Around the World, in One Cellar
The post of sommelier at Le Bernardin, the French restaurant some call New York's finest, is a dream job for a wine professional. As if to illustrate this point, Philippe Buttin endured an epic journey worthy of the film "Planes, Trains & Automobiles" in order to land the assignment.
Last year, Le Bernardin searched for nearly six months for someone to replace Michel Couvreux, who had been the restaurant's sommelier for 10 years. Late in the process, the restaurant, acting on a recommendation, called Mr. Buttin, who was then working at the high-end Atlanta eatery Joël. Following an hourlong phone interview on a Tuesday in early August, Le Bernardin asked to see the Frenchborn wine master in person.
General manager David Mancini doesn't recall asking Mr. Buttin to fly up the very next day, but that's what he did. There was trouble Wednesday morning at Atlanta International Airport, however; a detected plot to use liquid explosives on flights out of Heathrow and Gatwick had shut down airports all over the country. "I missed three or four flights," Mr. Buttin said recently, with enough animation that the crisis might have been occurring then and there.
Did he give up? Au contraire! Somebody had to take care of all that fine white Burgundy and Mr. Buttin knew he was the man for the job. He found an afternoon flight that brought him as far as Baltimore. From there, he sprinted to Amtrak. The sommelier planted his feet on Manhattan concrete at 4:30 a.m. Thursday morning. A shower, a couple hours of sleep and he dragged himself to Le Bernardin's elegant door on West 51st Street. "They looked at me and said, ‘Oh my God, you really want the job,'" Mr. Buttin said with a laugh. He had it by the end of the day. What's more, he found himself with three sommeliers under him, two more than Mr. Couvreux had in his service.
In his uniform of black jacket and apron, accented by the gold flash of a tastevin hung around his neck, Mr. Buttin, 41, looks every inch the grown-up sommelier. But his demeanor is classic "kid in a candy store." And why not? A sommelier's candy is wine, and he's in charge of one of the best sweet shops in town. The "cellar" itself, located one flight up, is an unprepossessing room — long, narrow, and unadorned. Simple pine shelving climbs up nearly 20 feet on either side. It is modest housing for one of the finest wine collections in the city, including deep holdings of white and red Burgundy.
Mr. Buttin is content with the slender confines of his wine room. "I like to see a small tiny cellar," he explained. "I can see exactly what's going on. … So when I arrived here and saw the cellar, I was like, ‘Oooooh. That's nice!'"
French wines dominate the 700-label, 6,000-bottle cellar, and Mr. Buttin views that supremacy as only natural. However, one of the things the restaurant's management liked about him was his international experience — he has worked in Paris, London, and Cape Town — and Mr. Buttin intends to bring the world to Midtown. In Atlanta, that was more difficult. "When I called distributors, they would say, ‘No, we don't have that in Georgia,' and I would say, ‘Please, bring it along, because that's what I want.'"
He is just as ambitious in his new post. "I want to expand," he said. "The list is like a planet. And I like traveling around the world. You sit at the table and you travel around the world." He said he hopes to increase the restaurant's selections from Alsace and the Loire Valley. Chile and Argentina, which have no presence on the list right now, may make their debut in coming months.
As far as whites go, the lands south of the equator are currently covered in a singleentry category called "Southern Hemisphere." But South Africa is the winegrowing region that has Mr. Buttin most energized. He worked in Cape Town for five years as head sommelier for the Cellars-Hohenort Hotel, and he is a fan of the local chenin blancs, sauvignon blancs, and semillons. "On my days off, I used to take my small truck and drive around through the vineyards, meeting the winemakers, sometimes during the harvest. I'm in close contact with importer Cape Classic Wines, which has most of the wines there. They know that I am here," he said.
There was not a single South African wine in Le Bernardin's cellar during a visit at the end of December. When it was suggested that such would not be the case in a year's time, Mr. Buttin cracked a big smile. "Oh, even less than that! Don't worry." By the end of last week, Le Bernardin diners had three South African whites from which to choose. The trip 'round the world has begun.
