"There is one essential thing: having vocabulary, having references, so as to put shareable words to what one feels. Without that, taste remains intimate and does not travel."
Jérôme Baudouin
Jérôme Baudouin
A journalist and photographer by training, a long-haul traveller by nature: Jérôme Baudouin has made taste a way of being in the world, one that is curious, literary and deeply turned towards others. Editor-in-chief of La Revue du Vin de France, on a journey that began in 1999, he first learned journalism "on the move": political and economic reportage across Latin America and Asia, leading to a two-year drive towards China, writing and photographing the road as the borders went by. Today he steers the RVF while continuing to explore what wine tells us about ourselves: memory, language, otherness. He has just published Le vin et la vie (Cherche Midi), a book conceived as an inner journey as much as a geographical one, with a simple idea at its heart: taste only truly exists when it is shared.
What is your story, your origins? I have been at the RVF since 1999: a freelancer to begin with, then on staff, then editor-in-chief. Before wine, I did a great deal of international long-form reporting. And, alongside that, I always had a pull towards the vine: a grandfather who was a winegrower, harvests, then work as a vineyard hand. At some point I managed to bring those two threads together: journalism and wine.
What shaped your taste, in the broadest sense? A perfectly timed question, since that is the whole subject of my book Le vin et la vie! How each person's taste is shaped by an accumulation of elements, from culture to sensory memory: smells and flavours from early childhood, imprinted before we necessarily have words for them. Then travel, which broadens the inner "repertoire". And then there is one essential thing: having vocabulary, having references, so as to put shareable words to what one feels. Without that, taste remains intimate and does not travel. That is the whole point of my book.
What craft was passed down to you? The turning point was understanding that wine is not simply an agricultural product or a question of yield: it is a product of culture. It opens onto something else, onto time, history, spirituality sometimes, and gives a very holistic vision of the world.
What value do you in turn try to pass on? The pleasure of sharing. Sharing taste, but also experience, travels, lived moments. That is truly the heart of my book.
What would you have liked to do with your hands? Play the piano.
What is most French about you? The spirit of the Enlightenment. A transversal way of looking at the world, of connecting things, of refusing to be locked into a single way of reading it.
What has been your greatest adventure? The most intimate one: an inner journey, triggered by an encounter with a psychologist. And, geographically, those two years driving to China, made up of daily encounters.
What is your favourite bistrot or institution? In Bordeaux: Le 1925 (a superb wine list). In Paris, in Montparnasse: Le Petit verdot and Le Petit Sommelier. And an Italian place on the rue du Cherche-Midi that I love.
Which icon best represents France, in your view? Voltaire: a critical, open, rebellious mind that opens up thought.
What is your mantra or a motto that guides your life? No specific motto, but I am deeply optimistic: when there is a problem, there is always a solution.
Is there an object or a work that embodies French taste? Voltaire's Treatise on Tolerance, him again! Or a bottle of wine. And if I have to choose: a great Bordeaux, because it is a blended wine and a region open to the world, cosmopolitan yet rooted.
Who would you have at your table for an ideal dinner? Friends first of all! And a few figures: Brassens, Voltaire, Averroes, Rabelais, Omar Khayyam. But also Annie Ernaux, and Billie Eilish, for the twist.
What would your ideal menu be (starter, main, dessert and wine pairings)? Scallop tartare with champagne. Then a salt-crusted roast beef with a Pomerol or a Margaux. Followed by goat's cheeses with various whites (including Spanish ones and a Sancerre). Dessert: tarte tatin with Sauternes, and a chocolate fondant with a very old Maury.
What is your greatest gastronomic memory? A Chablis premier cru (Dauvissat) with goat's cheeses from small producers in the Haut-Poitou, brought by my father. Simple, but extraordinary, because it was a moment of sharing.
What does La Vieille Prune de Souillac evoke for you? I cannot drink distilled spirits for health reasons, but in my imagination it evokes the purity of the fruit: very ripe plums, as if picked straight from the tree.
