INTERVIEW CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS PAGE

JL: How much value do you see in using a 100-point rating scale with wine?

JCB: I see value in any ranking scale as long as people are learning more about wine. Whatever scale you use. You use hearts, you use five grapes like in France, you use a point system, you use stars or decanters. Whatever can bring people into tasting fine wines is great, so I’m open to anything as long as it brings more people into wine and it helps people to classify wine. We need journalists to tell us what to drink, or even what to wear sometimes. It’s good to have them giving us guidance. It could be hearts. It could be blinking grapes. Whatever it is, 100 points, or like in France, 20 points. It could even be the A, B, C, D, F system.

JL: You personally use a 20-point scale?

JCB: Personally I use 20 points. When I rank wine, I have five metrics. I look at the wine, I smell the wine, I feel the texture of the wine, the palate and the after-palate. Overall, that helps me to rank the wine, so sometimes 4 x 5. So I rank up to 4 for each of those metrics, which equals 20, because in my school system in France, it was grades up to 20 points. But it doesn’t matter. I could use 100 and multiply by five.

JL: How many wines have you rated 20 out of 20?

JCB: Not many. I’m a tough ranker. For me, ranking is great, but it’s really how you drink the wine, with whom, where, what’s the emotion, what’s the occasion. More importantly for me, there are some vintages that are great and some not as great…The key is, we’re in a world where wine is a living organism, just like a human being. You have great moments, not as great moments, you have good days, bad days, you have great moments with your palate. Taste wine when you feel it’s right. If you liked a Malbec which was $6 or you like our French rabbit, which is a Tetra Pak wine we produce, which is amazing wine, and it’s $10. If you’re at the beach, on a picnic or on a boat and you like that wine, that’s great. I open French rabbit all the time. I don’t always go to those wines. I spare those wines. Those are the very heavy league, what we were tasting. It’s an occasion. It’s being with certain friends. And you know what I love to do? We start in the late afternoon with French rabbit, then move to sparkling and finish with a top wine, but only one. Sometimes what is overwhelming is to try too many great wines, too many grand wines. It’s too much. We want to respect wine, and that’s why I personally – say you come for dinner – we would open maybe eight wines which are between $20 and $80, and then we may open three or four wines that are $100, or $200 or $300. Then we would be mesmerized, but we don’t want to overshadow all the wines. It’s about all wines. You can find a great wine at $15.

From my standpoint, it would be very easy to tell you that I only like the wine we drank today, and that’s all I drink. Wrong. I would be a damn snob, and I would not be fair, because this is 1) not the truth and 2) I think all of us should try all kinds of wines. That’s why I kept the domaine. You notice wines at $30 because those wines are amazing and that gives you an entry to a great world without having to spend $300.

During your presentation, you alluded to the wine that you would drink in your final hour. That would be the 2006 Vougeot Le Clos du Prieure Blanc?

Yes, I vibrate for this wine. That would be the 2006 and the 2003 Clos du Vougeot Blanc. It doesn’t get better than this from complexity, to refinement, to length, to excitement, to meaning of life, too – because a lot of it, the history influences me a great deal. A lot of this wine, I love it for what it means and what it is and what it has been for the last 1000 years. So all of that weighs on me as to why I would drink that wine. I’m crazy about it.

JL: Would you pair any food with it?

JCB: Totally. I would go very much with rabbit. I’m crazy about rabbit because it’s a beautiful meat. It’s muscular, but at the same time tender. It’s very delicate, you can do an amazing sauce on it. I would obviously go to fish, but I would go to sashimi, to foie gras. I would pair it with anything. The beauty of that wine, it’s so amazing on its own that you can do meat, maybe not as much red meat, but rabbit or poultry, like lapin à la moutarde, mustard rabbit.

Another one I love, which is a big Burgundy recipe historically, is chicken with cream. It’s a very famous recipe with Bresse chicken, which is a variety of chicken grown in southern Burgundy, which is amazing. That’s one of my favorite dishes with that wine.