Our All-Time French Best Sellers.
Both $12.97 for Bastille Day.

Dear Artisans,

Every shop has a party trick. Ours is a pair of French bottles we pour blind at the tasting counter — one white, one red — and then ask people to guess the price. In all the years we have played this game, nobody has ever guessed under $30. The real answer is $12.97. For both.

These two wines — Domaine Duffour's Côtes de Gascogne Blanc and Château Chauvet's Bordeaux Supérieur — are our all-time #1 best sellers, every single vintage. And here is the part that should get your attention: the customers who buy them by the case are our collectors of elite high-end Bordeaux, Burgundy, and Sancerre. The people with the deepest cellars and the most demanding palates in the shop have quietly made these their house white and house red — the bottles they open on a Tuesday while the grand crus sleep.

For Bastille Day, we are putting both on sale and asking you to do what they do: buy them by the case. A mixed case — six of each — is $155.64. That is a summer of superb French wine for less than the price of one serious Burgundy.

Gascony is Armagnac country — the rolling, sun-soaked far southwest of France, tucked between Bordeaux and the Pyrenees, where the Atlantic keeps the nights cool and the whites electric. For generations the region's growers farmed Ugni Blanc and Colombard to distill into brandy. Ugni Blanc is the great high-acid workhorse of France; left as still wine off old vines, that same cut of acidity becomes something thrilling — freshness you can practically feel in your teeth.

Michel Duffour has run his family estate since the 1980s, and his father planted most of these vines in the 1960s — the same old parcels that feed the family's revered Armagnac. The blend is 70% Colombard, 15% Gros Manseng, 15% Ugni Blanc, fermented on indigenous yeast in tank: exuberant melon and pure citrus over an herbaceous edge, a touch weightier than Sauvignon Blanc but scrubbed clean and vivacious. This is what our Sancerre collectors drink when nobody is watching.

Bordeaux Supérieur is the appellation insiders shop first. It covers the same vineyard land as basic Bordeaux AOC, but the rules are stricter: riper fruit, higher minimum alcohol, and longer mandatory maturation before release. In practice, it means more structure and depth for a few dollars more — the sweet spot where honest Bordeaux overdelivers. The gravel, clay, and limestone soils and the temperate Atlantic climate do the rest.

And 2020 is the vintage to own at this level. The closing chapter of Bordeaux's celebrated 2018–2019–2020 trilogy brought a warm, dry summer, small concentrated berries, and ripe, velvety tannins — and while the classified growths need a decade in the cellar, wines like Chauvet hit their stride right now. Deep red-black fruit, violets, blackcurrant, and a smooth, polished finish, drinking beautifully tonight with anything off the grill.

Add any 12 bottles to your cart — mix the white and red however you like. A whole summer of French wine for less than one bottle of grand cru.

Our two best-selling French wines, every vintage.
$12.97 each. Buy them the way our collectors do — by the case.

Bastille Day is Tuesday, July 14. If you have ever wondered what the customers with the most serious cellars in the shop actually drink on a weeknight, this is the answer: an old-vine Gascon white from an Armagnac family and a 91-point Bordeaux Supérieur from a great vintage. No one who tastes either one blind has ever guessed under $30.

A mixed case is $155.64. Stock the fridge, stock the rack, and let the good bottles keep sleeping. Vive la France.

Cheers,

— James Tran