French Champagne

Champagne has been the preferred libation to be served at celebratory or festive events such as; weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, grand openings or other special gatherings. The cork of a champagne bottle should always be removed as silently as possible, even though some people seem to enjoy the popping sound.

“Spraying On One’s Self” as pictured above, is a more civilized form of spraying, or in this particular case actually pouring, rather than the recent disturbing emergence of spraying as conceived at Voile Rouge & Nikki Beach or sinking (as in pouring down a sink) that developed due to a very responsible ban on spraying in Sweden. It is a nonsensical waste of a very special wine that took great care and time to make, and showing off how many bottles you can squander as a sign of utmost stupidity, oh sorry, I meant to say wealth, is beyond idiotic.

The Voile Rouge has Closed: Gendarmes have already started dismantling the club in St Tropez

UPDATED: The main thrust of this post was to be about spraying Champagne, coincidentally I got word that a turn of events today November 17, 2011 changed all that, as a bigger story developed and marked the closing and demolition by authorities of the venerable Voile Rouge. This has been a massive shock to St. Tropez and the entire world.  For the past 45 years, this select stretch of sand on Pampelonne beach has been awash with beautiful people, actors and billionaires looking for summer excesses. It was opened in 1966 by Paul Tomaselli and now it is over, at least for Voile Rouge. The party will just have to move elsewhere down the beach.

Plage de Tahiti
Pampelonne
Credit Cards: All Major
Prices: Moderate-Expensive

Serving classic specialties: salad Niçoise, steak tartare, cous cous and the lot. Noted for offering the best food on the beach. This has always been one of my favorite beaches, going back to the era when Felix was front man in the evening at L’Escale at the port and during the daytime at Tahiti plage in some capacity I have forgotten exactly what. As an aside, it is also known for topless sunbathing on golden colored sand on the extreme northern side of Pampelonne. Plage de Tahiti is a fashionable less chaotic hangout and to emphasize once again, the cooking at Tahiti Beach on Pampelonne is still excellent as is the rosé wine.

Route de L’epi
83350 St. Tropez, Ramatuelle, France •
Tel. + 33.645.63.8487

Nikki Beach’s scene is the most exuberantly youthful and certainly à la mode at the moment. Naomi Campbell celebrated her birthday here last year and opened it up for the public who soon followed in droves. It is part of a chain, the original Nikki Beach is in Miami and they have opened others and are planning to open in Egypt and will launch one in Koh Samui, Thailand at Lipa Noi Beach in December. The thought that Voile Rouge failed in importing their brand of St. Tropez to Miami and yet Nikki Beach succeeded in bringing Miami to St. Tropez is a revolting reality.
The St Tropez branch is a series of split-level decking areas, which surround an enormous swimming pool. The show in the daytime at Nikki Beach reminds one of a disco with booming, loud music but the young
crowd here is visibly enjoying it. At night, it is a candlelit wonderland.
To obtain a place on one of the large white cotton mattresses that are lined up around the pool, you are obliged to consistently order bottles of Champagne. This is ridiculous, gauche, and most assuredly a sign of neurotic, nouveau riche insecurity, and the following incident gives definite proof. One tasteless, wasteful mat-squatter within a two hour period ordered about 100 bottles of Roederer Cristal Champagne just so that he could spew them into the pool with, I suppose, the odd tipple now and again.

