The Last Day of Cepage Noir

Saturday the wife and I made a final visit to Cepage Noir in order to say our goodbye's and, hopefully, catch a deal on wines no longer available in Houston. The label above is a final treat owner Christopher allowed us to experience before shutting his doors.

Bugey Cerdon is a rose sparkling wine made in a traditional method that allows the yeast and fermentation to work inside the bottle without additional manipulation by human hands. The resulting product is something that I can only describe as liquid strawberry cake. It was a beautiful wine with a pink color that had touches of lavender, a very light mouth feel and a taste that walked the line of sweet in a way that was, quite honesty, one of the best sparkling wine experiences I have had in my life.

The sweetness of this wine came forward once you put it in your mouth. It wasn't a 'sugary' sweetness that coated the back of your throat, but something that just brushed the taste buds before vanishing under a wave of smooth berry flavors and those iconic bubbles that you can experience in fine sparkling wine. It was a great wine, a memorable wine, and one that won't be sold any longer in Houston. The reason for this is because of the dictatorial nature of Spec's, and their wine buyers.

You see, the wine buyers for Spec's were at the same tasting as Christopher when he discovered this wine. They tasted the same wines, swirled, spit and then declared that they weren't interested in purchasing them because "they will never sell in Houston".

Sadly, Spec's was right. They won't sell well in Houston because Houston is a "name brand town". The wine market in Houston is over-concerned with finding the 'correct' wines as defined by Wine Spectator or those chemically altered to please the palates of famous wine critics. Because these wines are organic, and reflect the nature of the terroir, they are doomed to fly under the Houston wine radar. Ironically, in a city that's trying desperately to copy its much older cousins in Europe, Houston has no interest in discovering wine in their style.

The truth is Houston is a 'trend' town, especially the elite foodie community. Houston foodies are more interested in looking good and being seen as 'sophisticated' as they are actually doing the hard work it takes to be educated. Because of this our top restaurants have little true creativity, instead choosing to be Southern copies of East Coast trend-setters bringing the faux-sophistication of New York and other cities to Houston, one or two seasons after the trend has passed.

The off-shoot of this is that, when Houston's cultural standard-bearers write on the web about how "we're just like New York" they write that with pride and without a hint of self-awareness. Houston is quite happy to have its pizza copy New York, its wine bars copy San Francisco and its food scene be a pale imitation of the touristy areas of Europe. During the course of this they miss the earthy, soulful heart of other cuisines (the part of a cuisine that you should want to copy) that can be found in the countrysides and in the small towns. It's the food that causes top Chef's in New York to travel to the small towns in France & Italy in search of new ideas. Ideas that are "ooh'd and aah'd" over in Houston after they've been sanitized and had the heart sucked out of them by Houston Chefs, who have studied not the original heart, but the sanitized versions of their Big City counterparts.

There are exceptions to this practice of course, Feast being one, rare lights in the Houston culinary firmament. Too often however these high points are treated like any other passing fad, or their given no attention at all. In the rare cases that they aren't outright ignored they're soon forgotten in light of newer, flashier ventures. Such is the culinary life-cycle in Houston. It's "the Houston Way" from a food and drink perspective.

Ironically, when speaking of Houston, one of the biggest complaints from the elites is that there's no soul in Houston, that its nothing more than a sprawling, festering, smelly pit of chain restaurants with no soul and even less culture. Houston's foodie community will spend hours bemoaning this strip mall or that, the holes in Houston's cuisine landscape and what needs to be done to get it more in line with the food scene of the 'great food cities of the World'.

All of that makes the closing of Cepage Noir even more curious. What Houston had in that little wine shop was something that truly was world class. They had an opinionated owner who was willing to share his passion, a wide selection of under-the-radar wines that were available for sale due to the relationships he had developed with both the importers and the producers. There were tastings and workshops and opportunities to learn wine from a true sommelier.

And now its gone, close for good and Houston is again stuck with having their wine choices dictated to them by corporations and distributors.

That's not world class.