Three Parisian artisans (Jean-Paul Hévin, Poilâne et My Fermentation) in conversation with Château Rieussec
Three Parisian artisans (Jean‑Paul Hévin, Apollonia Poilâne et Hugo Chaise) bring their fermented crafts into conversation with Château Rieussec.
Château Rieussec is born of noble rot, Botrytis cinerea, a mould that concentrates and transforms. For three Parisian artisans with very different crafts, fermentation isn’t a curiosity. It’s a mother tongue.
Jean-Paul Hévin, France’s finest chocolatier
A bold claim that might actually be an understatement: in 2023, Jean-Paul Hévin was named World Best Pastry and Chocolate Maker at the World Pastry Stars in Milan.
For us, Hévin chose a flourless soufflé: Grand Cru chocolate, an egg yolk, a whisper of white to hold it together. A study in restraint, which only sharpens what fermentation brings to cacao. The beans spend days in their mucilage, that sweet white pulp surrounding the heart of the fruit, before they become couverture. Hévin’s soufflé arrives with a round bitterness; somewhere toward the end of the tasting, Château Rieussec turns all of it into caramel.
On the Rue du Cherche-Midi, Apollonia Poilâne’s sourdough starter may be a hundred years old, a piece of dough from one batch used to seed the next, a transmission that is literal, biological, unbroken. Bread and wine have shared a table since antiquity. Apollonia shifts the dynamic: she places a little miso, made from that same starter, between them. Suddenly the sweetness of the Rieussec, the acidity of the sourdough and the umami of the miso stop adding up. They recognise each other.
Trained at Noma, Copenhagen’s temple of fermentation, then in the kitchens of the George V, Hugo Chaise could have opened almost anything. He opened My Fermentation: an unfussy canteen, quietly ambitious, creative on the plate. His Grilled Kim’Cheese (brioche, cheddar, emmental, kimchi) isn’t fusion. It’s a conversation between a Korean tradition of lacto-fermentation and the kind of comfort that arrives molten and buttered. Against Rieussec, the wine’s sweeter notes settle in without disappearing. Roasted white asparagus with miso, topped with a mayonnaise espuma, does the rest.
Three Parisian houses, three time signatures: Hévin’s spare excellence, Poilâne’s living memory, Chaise’s contemporary Paris. All of them speak the same language: fermentation. As a native of noble rot country, Château Rieussec moves freely among them. It loosens things. And in doing so, brings out what was there all along.
Sauternes has a reputation of being an after-dinner or dessert wine. But Château Rieussec is here to challenge that stereotype. Join Mathieu Crosnier, our Estate Manager on an enlightening journey to London.