Plage de Pampelonne
Boulevard Patch
83350 RAMATUELLE – FRANCE
Tél.+33 (0)4 94 55 55 55
Fax.+33 (0)4 94 79 85 00

Club “Cinquante Cinq” is a lunchtime beach destination accessed by a narrow road, clogged bumper to bumper by high-ticket automobiles. The beach club is also one of the toughest tables to book for lunch in high season, which makes you wonder if it is all worth it—arriving by private yacht is far easier and certainly a more pleasant experience, but the booking problem remains the same. The beach club is divided between a main restaurant; while a white canopy-shaded beach bar is adjacent.
An overgrown bamboo forest is the backdrop to a Provençal beach bungalow with white canopies and lavish beach club jetting all the way down to the water’s edge where a wooden pier extends out a short distance. Huge yachts are anchored offshore and the occupants slowly arrive by launch.
It is interesting that Club 55 was once a ramshackle beach hut, where the Colmont family lived. By an accident of good fortune, they wound up catering for the cast and crew of the film starring Bridget Bardot “And God Created Woman” in 1956, and over the last three decades or so, became a sometimes destination for the more well-behaved and less boisterous element of the St Tropez crowd.

They have fresh wild salad and a menu that offers more interesting items, which is best accompanied by bottles of Provence rosé or rouge wine, at least this is what I experienced whenever dining there with a French friend of mine who never ordered from the menu. He usually finished the lunch by ordering a large pitcher of green apple sorbet with an entire bottle of Calvados mixed into it.

Route des Tamaris 83350 Ramatuelle France
Opening Hours: 11am-8pm, daily (Apr-Oct)

One of the most famous of the 30 odd beach restaurants along Pampelonne’s Beach, La Voile Rouge is a dining, drinking and must-be-seen expanse of sandy real estate about 60 meters in width. Yet, with such a worldwide reputation they failed to make their Miami branch work; it went bankrupt. A lounge, or mat rents for around $50 per and these prices are right in line with similar beach destinations on the Med. You should probably book a day ahead, for by midday during peak season Bastille Day to Sept 1 everything is taken tables, mats, everything!
The clientèle are more wild than chic and “bronzed nubile little things” carry irascible designer dogs and everyone drinks great quantities of Champagne that they take to spraying after time; what a terrible waste! I tend to have lunch late about 3:30pm as dinner is never before 11pm, to avoid the booking hassle.
Paul Tomaselli, owner of the club sometimes can be found playing backgammon, made famous in the west by Prince Alexis Obolensky, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Palm Springs with Carlton Alsop, and later in other parts of the world. As an interesting bit of information, Carlton and his wife occasionally dined in one of the private rooms at Chasen’s Restaurant in Los Angeles accompanied by their two dogs (small) and in their bathrobes; they entered from their limousine from the rear of the restaurant. He used to consume a bottle of Champagne while having his hair cut at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and he did not spray one ounce of it!

RELATED LINK: Champagne Spraying Is Over At Voile Rouge, Closed By Authorities

Byblos St.Tropez
Avenue Paul Signac
83990 St.Tropez, France
Tel. 33 (0)4 94 56 68 00
Email: Saint-tropez@byblos.com
Opening Hours: Dinner only
Credit Cards: All Major
Prices: Expensive

There are many Spoon Restaurant’s around the world but none as illustrious as this pairing of the legendary Hotel Byblos in St. Tropez with international celebrity chef Alain Ducasse’s Spoon.

Spoon Byblos, a Patrick Jouin designed space, has a different slant on the chains’ ethnic dining concept and focuses on the Mediterranean rim countries healthy cooking especially Provencal and Italian cuisines. The large wine list includes globally produced selections of wines from both the new and old world. After it opened in 2002 the St. Tropez crowd gravitated to this bistro very quickly. Just a short walk from this bistro is the famous disco Les Caves du Roy, the original Beirut nightclub was built underground and survived bombings that destroyed the luxurious Exelsior Hotel it was housed in. The Los Angeles and St. Tropez branches were all orchestrated and built by the same interior designer who created the original club in Beirut, the late, Serge Sassouni. I flew down from London to attend the opening of the Byblos Hotel and the Caves du Roy where friends of Serge and mine were gathering such as actresses: Vivian Ventura, Barbara Bouchet, and Joanna Pettet along with so many others, perhaps Charlotte Rampling and Jeremy Lloyd—it has been such a long time I do not recall the entire guest list, although I do remember it was a fun night!