Petits Creux & Grands Crus

This article is the latest in Power Tasting’s irregular series on interesting wine bars around the world.  Previous issues have taken readers to locations in Paris, London, Copenhagen and Lisbon.

There is a street in Québec City called rue Cartier that is only five blocks long, but is the commercial heart of a sector that is very much Québecois.  Not the Québec of monumental hotels and 18th century architecture, but rather a reflection of the way the people of this French-speaking Canadian province live and think of themselves.  For example, there are five boulangeries, where you can buy the best baguettes in North America, and as many pastry shops that dazzle the eye as well as the palate.  There are trendy clothes shops, a French bookstore, two family-owned butchers, two pubs where you can watch all the hockey games and at least a dozen restaurants all spilling out into the street during the warm summer months.

And there is one wine bar, a “bar à vin”, called Petits Creux & Grands Crus (https://www.petitscreux.corsica), which translates roughly as “little snacks and great wines”.  While it is open year round, its indoor space is rather small.  PC&GC comes into its own after the last snows melt and before all the leaves fall, May through October.

Now, Québec City is a very French town as opposed to Montreal, which is more evenly split between francophones and English speakers.  In the not so distant past, no one knew about rue Cartier except the locals.  Québec City has always had plenty of tourists but they generally stayed in Vieux Québec, the Old Town, and were not seen in the residential and commercial areas.  Today, you will hear English, Chinese, Italian and Spanish as you walk along rue Cartier (which doesn’t please Lucie, who is from Québec).  The wait staff at PC&GC are adept at both French and English and we have heard conversations in other languages as well.

With Québec’s French heritage, you might expect this wine bar’s list to be heavy in Bordeaux, Burgundies and Rhônes and indeed there are plenty of those on its rather extensive list.  But Marie-Pierre Colonna, the owner, is Corsican-American.  So the spécialités de la maison are wines from Corsica, that island department of France floating in the Mediterranean.  Its wines reflect its geography, with the sun producing big, flavorful, fruity wines in both red and white.  The Corsican rosé served at PC&GC looks more like a light red than a slightly colored white, as found in Provence.

Many of the grapes in the Corsican wines are barely known this side of the Mediterranean.  There are reds like Neullucciu from the north of Corsica, Sciacarellu from the south and a white grape used there called Biancu Gentile. (Sometimes these grapes are spelled with an “o” instead of a “u” but M. Collona speaks in the Corsican dialect.)

The “little snacks” as advertised in the wine bar’s name aren’t really that small.  You can get boards with meats, cheeses, veggies or seafood but there is nothing much that you would call a nibble. They used to make their own potato chips that were served warm and very crusty but unfortunately they removed them from the menu.   There are also a few main courses, some of which echo the Corsican theme of the bar.

Despite the influx of tourists, rue Cartier is still a focal point for the people of the surrounding neighborhood.  One of the great pleasures of spending some time at Petits Creux & Grands Crus is watching the parade of the local people passing by.  Sure, in one way it’s the same mix of young and old, men and women you’ll see anywhere.  But these are the folks of Québec, with their distinctive history, beautiful language and joie de vivre.  So take a glass or two of wines that you’ve never heard of, much less tasted, and pretend for an hour or so that you’re a part of this wonderful Québecois culture.

 

 

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