Last night, Thursday 15 January 2026, part of the Bordeaux Confidentiel team took a seat around a table not quite like the others. At Amicis, gastronomy did not settle for being merely executed: it was told, set in dialogue, thought out as a story. The name of the evening set the tone straight away, Wine Dinner, The Dialogues of Taste in 7 chapters, and it was not a marketing tagline, but a real narrative construction around taste.
Invited by Maison Castel, a trading and château house with roots deeply anchored in the French vineyard, this evening brought together what Bordeaux does best: great wines, a high-precision cuisine, and a clear intent to pass on an emotion, more than a simple food-and-wine pairing.
A six-handed dinner, thought out as a story
The idea was clear: a six-handed gastronomic dinner, orchestrated by three starred chefs, in a purposely relaxed, almost knowing atmosphere, « a dinner of chefs among mates », as we heard in the dining room.
Around the stoves:
- Alexandre Baumard, chef of Amicis (1 Michelin star), host of the evening.
- John Argaud, who came with one of his signature dishes, one Michelin star.
- Mathieu Viannay, two Michelin stars and Meilleur Ouvrier de France, recognisable by his famous collar.
Each cooked his signature dish, not to shine individually, but to fit into a collective progression. John Argaud's kokotxas, all iodine tension and precision, and Mathieu Viannay's signature cabbage, deceptively simple, technically formidable, left their mark without ever overpowering the rest of the menu. Here, the point was not to prove something, but to be coherent.
Facing the plates, the wines were not treated as a mere side. They were co-authors of the story. Selected and presented by Châteaux & Domaines Castel, they traced a clear arc, from initial freshness to deeper, more meditative expressions.
Among the houses and cuvées in the spotlight:
- Château d'Yquem
- Château Montlabert
- Château Guiraud
- Château Beychevelle
Every chapter rested on a precise balance: tension and fat, freshness and depth, texture and length. The pairings did not aim for spectacular obviousness, but rather a subtle, sometimes almost silent conversation between the glass and the plate. You could feel the work done upstream, a shared reflection between chefs and wine teams, far from the simple « wine that goes with a dish ».
A gastronomic scene that tells something else
Beyond the immediate pleasure, this evening says a lot about how the Bordeaux dining scene is evolving. You no longer simply come for dinner; you come to live a constructed, almost scripted experience, where the guest becomes both a reader and a taster. At Amicis, the dining room ran to the rhythm of a ballet of chefs presenting the dishes with their team of sommeliers and servers, alongside the representatives of the wines tasted. Nothing ostentatious, nothing frozen. Just a shared desire to make taste speak, to create a lasting memory rather than a spectacular moment forgotten the next day.
This Wine Dinner, The Dialogues of Taste in 7 chapters was not just a food-and-wine pairing dinner. It was a gentle but convincing demonstration that gastronomy can still surprise when it agrees to slow down, to tell a story, to pass something on. An evening where the wine spoke as much as the cooking, where chefs cooked together without ego, and where Bordeaux confirmed, once again, its capacity to make its wine heritage talk with a contemporary, living and sincere culinary creation.
A rare, elegant and deeply spot-on experience, validated by Bordeaux Confidentiel.
