine in the world, singing, clapping, dancing while all this incredible wine flowed. I was floored by the friendship and the sharing and the sheer joy.”
This dynamic is part of the magic of Burgundy. Despite being home to the world’s most expensive wines (Domaine de la Romanée Conti and CocheDury, to name two) and exclusive vineyards (e.g., Montrachet, Chambertin), its people remain humble and generous. Winery owners wear overalls, drive vineyard vans and work in the vines alongside their employees. Little of the pomposity and grandeur you find everywhere from Tuscany to Napa exists here. And the wines—even the mid-tier versions—often express this earthy charm to go along with their otherworldly perfume and mineral texture.
But Burgundy’s wines and esprit de corps are inseparable, and Johnnes created La Paulée as a love letter to both. After all, this was the region that defined his sommelier career, which began at the cherished Manhattan fixture Montrachet (now closed). Johnnes’ extensive wine list and Burgundy-focused dinners attracted collectors from all over, making Montrachet the world’s unofficial Burgundy embassy outside of France.
In 2000, when Johnnes threw a dinner called La Paulée in New York, inviting some producers from France and some honored collectors, Burgundy was still an underdog region. At the time, the world was obsessed with highscoring Bordeaux, Super Tuscans and Napa Cabs. Burgundy was revered, but not idolized, except by a few zealous collectors. But as Burgundy’s popularity mushroomed over the last 20 years, so did the Paulée, which began alternating locations between San Francisco and New York, added satellite versions in Aspen and Stockholm, went online during the pandemic and became arguably the most prestigious wine event in the world. In recent years, Johnnes has launched similar but smaller-scaled events celebrating his other favorite wine regions. La Tablée is devoted to the wines of France’s Rhone Valley, while La Fête du Champagne is awash in bubbles. And his overarching company, Pressoir.wine, expands these services to a smaller coterie of coveted clientele: staging wine seminars and tastings, offering retail buying opportunities, cellar advisory and even travel arrangements.
Over the years, the mission changed as well. La Paulée and the other events became much more than fancy dinners. As Johnnes said in his keynote remarks to the anniversary Gala Dinner in 2020, “La Paulée for us is not just another wine dinner. Its significance is much greater. It is a platform for educating and a nesting ground for talent, winemakers, chefs, sommeliers and guests.” That platform now includes a broad spectrum of events—educational seminars, films, onstage interviews—and touches on all levels of wine, not just the elite stuff. While satellite events include exclusive (and expensive) smallscale lunches and dinners that allow guests to rub elbows with the winemakers, Johnnes wants people to embrace not only the chichi wines and appellations but also the more commonplace, accessible ones that in many ways constitute the true soul of Burgundy.
“I really feel sensitive about the perception of Burgundy,” Johnnes said, “and I fear a little bit that the average consumer is lumping it into that sort of elitist category. Whenever anybody asks me, I try to divert the conversation away from those very expensive wines and collectors and rarities and direct it toward the fact that Burgundy can be accessible and affordable and there’s a lot of great stuff out there.”
That said, how again can a $1,500 gala dinner seem like a bargain? If you’re but an average Burgundy fan, you might only bring a token bottle of nice wine that you bought at a shop. But the dozens of producers attending from France have packed their bags with cases of rare and delicious stuff. And the many wealthy, generous collectors who attend tend to bring dozens of bottles of ridiculous wine themselves. Inevitably, throughout the evening many of these bottles get passed around, shared among the entire eager throng. So even if this dinner is the most costly of your life, for the true Burgundy lover there’s no way to put a price on it, because chances are you’ll taste things rare and beautiful that you would never otherwise encounter. And then the singing begins (in French). And the dancing. And the drinking. And suddenly the night becomes a euphoric Paulée, channeling the authentic spirit of Burgundy for one night across an ocean. And that’s what’s truly priceless.
