Voyou

A repurposed skateboard light fixture, magnum bottles hanging from the ceiling, corkscrews sticking out of the stone walls, barrels of paint on the terrace… This Voyou (French for “scoundrel”) has lots of personality! Maud Ginez and Mathieu Abella decided to set up their wine collection in the former L’Art de la Matière. There are nearly a hundred living wines from the region to choose from, making for a first-rate locally-sourced selection: Roussellou, an Aveyron white from the Domaine Le Verdus that’s both mineral and saline (€4.50 a glass); Les Trois Pierres 2012, a Roussillon red blend from the Domaine de l’Ausseil that’s as delicate as it is gourmet (€22.50 in house, not including the €10 corkage fee); an atypical skin-contact Montalbanais chardonnay produced by Muriel Zoldan (same price)… And yet their story doesn’t end there: they also serve good things to eat sourced from the area: extraordinary cured meats from the Al Païs farm in Salers; superb organic asparagus from the aforementioned Domaine Le Verdus, simply seasoned with some outstanding extra-virgin hazelnut oil from Le Moulin d’Adèle in Murat; or beef carpaccio from La Maison Dupont, the best butcher’s shop in the area, subtly shaken up by a Thai sauce… // Larosé 

THE BULLET-PROOF BOTTLE: Potemkine, a flavor-packed fruit-forward rosé, a blend of carignan gris and carignan blanc, macerated for a week by Jean-François Nicq, the winemaker behind Les Foulards Rouges (€33.50).