How to buy wine in France: Caviste interview

For this interview, we went to a French wine shop near the Aligre Market and interviewed Isabelle Gosselin. Our transcript includes the original French interview plus a full transcript on the facing pages.

Here's what you'll learn:

• The difference between a caviste and a restaurant's sommelier. The distinction is important. Understanding this helps you communicate with the sommelier in the restaurant.
• What wines will you find in the wine shop? How the wine seller chooses which wines to sell. The wines you find in a wine shop are different from those found in a French supermarket.
• You don't have to be an expert! How to choose a wine seller and how to understand what your sommelier is telling you at the restaurant.
• The two keys to buying wine in a French wine shop.
• How the wine seller knows which wine to suggest to a specific customer. (This is the "art du métier.")
• Showing up with the wine: when you are invited to someone's house and you don't know the menu, what wine do you bring?
• Pairing Champagne and food: Mme Gosselin outlines a basic principle and then gets into how varietal balance and dosage levels determine the choice of Champagne.
• Which Champagne was served with lamb at the Hotel George V?

Once you've been through these two booklets, you'll have a better understanding of how the French approach wine. (Their approach is very different from what you're used to hearing in English-language wine discussions.)

Native speaker's reading of the transcript: after we receive your order, we'll send you the password to download the recordings for these booklets.