gotta take everything he says with a salt mine worth of grains of salt
I made this video on IG in response to a post he posted (jokingly?) about TCA going away and I got quite a few messages in my DM about being very disappointed at paying dinners of his. Everything is a marketing tool in the end and if people want to believe it, more power to them.
Francois is “the Dude.”
I think he even has a warehouse to store his empties!
Attending one of his dinners is a bucket list recent for my wife and I…but the damned Lotto keeps telling us “No.”
Just the act of sharing the experience and discussing with a wine loving group would be the main thing.
I agree that beauty is in the palate of the imbiber, and I have had dead wines…but they are all worthy of a shared conversation.
I had the great pleasure to meet Francois several times, not at his dinners but privately, in the South of France, in Paris … and he even attended a tasting of mine in Graz …
he is an extremely nice and generous person … I enjoyed every minute with him …
His dinners are certainly no “business” (he’s got no need for this) but for enjoying fine wines together with great food …
the dinner is included … should he give away the dinner with wines for free?
What I have heard it’s still fairly priced …
I’ve learned a lot from him reg. opening and slow oxing older bottles … although I have adapted his method to my needs …
No, I don’t think wines are immortal, but well made wines from good terroir can age, develope and live far longer than most believe … and I agree with him that many wines land in the sink far too early and unjustified without giving them the appropriate time … and proper respect …
A few comments/assumptions:
But I also assume that some of those wines were spectacular.Re your point 3. François (and his dinners) are in France. I doubt that the tax laws there mirror those in the US, as you seem to be assuming.
We almost went to one of his wine dinners (had to cancel our trip for irrelevant reasons) so I did a good bit of research on them. The price was quite in line, even lower in fact, than what other people were charging for similar cuisine and wines. And BTW he always had some extra bottles at hand, just in case one of the scheduled ones was “beyond repair”.
It‘s ridiculous to doubt Francois‘ love for his wines is anything but his 100% truth. Attributing it to financial motives is ludicrous.
Having said that, the prices you pay are more or less market prices. They are not overpriced but they‘re not a bargain either. In some larger of my dinners I charge what I paid, never market prices. Others around me do that too. Even for legendary dinners where magnums of Lafite 1900, Petrus 1945 or Haut Brions 29/34/45/59 have been served. When you pay market prices the threshold of being disappointed is infinitely lower than at dinners where somebody opens his cellar.
We see plenty of people who don’t even appreciate moderately mature wines. Some never “get” it, others take time. It’s easy to see some random curious people attending a dinner of his with no benchmark for what they’re in for being disappointed. Isn’t that on them?
Francois’ notes are poetic and give a good view of where he’s coming from in appreciating wines. Contrary to some peoples’ claims here, they aren’t all positive, but he is looking for charm in a faded wine. It’s clear he’s at the extreme of what he appreciates. Also, note that he rates wines in relation to expectation and sees plenty of sub-par performances.
Thanks, Peter. Point taken. I don’t know why he chose the nonprofit path, and imagine he would organize dinners even if there are no tax benefits. 
Andy,
I’m not sure if this post is directed at me. I agree with both of your statements. I was simply noting that his dinners do help fund his passion. It’s understandable that he charges closer to market value (on wines purchased over a lifetime), but we can agree that it’s very different from cost-sharing on recently acquired bottles.
Can we drop this boring junk about old wines and focus on the far more intriguing question of how to establish a nonprofit to get a tax write off for wine collecting / entertaining? We should maybe have a whole forum for this, it’s a critical issue!
That’s called the American Association of Wine Economists.
I have not witnessed any resurrection of a dead wine. I am on a bit of a journey of late culling out oxidized whites. 2011 Dauvissats were down the drain after letting them “Audoze” for up to 24 hours. 2012 Niellon Clos de la Maltroie has been all oxidized. 2 of 4 have been drinkably so. Maybe it was just context. 1999 Clos Ste. Hune was “interestingly oxidized” with a mineral streak still underneath. Day 2 was actually more pleasing but less mineral…think drinking Pine-Sol. Maybe that’s the “Audoze effect” at play.
I love old wines and fully believe that sound examples possess character that cannot be replicated without time on cork.
Cheers,
fred
I’ve known and have shared wine with Francois for over 20 years, so I am a bit biased.
He loves making over the top comments and he loves really old wine. I get calling him out on statements like “wine only gets better.”
He runs the wine dinners so he can share his ridiculously large cellar with more people. When he has dinners with his friends and they are small, there is no charge. He is not doing this for money. He truly loves old wine.
I have tasted with him many times and we often don’t agree on which wine we like best. At a mutual friends birthday blowout we had perfect examples of 1989, 1953 and 1928 Haut Brion in front of us. The non-wine geeks liked the 1989, I and many others preferred the 1953, but Francois absolutely swooned over the 1928, which I thought was great but over the hill.
His palate is his palate and he likes really old wine. He finds what he likes in old wines, including enjoying the sediment at the bottom (which now my wife does when we open bottles from the 60s).
