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The legendary Paris star restaurant La Tour d’Argent is offering guided tours through its famous wine cellar for the first time. This is reported by Wine Spectator. With 1,100 square meters over two levels, it is the largest wine cellar in Paris. It houses one of the most extraordinary wine collections in the world with around 14,000 items and 300,000 bottles.
In 2022, La Tour d’Argent was renovated simultaneously with the start of the reconstruction of the opposite Notre-Dame Cathedral. A newly developed climate control system was installed to achieve optimal storage conditions. The temperature remains continuously between twelve and 14 °C. According to André Terrail, president of the Groupe La Tour d’Argent, this is crucial for a wine collection that must be planned "15, 20, sometimes 50 years" in advance.
The tours will start in the coming weeks; reservations are to be made only through the website. The prices are not yet known. Participants will be accompanied by sommeliers who will talk about purchasing strategies, long-term storage, and the establishment and maintenance of a wine collection of this size. This also includes the "selective sales strategy," as André Terrail says: "It is pointless to buy wine if you do not know how to sell it.".
La Tour d’Argent was founded in 1582 as an inn and soon became one of the most famous restaurants in Europe. After the French Revolution, it was rebuilt and received its current form in 1930. In January 2024, the establishment was the target of a wine theft of 83 bottles of Grand Cru Burgundy, including the Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, worth over 1.5 million euros. The wines and the perpetrators have disappeared to this day.
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