Talk with Pascaline Lepeltier 

PASCALINE LEPELTIER

At Chambers, we set great store by cuisine made with fresh market produce which we pair with nearly 4,000 different wines. We hold very little stock and the idea is to suggest a new wine by the glass with each new dish. The backbone of a restaurant is to reconcile the living, the seasons and moods. People come and return because they want to be taken by surprise.

PASCALINE LEPELTIER

I am increasingly looking to work with sakes, fermented rice-based drinks, ciders and co-fermentations. But you have to understand that not everyone is totally prepared to try everything, even in New York, the city where everything is possible and every type of creativeness exists. Nothing is off-limits – that is our vision of hospitality and the one we try and uphold through small producers, in order to decarbonise our consumption habits as much as possible. You can open up a gigantic world of flavours for New Yorkers who are a great audience for trying new things! This week, for example, I had fun introducing people to some absolute treasures – a Chenin skin-contact wine by Didier Chaffardon (Ed. a winegrower in Anjou, Coteaux de l’Aubance), and an ethereal Pinot noir by Raphaëlle Guyot (Ed. a female winegrower near Vézelay in Burgundy).

PASCALINE LEPELTIER

The wineries featured on the wine list are those with the closest connection to living things and I tend to promote wines on a case-by-case basis. In every case, we try to understand the winery’s economics, its history and its approach to life. We support producers for their overall project, while at the same time taking into consideration the challenge of making wine today in an era of global warming. This doesn’t mean I don’t get excited by the great masters who perpetually strive towards embracing living things, like Domaine Chandon de Briailles which made a very strong emotional impression on me.

PASCALINE LEPELTIER

In our sphere of influence, you have to stay as factual and rational as possible and not give your opinion because it is worthless. The book helped me a lot to set out an expertise which previously people tried to curtail, or they tried to categorise me only for my natural and feminist values, whereas my work is about wine in general. So I aimed to make my contribution, with total intellectual integrity, and debunk many of the preconceived ideas about wine tasting. Usually people forget about the genealogy of wine tasting and who decides about the expertise. Interdisciplinary research by the historians and researchers Thibaut Boulay, Olivier Jacquet and Gabriel Lepousez (who advocates a new form of multi-sensory tasting) led me to say that behind the interpretation of quality there are historical aspects, people, stakes… You have to look at how it has changed over time. For example, many people have forgotten that the Greeks only tasted from a medical perspective, then tasting became a commercial and political issue. It is therefore essential to deconstruct all of this for the benefits of wine itself.

PASCALINE LEPELTIER

Tasting alternatives are beginning to emerge. One example is geo-sensory tasting by Jacky Rigaux (Ed. an author specialising in wine tasting and terroir). Anything that is energising can be relevant as an introduction to discovering terroir. But, generally speaking, wine tasting should resemble one thing: are we able, as animal sapiens, to identify a living wine, and if it is good? That is the major challenge of tasting wine in the future.

PASCALINE LEPELTIER

Wine’s great power is its emotional, transcendental, transcultural and transgender qualities. You have to create these tasting environments and new horizons, and most importantly, know how to express them and know how to get excited when you taste a stellar Champagne by Olivier Horiot or a Carignan by Alain Castex in Banyuls. Language has the power to influence the way you taste and so you have to constantly contribute to deciphering things.