(Note: This is a sidebar to lead critic Dave Lowry's May 2010 review of Brasserie by Niche. In the review, Lowry writes: "Want to be authentique? Splash a little Beaujolais into the last of your onion soup and drink up, a gesture of chabrot that captures Brasserie's essential spirit.")
Phillipe Faure-Brac was named the best sommelier in the world back in ’92. So when he and a few friends gather for dinner at his restaurant, the Bistrot du Sommelier in Paris, you can bet they’re popping corks on some wines you aren’t going to find on the bargain shelf at Safeway. After one such dinner, when Phillipe grabbed a bottle from the table and rose to solemnly suggest he and his companions engage in chabrot, a few eyebrows might have gone up. But hey, you gonna argue with the world’s best sommelier?
Chabrot is best thought of as a kind of swiping-the-plate-with-a-piece-of-bread move, designed to pick up the last, delectable tidbits there. Instead of bread, it’s a splash of wine. Instead of a plate, it’s a soup bowl. With just a spoonful of soup left, a glug of wine goes in to “sweeten the pot,” so to speak, then the bowl’s lifted and sipped. Chabrot has always been a strictly country-style way to end a meal in France, mostly in the southwest region of the country, and it’s something the oldsters do. It’s currently gained a sort of elan among younger gourmets.
What made Phillipe’s gesture a little different than say, Old Man Pierre’s pouring a gurgle of vin ordinaire into his evening potage is that the bottle Phillipe picked up for chabrot was a ’92 Cheval Blanc. Yeah, the ’92. It’s a smoky, aromatic liquid of love, exquisite with more layers than a '70s hairdo and more complexity than the tax code. It’s a wine that could change your life with a single glassful. Which isn’t likely to happen unless you’ve got a little more than $3,500 to spend on a bottle. So Phillipe’s passing the bottle, and everyone at the table is giving a Gallic shrug and joining him, except for one guest, a fabulously wealthy American wine enthusiast who didn’t speak a word of French and who had no idea why these crazy Frenchmen were tilting a Cheval Blanc into their bowls of mushroom soup. According to some sources, he still isn’t over the shock.