I can’t say I agree with 100% of his statements, but his philosophy is really about finding what you like in each wine, and for him that is very often flavors and textures many others don’t like as signals of wine that is over the hill. Listen to how much he loves wine and focus on that.
What if we establish a berserker non-profit 501c3 that gives wine to the needy/less fortunate.
We all have needs and are clearly less fortunate than those that can afford burgundy on the reg.
Here in Austria you pay taxes not on the income but on the profit …
I’m pretty sure he pays all French taxes whenever due …
(… and now enough of this offending tax topic) …
I’ve never been at his official dinners, but he served us some really great old wines for free (of course I brought my share with me, too) … and it always was a great memorable evening …
It appears in these exchanges that many people do not know me and pretend to know me. I do not have any obligation to justify what I do.
What is ignored, by the ones who do not know me, is that I do not pretend to have knowledge, I pretend to have experience, which is very different, because I ask no one to have the same taste as I have.
Imagine that you have in front of you a map of National Geographic and a map made in the 17th century. Some people will prefer to study the young map, and if I prefer the old map, nobody has to criticize what I do, because I do not pretend to represent the truth.
I have experience, and it should be accepted. On 17637 wines drunk listed in my data base, there are 4404 wines before 1962. As my data base begins only end of 2000, it means that I drink 200 old wines (before 1962) per year. Nearly 4 per week.
Among these old wines, 1426 were drunk in paying dinners and 2978 were drunk with friends, the double. As I have made 271 dinners, in each dinner there are 5.3 wines before 1962.
My dinners have given me the occasion to drink 50% more old wines than without dinners. And my dinners give wine lovers occasions to drink 5.3 wines of before 1962 in one dinner. Apparently, some wine lovers are curious to enter in the world of old wines because they attend my dinners.
Among the old wines, I have an experience of the wines of legendary years. For 1899 plus 1900 1921 1928 1929 1934 1945 1947 1959 1961, I have drunk 1777 wines.
But I am not obsessed by old wines because for only four years 1989 1990 1995 1996 I have drunk 1730 wines.
So there is no obsession for old wines but an immense pleasure to have an experience of 4404 wines before 1962. I love to explore this world, with no pretention to have ‘the’ universal taste.
The people who attend my dinners are people who work hard, have no time to create a cellar of old wines, and have the curiosity to discover old wines in gastronomic dinners that I organize with great chefs. For them, there is no difference between going to a restaurant for a dinner and going to one of my dinners. They pay in both cases, but they will drink wines that no restaurant provides except at stratospheric prices.
My dinners are appreciated by wine lovers. Six of them have attended more than 30 dinners and many exceed 20 dinners. It allows me to open more old wines and share them with nice persons. I am happy.
I had had some wines, yes more than one, that seemed corked on opening, but that seemed to have recovered after a few hours decant. I have always assumed they were not actually corked, but suffered from some malady that just showed similarly.
I was excited by the idea expressed by some comments, that I would enjoy extremely tired wines that no other wine lover would accept.
Certainly I see in very old wines emotions that not many wine lovers accept and I can live with that.
But, as I have the chance to have the votes of participants in my dinners, I wanted to check.
Among the 271 dinners registered in my data, 229 dinners had votes of every participants, from one to four or one to five. In these dinners there were 2524 wines drunk of an average age of 52.4 years.
I have my vote and I have the global vote for every dinner. The global vote is calculated with points in a similar system as the points given in Formula 1.
I tried to check what is the average age of the wines ranked first, second and so on, for my vote and for the global vote.
First of all what is age? A 1961 drunk in 2001 has 40 years. A 1961 drunk in 2021 has 60 years.
So the ages of the wines that I voted are:
Ranked first : 71.8 years, second 62.9, third 56.6, fourth 53.3, fifth 64.7, no vote 46.9 years
Global vote :
Ranked first : 66.9 years, second 60.9, third 55.5, fourth 54.3, fifth 55.4, no vote 47.6 years
In the global vote, my vote weighs only one tenth.
It appears that the wines voted first are older that the others for me and for the total table, and that my preferred are older than for the global vote.
But really the differences of age between my vote and the global vote are not very significant.
So to suggest that I would have a taste very different from the taste of the participants seems to me exaggerated.
I prefer to see that the participants appreciate older wines in the dinners.
Cheers,
I am very much saddened that some Berserkers made the jump from disagreeing over tastes, to what felt like aggressive insinuations/accusations. You did not deserve that and it reflects badly on this community, that such personal attacks were made.
As for the stats, to a degree the audience for your dinners is pre-disposed towards appreciating very old wines, as that’s the USP of the dinners, effectively ‘history in a glass tastings’. That you yourself have a marginally stronger preference for even older wines than the average isn’t a great surprise, even given this pre-selection amongst attendees.
We all have our preferences and it’s a grown-up conversation that recognises and respects the differences in tastes, rather than the stridency of certain wine critics who insist they are ‘right’.
Did it recover or did the tca just get masked enough by the wine opening up to make it less detectable? That def happens. Tca doesn’t disappear once it’s there.
FWIW I’ve had a small few instances where what appeared to be TCA on opening, was not. I agree that TCA does not blow off.