Back to Le Troisième Panton Street London

A restaurant has to be really good, if not superb, for me to visit twice in one week. I was meeting a good friend and work colleague, Ernest, for lunch. What better than to book a table at Le Troisième. There is no way that I would go to this wine bar and restaurant without eating. The smell of the food sets my stomach rumbling.

As I said before this restaurant could almost be in France. It is not fine dining. The food is just like my wife and her sisters make. It is simply homely and delicious.

This time we ordered the food before the wine and we both selected the bœuf bourguignon. There was no Burgundy on the wine list so there probably wasn't any in the dish. We chose the next best wine Le Versant Pinot Noir 2010 Vin de Pays D'Oc (IGP). I was reluctant to try it at first as the South of France is usually too hot for Pinot Noir grapes and such wines usually taste ghastly. But the wine had won prizes.

I was prepared to give it a go as "Le Versant"  means the slope of a hill so maybe the grapes were grown in a higher or cooler location. There was no information on the back label. We were not disappointed; the wine was full of red fruit flavours. There was no "jammyness" or harsh tannin. It was medium bodied and you could drink it on its own but of course it is best with food. It will probably keep for a few years but it is best drunk young.

In some ways it was like a New World Pinot Noir from New Zealand or Washington or Oregon states in the USA. These regions have the ideal climate to produce the some of the best "Pinot Noirs". The wines are blended with a small proportion of another grape variety and perhaps Le Versant is blended too.

Pinot Noir is grown all over the World but it expresses itself best in the Burgundy region of France where the  calcareous marl soils and cool climate provide ideal growing conditions. Burgundy produces some of the finest wines red wines in the world. Le Versant cannot rival this but nevertheless it is a very  good quality wine and I recommend it.

Le Versant is produced by the Vignobles de Foncalieu which is a prize winning co-operative based at Arzens in the Aude. There are hills around the area so I guess the wines come from a cooler location.

http://www.foncalieu.com/ and  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arzens

The wine and the food were leading to further convesations about travelling and restaurants and we remembered some of the projects we had worked on, especially in Hamburg. Our team would initially find  four or five good restaurants and stick to them. Two particularly good restaurants in Hamburg were the Vasco Da Gama and the Casa di Roma both on the Lange Reihi in the St Georg district.
 
I thought the fish in the Vasco Da Gama was fabulous when washed down with  a bottle of 
Alvarinho or Albariño white wine. The Vasco Da Gama was a little bit of Portugal in Hamburg and Le Troisième is certainly a little bit of France in London.



http://www.vasco-da-gama-hamburg.de/ and http://www.casadiroma.eu/.

The wine was fast running out but it was good enough to order another bottle with some French cheeses. After some dessert I had  a shot of Armagnac and some coffee. It was great food and good wine in a superb restaurant and the conversation matched it. We had spent three hours dining and had drank plenty but left reasonably sober.

We had had a four course meal for two with two bottles of wine and two digestives and coffee for 100 pounds including a tip. That was not so heavy on the wallet for so much conviviality.
What a great way to pass a few hours on a Tuesday afternoon.  Le Troisième, you must try it.

http://www.letroisieme.com/

PS/ you can buy Le Versant Pinot Noir here at Wine Discoveries who are a good independent supplier and they deserve all the support they can get. http://www.winediscoveries.co.uk/contact_01.php