Bal Harbour

The New York La Paulée didn't pioneer its raucous, BYO format, but it did introduce it to a world beyond Burgundy. The ticketed American event is modeled on the invite- only La Paulée de Meursault—the original French La Paulée—a BYO harvest feast for winemakers and their friends held in the village of Meursault since 1923. Daniel Johnnes first imported the concept while running the wine program at Montrachet in Tribeca. He had been traveling to Burgundy since the 1980s, where he fell in with a tight-knit group of winemakers who organized long wine-soaked dinners whenever he visited. At one dinner, in 1991, he floated the idea of flying the whole gang to New York for a Burgundy dinner. "In that period, we didn't travel," recalls Jean-Pierre de Smet of Domaine de L'Arlot, the sort of ringleader of the group. "So, the idea seemed completely crazy, but we said, of course, of course. It was a crazy idea—to fly all the way to New York for a dinner—and we loved it." The dinner, in the spring of 1992, was a huge hit—among both paying guests and the winemakers they mixed with. It was the first kernel of what would become the New York La Paulée, held eight years later in a banquet room at the W Hotel in midtown Manhattan. Aubert de Villaine, the enigmatic owner of Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, poured his wines there that year—and has been a loyal supporter of the event ever since. "There were 12 producers in all," recalls Johnnes. "Daniel Boulud agreed to cook, so we had some star power, and we got about 70 people. I lost a lot of money, but it felt great." In the 25 years since that first gala dinner, Burgundy prices have gone through the stratosphere. "Bordeaux was the main interest for most people at that point," says Doug Barzelay, a Burgundy collector who has been a regular at the New York gala almost since the beginning. "A lot of the growth of interest in Burgundy in New York was sparked by Daniel and La Paulée." Johnnes moved from Montrachet to Daniel Boulud's New York restaurants in 2005, where he oversaw the wine program while building a sideline business, Pressoir, around La Paulée. That enterprise soon came to eclipse everything else. Today Johnnes and his team work as consultants to the Boulud empire while organizing wine celebrations across the country, transferring the La Paulée format to other wine regions with La Fete Champagne, La Tablée (focused on the Rhône), and the new Convivio del Vino (expanding to Italy for the first time). And last fall Johnnes's organization moved further afield, with La Paulée Solomeo, an invite-only extravaganza mixing wine, fashion, and food, in designer Brunello Cucinelli's company town in Umbria. The two-day event officially marked the new vintage of Cucinelli's own wine project, Castello di Solomeo, but was really a celebration of French and Italian luxury, mixing friends of the fashion house with some of the most celebrated winemakers in France, brought in by Johnnes and his team (the Krug Champagne and Château Lafite Rothschild were free-flowing). There was no BYO component to this Paulée, but the convivial spirit endured. "They liked the concept of a Paulée, the broader meaning of a paulée, which is bringing people together," said Johnnes, of Cucinelli and his team. Plans are underway to bring the event back next year. And Johnnes's Pressoir business continues to evolve as the ultimate Burgundy champion, bringing a new generation of professionals to the region through a sommelier scholarship program, and building bridges to young winemakers there, to ensure the party goes on. "It's really the time now that the baton is being passed," he says. "It's going to happen to me sometime too. I want to ensure a future for my team as well." FROM ABOVE Now an annual tradition, Johnnes is tossed into the air by the team of chefs led by Daniel Boulud; the arrival scene at Castello di Solomeo. The cult of Burgundy that has exploded in the US over the last 30 years owes much to this annual bacchanal. At the Castello di Solomeo Welcomes La Paulée Festival, guests enjoyed iconic wines from Champagne Krug, Château Cheval Blanc, Château Lafite Rothschild, and Champagne Delamotte. P H OTO BY L I S A G A L LO FO R L A PAU L É E ( I N S E T ) ; C O U R T E S Y O F C A S T E L LO D I S O LO M EO ( TO P, B OT TO M )

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