Blazers Under the Louvre: My Monday Inside Bettane & Desseauve's Grand Tasting, Where 300 Estates Pour Their Best 🥂🇫🇷

Darlings, some Mondays are for meetings. This one was for the mother of meetings. In three weeks' time — Friday 27 and Saturday 28 November 2026 — the Carrousel du Louvre, that luminous exhibition hall tucked beneath the Louvre's shadow at 99 rue de Rivoli, turns into France's most elegant trading floor: Le Grand Tasting Paris, the festival created by Michel Bettane and Thierry Desseauve, the critics whose scores move chais and checkbooks across the Hexagon. Nearly two decades in, the formula hasn't aged a day: more than 300 domaines and maisons, every region from Alsace to the Jura laid out in tasting aisles, and masterclasses animated by the Bettane+Desseauve team all weekend — glass (a proper Riedel, included with your ticket) in hand. So today I walked the route the way I always do before a fair: blazer sharp, notebook full, charm loaded. Because at a tasting like this, the wine is only half the negotiation.

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🍇 Scene 1 — Stand Talk: Twelve Generations in One Glass

Bright skylight, white vaulted stone, and the low murmur of the trade doing what it does best — talking terroir with a straight face and a twinkle. I found my first stop of the day at the Alsace aisle, in conversation with the Maison Trimbach team — Ribeauvillé royalty since 1626, where 12th-generation Pierre Trimbach runs the winemaking with nephew Julien while his brother Jean and Pierre's daughter Anne, of the 13th generation, carry the maison's flag around the world as its ambassadors. We talked Riesling — naturally — and the jewel of it all: Clos Ste Hune, that mythical 1.67-hectare plot inside the Rosacker Grand Cru that produces what plenty of critics call one of the world's most magnificent Rieslings, from a house that went HVE-3 organic in 2023. I laughed, I nodded, I may have practiced my best "importer voice." The Riesling did the seducing.

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🍷 Scene 2 — The Masterclass Suite: Kaysersberg, Pouring Gold

Midday, and I slipped out of the aisle noise into a masterclass suite — the intimate heart of the Grand Tasting, where Bettane+Desseauve's experts walk you through flights you'd otherwise spend a decade chasing. My afternoon study: Alsace richness, via Domaine Weinbach of Kaysersberg — a former monastery founded by Capuchin monks in 1612, in the Faller family since 1898, and run today by Catherine Faller with her sons Eddy and Théo. In the glass: the domaine's opulent Pinot Gris Cuvée Laurence, named in memory of Laurence Faller, whose touch made Weinbach the reference for sumptuous late-harvest Alsace. Deep gold, quince and honeycomb, that waxy silk only Pinot Gris on the Clos des Capucins delivers. I swirled it into the window light and pretended to take notes. My handwriting says "wow" about forty times.

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🥂 Scene 3 — The Gala: Churchill's Cuvée Under the Chandeliers

And then the fair changes costume. The aisles empty, the gowns appear, and the Carrousel du Louvre becomes what it secretly always wanted to be: a ballroom. This is the after-hours side of the wine business — the vintages that get brokered between toasts, the handshakes that become allocations. I claimed a candlelit column with a flute of Champagne Pol Roger, the Épernay house founded in 1851, member of the Primum Familiae Vini, holder of the Royal Warrant — and poured its legend: the Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill, created in memory of the house's most faithful devotee, its black-bordered label a sign of mourning, its blend a guarded secret said to be Pinot Noir-dominant with "a zest of Chardonnay." Churchill borrowed Napoleon's line about champagne — in victory you deserve it, in defeat you need it. Under those chandeliers, darling, I was feeling victorious.

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✨ Le Grand Tasting Paris — Tasting Notes & Travel Tips

• Event: Le Grand Tasting Paris 2026 — 27–28 November 2026 (Fri 10h15–20h, Sat 10h15–18h), Carrousel du Louvre, 99 rue de Rivoli, Paris 1ᵉʳ; organized by Bettane+Desseauve, 300+ domaines and maisons, masterclasses throughout (reserved with entry), tasting glass included
• Wines Featured: Riesling Clos Ste Hune (Maison Trimbach, Rosacker Grand Cru, Alsace); Pinot Gris Cuvée Laurence (Domaine Weinbach, Kaysersberg); Cuvée Sir Winston Churchill (Champagne Pol Roger, Épernay)
• Best Time to Visit: Friday afternoon for the calmest pours and the longest conversations with the winemakers; Saturday for energy — go with a plan and pick two regions to go deep
• Getting There: Métro Palais Royal–Musée du Louvre (lines 1 & 7); the hall sits under the Louvre's Cour Napoléon, five minutes from the Tuileries — arrive by 10h15 opening to taste before the aisles fill
• What to Wear: Business-chic that survives a spittoon — a tailored blazer over silk by day, one unforgettable gown (and one memorable sparkle at the ear) for the evening circuit; Paris dresses up and so should you

💋 They say you shouldn't mix business and pleasure — but nobody warned the wine world. I came home with three importer conversations, one notebook full of gold ink, and a standing invitation to Kaysersberg. Next Monday? Let's just say a certain castle cellar is expecting me, and I intend to arrive in something scandalous. Don't wait up. 🥂

— Sofie, your ambassador of bubbles & business, signing the deal in Riedel