Rose Water. You gotta love a restaurant that not only sends its customers a letter from Paris but begin the letter with this dashing quote from “An American in Paris”:

For a painter, the Mecca of the world, for study, for inspiration and for living is here on this star called Paris. Just look at it, no wonder so many artists have come here and called it home. Brother, if you can’t paint in Paris, you’d better give up and marry the boss’s daughter.
(Alan Jay Lerner (1918-1986), U.S. composer, lyricist. Jerry (Gene Kelly), An American In Paris, voice-over introduction to the film (1951).

Here’s a bit of the note from the folks at Rose Water as they scour France for great wines and ideas. And don’t forget Rose Water for heart’s day on Thursday.

Hello again. I’m in Paris for a few days after an intense week of visiting winemakers from Muscadet to Cheverny. I had the good fortune to travel with a group of American wine professionals on a trip organized each February by Joe Dressner and his partners at Louis/Dressner Selections, a favorite importing company. Many of you already know that we feature many of their wines at RW. They import natural wines, mostly from France, as well as a growing number of Italian wines. They are particularly strong in the Loire.

Joe and Co. work only with winemakers who adhere to strict principles of natural winemaking that result in what is now commonly referred to as Real Wine. These vigneron use as little chemical contact as possible, usually none. They harvest by hand and ferment only with the natural yeasts, producing wines of great character and integrity.

It came as no surprise that the winemakers that we visited turned out to be of great character themselves. From Marc Olivier at Domaine de la Pepiere in Muscadet, (who prepared us pates of wild boar and pheasant to follow dozens of local oysters) to Nadi Foucoult at Clos Rougeard in Saumur-Champigny, to Jean-Marie and Thierry Puzelat of Clos du Tue-Boeuf in Cheverny (who made us a blanquette de veau!), and others too numerous to mention here. It was a privilege to meet them, to taste the new wines, some of which were still fermenting in tank or barrel, and to taste some recent and not so recent vintages. Our first night, for example, Marc Olivier opened nearly every vintage of his Muscadets going back to the late eighties when he began making wine. He then proceeded to taste us on nearly every vintage that his uncle had made from the mid-eighties back to the late sixties! They were fresh and astonishingly vital.

For the last three days of the trip I had the great pleasure of staying with Olivier Lemasson of Les Vins Contes (remember the P’tit Rouquin Gamay from last summer?), his wife Cecile and their beautiful daughter Mila. They live in the tiny town of Cande just outside Blois. Olivier is a young winemaker with a very bright future.

In all, we tasted hundreds of wines this week. You’ll be seeing a great number of them on the list at RW in the months to come, and see below for a special dinner featuring the wines of producers I visited.