At the dinner of the century they drank Paul Bara
Let’s begin with the “dinner of the century”. It’s 1975, and American Express had an item at a charity auction: dinner for two, anywhere in the world, no spending limit.
Craig Claiborne, the late New York Times restaurant critic, won the item. There was perhaps no one better placed to disgorge upon excess. Claiborne is the one who suggested a dinner party for eight involving a bottle of Romanée-Conti and Montrachet in the pages of The Times, as if it were as easy a dinner as hauling out a can of Wattie’s spaghetti and making spaghetti on toast for hungry five year olds.
Claiborne and his frequent dining companion, the chef Pierre Franey, decided upon Paris. Yet they didn’t go for the usual rooms; they went for Chez Denis, a tiny place with no Michelin stars run by the mercurial Denis Lahana, a self-taught chef who, when questioned on his lack of training, said “I’ve eaten my way through six inheritances in great restaurants; I know what good cooking is”.
Lahana was perhaps the last of the restaurateurs in the style of the great Fernand Point, the famously outsized proprietor of La Pyramide, nicknamed “Magnum” for his reputed habit of drinking a magnum of Champagne a day. At La Pyramide there was no à la carte: the day’s menu was decided that morning according to what was best and written out by hand. Lahana had a similar joie de vivre: come to my place, eat some food, and enjoy.
Naturally, when Claiborne suggested the dinner to Lahana, the latter was thrilled. How much? Perhaps $2,000 to $3,000, Lahana initially suggested. The final bill came to $4,000. To put it another way: that’s roughly $25,000 USD in today’s money. The US national average wage that year was only around $8,600. It was a 31-dish dinner of excess. The Vatican even weighed in, such was the scandal it provoked. The wines included 1918 Latour, 1928 Mouton, 1947 Lafite, 1961 Pétrus and 1929 Romanée-Conti. Legendary vintages.
And what was the Champagne?
Paul Bara. Solely Paul Bara. Specifically 1966 Comtesse Marie de France, Cuvée Denis, a Champagne created by Bara for the restaurateur behind Chez Denis. You can kind of imagine the meeting: both men were formidable personalities, both with an encyclopaedic knowledge of the food and drink of France. They were proper epicureans. At the time Bara was the first of his family to sell their Champagne under the family name (though one suspects he’d demure at the label, he was a pioneer in “grower Champagne” decades before it became a buzzword). Lahana was an iconoclast who was interested in the “best” of everything. It’s telling that Bara’s Champagne was selected for the “dinner of the century”. A 2015 bottle of Comtesse can be had for $175.00 from Glengarry right now, which is slightly less than Claribone’s infamous dinner.
The naming of the bottle is another nod to the rich history of Champagne and Bara’s understanding of it. Marie of France (1145 – 11 March 1198) was Countess of Champagne. It’s 100% Pinot Noir and well aged and, hilariously, is still labelled “Marque d’Acheteur”, essentially a “buyer’s brand”, because even though Chez Denis is long gone the trademark technically remains with the restaurant.
It’s probably important at this point to emphasise the symbiotic link between Bouzy, the great Champagne village, and of Bara. The Bara family has been rooted in Bouzy since 1833, with the family’s connection to the vineyards beginning when Auguste François Bara married the vine-owning Annonciade Robert three years later. The man himself, Paul Bara, was so passionate about the area he wrote a history of it. Bara’s own Champagnes are grown on 11 hectares, hand picked, and only the first pressing is used. The house’s wines almost empathetically reject yield for a more pure expression of place.
Perhaps a complement to the Comtesse, if you’re inclined to add that legendary wine to your cellar, is Bara’s Special Club. The designation is reserved for members of the Club Trésors de Champagne, and each vintage must survive two blind tastings before it can wear the Special Club label. Bara’s 2018 is a blend of 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay, drawn entirely from the vintage rather than reserve stocks.
Finally, some consideration should be given to Bouzy Rouge, a wine Paul Bara has long championed. This is still red Pinot Noir from Bouzy, a style whose history predates sparkling Champagne by centuries. Wine from Bouzy appears in the inventory of Louis XIV's court at Versailles, and the village's reds were historically spoken of alongside Burgundy. As sparkling Champagne came to dominate the region, these still wines became increasingly rare. Bara remains one of their benchmark producers today.
Back to Claiborne’s dinner. Bara was served. The bill, obviously, was immense. Yet you can still drink the Champagne that was served (ok, not the vintage) and find a few other bottles Chez Denis likely had on their list, too, at remarkably sharp prices. And in doing so it’s a link back to the past: when giants like Bara, Claiborne and Lahana roamed the earth and thought nothing of a 31-dish dinner.
