From Brooklyn to the Loire(1)

By 2009-3-6 19:20:52

Laurent Saillard, pruning the vines in Mareuil (Loire)From Brooklyn (NY) to the Loire Valley.
Mareuil-sur-Cher, Touraine (Loire)
This is a long way from New York, and this is in many regards a completely different world over here but somehow this new life that Laurent Saillard has been experimenting along the

Cher river complements his New York achievements. Laurent was the man who opened with his wife Catherine Ici, a Brooklyn restaurant that soon thrived and played its part to popularize natural wines in the big city. He had discovered natural wines while in New York through the importer (now closed down) who imported Claude Courtois' wines, then through Jenny Lefcourt and Joe Dressner. To make it simple, the first venue to give natural wines a central place in New York was 360 (now closed) which was opened in february 2003 by Arnaud Ehrart, and this was also in Brooklyn. The second was Ici, opened by Laurent and Catherine Saillard in february 2004. For the information, the third place where natural wines were a centerpiece of the menu was Ten Bells which was opened in 2008 by Fifi (whom I met recently) in the Lower East Side. Natural wines, these wines made without the many additives used in commercial wines, have since rapidly expanded in New York, thanks to distributors like Chambers Street Wines, Astor Wines and people like Joe Dressner and Jenny Lefcourt.
For years, Laurent who had previously worked at Bouley and Balthazar after first arriving in New York in 1995, delished at preparing his cuisine at Ici from local fresh products bought at a farmers market. For the wine, his wine list consisted grossly of 30 whites and 30 reds, mostly from French natural-wine producers plus a few from Spain and Italy. These wines were still little known on the restaurant scene in New York but they were bringing a new life on the table. He used to enjoy the company of the vignerons who were behind these marvelous wines that he served and drank, as they were coming regularly to New York for tastings and he also visited some of them when in France for a visit. The human-size estates and the organic/biodynamic farming fared well with the philosophy he tried to convey through his cuisine. At one point, personal problems and the desire to try something else made him want to get on the other side of the wine trade. This all landed him in the Loire last year for a long visit to his friends/vignerons, and ultimately in this old house surrounded by woods and vineyards on the slopes going down to the Cher river.

Gathering the canes - the house in the background

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From wineterroirs.co