Les Enfants de Chœur

You might hear “plus près de toi, mon vin…” being sung in Agon-Coutainville, where the trained sommelier Grégoire Helye turned an old dive located across from the village church into a hair-raising wine bar (dark walls, vintage furniture, a black piano). With Louise Dufacteur wielding the corkscrew, this duo has the answer to all your drunken prayers: an Alsatian pinot noir from Henry Fuchs (€5 a glass), an Auxerre pet’ nat’ by Christophe Lindenlaub (€17 a bottle), a grenache gris from the Aude winery La Baronne (€20), which you can pop open in house for a €7 corkage fee. In addition to the wines, there are also local beers on tap (a light pale ale from Les Travailleurs de l’Amer for €8 a pint) and improvised cocktails – rum, Cointreau, home-fermented green tea and ginger bug the day we went (€7). And if you’re hungry, grab some fish rillettes from Saveurs du Marin served with bread from the neighboring Le Pain Levé bakery or, if there’s any left, homemade Spanish tortilla… // Henriette Ma

THE BULLET-PROOF BOTTLE: Désinvolte, a cabernet franc from Thomas Gomes, alias Populus Alba (€18).