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We don’t have much room to store cases of wine, so rather than offering people the same old list of Syrahs, Cabernets, Chardonnays, Pinot Grigios and the rest of the usual suspects we thought we’d make up a wine list of the strangest and most unusual wines we could find, sort of like a wine zoo for exotic animals.

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I serve a lot of wine at Dirt Candy and all of it comes with a story. But A Touch of Classe is the most personal wine I serve.

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Sure, it’s organic. Sure, it’s natural. But there’s more to it than that.

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No one bears more responsibility for the wine list here than Camille Riviere. From the beginning of Dirt Candy I wanted to serve unusual wine, but most of my reps were bringing me the same old Chardonnays and Pinot Noirs. They just were not rocking my world and I feel that if you’re going to shell out for a bottle of wine, your world needs to be rocked. So I hired sommelier Rachel Ponce to help me put together a list of bizarro wines and to introduce me to wine companies that would be willing to go the extra mile to knock my socks off. Camille was Rachel’s favorite rep (working, at that time, for Frederick Wildman & Sons importers) and she blew into Dirt Candy for our first tasting like a French tornado and she immediately pulled out an array of bizarre but beautiful wines I’d never heard of before. Tasting them felt like I’d been eating bread all my life and suddenly someone introduced me to cupcakes.

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Camille among the grapes.

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Since then, Camille hasn’t just become my favorite wine rep, but she’s become a friend. So when she told me she was branching out on her own with Camille Riviere Wine, I couldn’t wait to see what she’d bring. I wasn’t disappointed. The first wine she had me taste was A Touch of Classe from Jean-Francois Coutelou’s winery. Jean-Francois is a third-generation winemaker and his vineyard is entirely organic. He was Camille’s mentor early in her life, and he taught her everything she knows about wine. So for me, it’s not just Camille’s rambunctious personality that screams off the label, but a part of her life is also in that bottle.

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I love the name and the label – wine doesn’t have to take itself so seriously all the time. There’s room for laughter and having fun with wine and I like that this label doesn’t look all pretentious and stuffy. After all, we drink wine to enjoy ourselves, so why shouldn’t the label be fun, too? But A Touch of Classe is also a serious wine. 60% Carignan grapes, 40% Syrah, it’s a natural wine that tastes amazing, like the essence of funky hippie, laced with the true taste of Concord grapes – sweet, with some pepper and a whole lot of terroir: farmed soil, sun-ripened fruit, herbaceous greenery, woodsy roots.

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Jean-Francois Coutelou’s winery is in Puimisson, a small village in Languedoc down in Southern France. It was started by his father in 1966, and many of those original vines still exist. Jean-Francois went organic in 1987, long before it was trendy, back when there were only seven organic wineries in the region, and his vines haven’t tasted chemical fertilizers or artificial additives in over 25 years. His land is planted with about 400 olive trees, almond trees, and fig trees (which only grow where there’s underground water) in order to encourage biodiversity. All the plowing, pruning, and leaf plucking is done by hand.

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A Languedoc vineyard.

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Usually you tell a story about a wine and the region it comes from, but A Touch of Classe feels like a story that Dirt Candy’s a part of. It’s a wine only a restaurant like mine would serve – a restaurant that doesn’t feel the need to be solemn and humorless about food and wine. It’s a wine that’s represented by a friend who understands Dirt Candy, and it’s a wine made by someone who’s close to her. I couldn’t be prouder to have it on my list, and every time I sell a bottle it makes me happy.

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Here’s a lot more information about the Coutelou winery, with some great pictures.