Dégustation de vins d'exception

Let us be straightforward from the start: Monaco produces no wine. Two square kilometres, not a single vine, and yet the Principality is probably where the finest bottles on the coast are drunk, because everything has converged here for a century and a half. So the tasting we arrange is of a particular kind: not a visit to an estate, but access to what Monaco has accumulated. The Hôtel de Paris cellar is the best example, and most of the people sleeping above it have no idea it is there. For those who nonetheless want to see vines, we drive up to Bellet, above Nice: a minuscule appellation wedged between housing estates, whose wines almost never leave the department. It is the exact opposite of the Provence rosé everyone knows, and that is precisely the point. We pitch the level to what you normally drink, and we would rather open three right bottles than ten for the sake of it.