Salut mes chers fous de vins français (Hi my dear French wine lovers),
As a contributor to My French Life™ magazine, I’ve started a series about French wine basics to demystify the topic a bit and to help you with how to talk about les vins français, as well as how to pair them.
As promised, for those who’ve read the article and who want to work on their French wine vocabulary and pronunciation, you can just scroll down for the audio of me pronouncing French wine words.
Mais comme vous savez déjà très bien (but as you already well know), I can’t let you go without at least a little yarn.
Story Time Yay!
In my early twenties, when I first got a good job in a great restaurant in New York city (after a year or so working breakfast shifts in a diner on 6th Avenue and late night weekends in a Soho cabaret), I found myself at a staff wine tasting before the dinner service. The charming wine director, who was clearly very knowledgeable and passionate, picked up his glass of red and swirled it, then jauntily took a big inhale.
“This wine smells like violets,” he said.
I looked around at the other team members who were nodding, swirling, and writing stuff down. I tried to swirl but splashed a little wine on my uniform. I dropped my pen on the floor while mopping up wine. Finally, I stuck my nose in the glass, but I couldn’t make the reference.
A wine that smells like violets? Friends, I had grown up in an apartment in Dayton, Ohio, and I was out of my league. “I don’t even know what violets smell like,” I whispered to myself.
The next week, however, we tasted un vin blanc (a white wine). It was a straw-colored sauvignon and I will never forget that moment. The wine director smiled, swirled and sniffed, then lifted his head and said simply, “Petrol and eucalyptus.” And you know what? I smelled it! I actually smelled oily petrol and the unmistakeable perfume of eucalyptus. And it was marvelous.
In that instant, something unlocked in my brain and I became fascinated with exploring the subject of wine and expanding my knowledge of my own senses. And just like that, decades later I’m currently studying for a wine exam where I actually have to know the difference between le shiste and le silex. Ah putain !
On veut des commentaires ! (We want comments!)
Listen to Me Pronouncing French Wine Words
Bon, just remember, I’m not a French teacher. I’m a wine-loving American living in France avec un petit accent so don’t give me a hard time :-) Also, if you want a real French teacher on Substack, here is one and here is another.
Allez, let’s goooo…
La carte des vins — the wine list
Je préfère quelque chose plus… — I prefer something more…
Léger — light
Frais — fresh
Puissant — powerful, big
Ample, rond — ample, round
Boisé — oaky
Tannique / moins tannique — tannic / less tannic
Notre budget est… — Our budget is…
On va prendre une bouteille de chardonnay s’il vous plaît —
We’ll take a bottle of chardonnay, please
Un verre de blanc / rouge / rosé — A glass of white / red / rosé
Une coupe de Champagne — a glass of Champagne
Selon vous, entre ces deux bouteilles, laquelle est plus intéressante pour notre repas ? — In your opinion, which of these two bottles is more interesting for our meal?
Un pichet — this is a useful term if you want to drink a wine that’s on the list “by the glass” but you want to have more than one glass (but less than a bottle) at a better price.
Un pichet is, en effet (in effect), a small carafe or pitcher of a wine-by-the-glass option. There are sometimes smaller and larger options, so the server might ask you some form of “Petit ? Grand ?” (Small? Large?) or “Vingt cinq ?” “Cinquante ? (25 or 50 centiliters)
J’aimerais bien essayer un vin local, s’il vous plaît — I’d really like to try a local wine, please
En fin de compte, le vin c’est le plaisir ! — at the end of the day, wine is all about pleasure!
le pinard — a slang term that originates from wine rations for soldiers in the First World War. It mainly invokes the idea of red wine and may come from pinot, but we’ll be inclusive!
Appellation d'origine contrôlée — Controlled designation of origin
Appellation d'origine protégée — Protected designation of origin
Grand cru — a wine classification of very high quality
Le climat — a specific parcel of vines that displays a particular set of established and categorized characteristics that influence the wine’s character, especially in La Bourgogne. Think of it as a very distinct place within a place.
Le terroir — the combination of soil, aspect, elevation and climate on a given piece of land
Les vins français — French wines
If you want to read the full article, which talks about some basics of French wine to help you navigate a French wine list and/or a conversation with a sommelier (and that tells the story of how my wine knowledge might just have helped me marry my French husband), head on over to My French Life™.
If you’re interested in how I got fluent in French (hint: it wasn’t in just the last two years of living in France), venez ici.
Did you know you can earn sweet little prizes by referring a friend to subscribe? It’s free but it helps so much to grow our community, and the prizes are sent via mail by me from Paris to you! Click below to read more about referrals and merci merci !
Such a helpful resource! Wine can seem so scary and intimidating in France to the uninitiated at first.
Very helpful. Thank you.