For a generation or so, Gael Petit’s family domaine made a Tavel rosé that wasn’t all that good. The wine was made in a commercial fashion, with giant steel vats, laboratory yeasts, commercial enzymes, and... Read More

For a generation or so, Gael Petit’s family domaine made a Tavel rosé that wasn’t all that good. The wine was made in a commercial fashion, with giant steel vats, laboratory yeasts, commercial enzymes, and so on. The result was, well, kind of boring.

But after Gael took over an epiphany soon followed. He remembered the giant old wooden casks that still took up space in the darker corners of their ancient cellars when he was a kid. What happened to those? And his neighbor and friend, Eric Pfifferling, how was he making wine that was so delicious?

Gael changed everything. The old casks came back. Traditional farming and wine-making ensued. Like Pfifferling, all but a minimal amount of sulfur was eschewed. And our photographer was happy to learn that Gael decided to revive the bottle label that the family used in the 1930s.

One day, Kermit Lynch and his son Anthony went to visit their friend Eric Pfifferling (whose wines they do not import). Eric sent them to check out what Gael was doing. A few months later, they were on the wine list at the Four Horsemen, which, we are told, acquired all of New York’s initial allocation.