Based in Fresjus in Provence, Jerome Paquette carefully constructs a delicious selection of wines, including a rosé that is frequently seen as one of the best Provence pinks you can buy. Always shunning the fancy bottle and consistent colour fad of the famous brands, he makes wines that reflect his land and reflect the vintage. Basically, he is a proper winemaker!
Always accompanied by his wonderful dog Muscat around his vineyards, here he tells us of the six wines that changed his life.
Wine 1 - 1975 Chateau Figeac As a student at the Bordeaux oenology school, I was discovering a magical world of exceptional culture from Provence. It was during our wine-tasting classes that we were introduced to this wine. Château Figeac impressed me with its depth and the magic of its aromas, ranging from red fruits to violets, and above all, how astonishing it was to find notes of freshly roasted coffee in a wine!
Wine 2 - 1988 Chateau d'Yquem This wine was given to me by a friend in 2004. For me, it's the greatest discovery of precision in a wine. It has an incredibly deep nose of orange marmalade, dried apricots, musk and dried pineapple, with hints of marzipan and candied ginger. The palate is transparent, with perfect crisp acidity contrasting with the dried tropical fruit and dense honeyed flavour. The finish is of truly incredible length.
Wine 3 - A Cote Rotie from Guy Bernard I'm not sure of the vintage. Young graduate in oenology, on my way back from a weekend in Lyon in my old Citroën 2CV, I stopped at a winegrower's in Ampuis on a spring Sunday evening at around 6-7pm, unaware that I might be causing a disturbance. Against all odds, the winemaker welcomed me into his kitchen, uncorked a bottle and told me about his wine. Of course, I didn't have a penny to buy a bottle, but that wasn't important to him. He just wanted to share his love of his terroir. For me, that's the best expression of the fact that wine is first and foremost a matter of passion and conviviality.
Wine 4 - 2005 Paolo Bea Sagrantino de Montefalco Discovered by chance in an Italian restaurant, I had never heard of this appellation. I was in awe of the diversity of terroirs and grape varieties. This dense wine, so austere at first, gradually opened up, revealing all its complexity of black fruit, spices and hints of balsamic. A year later, I travelled over 1,000 km to meet this small vineyard in the heart of Umbria and, once again, the meetings with the winemakers were an opportunity for great exchanges!
Wine 5 - 2020 Stephane Tissot Les Bruyeres Arbois My grandfather was originally from the Jura before moving to Provence. It was on the occasion of my father's 80th birthday that we tasted this wine, like a pilgrimage to the source. The wine's lively minerality, with its aromas of fruit and spices. It's lively and dense on the palate, very concentrated with a hint of oak. A fine tribute to my family's roots. It's definitely confirmed that I like crisp, full-bodied wines.
Wine 6 - 2016 Chateau Paquette Cuvee Themis Rose I tasted this bottle on 21 January 2023 during a meal organised by my wife Sophie for my birthday. There were 6 of us at the table with our long-standing friends and Sophie had prepared a poule au pot as she knows how to do in a unique way. Wanting to surprise me, she presented this bottle blind. I spent a long time looking for a wine that could offer such a velvety structure and such complexity in its register of woody spices and dried apricot with a hint of menthol. But I couldn't find it! I created this unique blend of Tibouren and Mourvèdre in 2014, convinced that on our terroir of volcanic origins, a rosé for ageing and gastronomy was possible. The proof is in the pudding!
If you could share only one of these with three people, real or fictional, living or dead, which would it be, and who would they be?
I think that if I had to choose a bottle, it would be the Sagrantino de Montefalco, for the journey it represents, but perhaps also because it corresponds to that mixture of austerity, seriousness and curiosity that I carry within me.
I dream of being able to share this moment with my grandparents. My Grandfather, whom I never knew, but who was at the origin of everything, and it seems that I look like him. My Grandmother, because it was with her that I learnt about photosynthesis, which she used to explain to my brothers and me in the car when she took us on holiday, and above all about vines and wine.
