Paris: Wine & Cheese Tasting Latin Quarter Small Group

4.98

(136 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

The first thing I noticed was the cool hush inside Thierry’s wine shop, just off a cobblestone street in the Latin Quarter. Outside, scooters buzzed past and someone was singing (badly) in French. Inside though — it smelled like old wood and something buttery, almost sweet. Thierry greeted us with this quick smile, like he’d just been waiting to open a bottle for someone. There were only eight of us, all squeezed around a wooden table that looked like it had seen a lot of spilled wine and stories.

I’ll admit, I thought I knew French wine — but after the second glass (a white from Burgundy), I realized I really didn’t. Thierry explained things without making you feel dumb; he even drew little maps on scrap paper to show where each region was. At one point, he handed me a slice of cheese and said its name so fast I couldn’t catch it — Li laughed when I tried to say it in French. The pairing actually made the wine taste different, rounder? Softer? Hard to explain but suddenly it made sense why people obsess over this stuff.

There was a moment when everyone went quiet, just tasting — you could hear the faint clink of glasses and someone’s chair scraping on tile. It felt kind of intimate for such a short lunch break in Paris. The last red had this earthy smell that reminded me of wet leaves after rain (maybe too poetic but that’s what popped into my head). We lingered longer than we should’ve — nobody wanted to leave right away, not even Thierry. Sometimes you get lucky with groups like that.