Alchemy

After the bar is the tasting room. The antithesis of Midi-Minuit and its sunlight, the room, an octagonal cocoon, is adorned with Gérard Garouste's work "Alchimie", 2003, which represents the earth, fire, air and water needed to make crystal. A dance both joyful and telluric, it accompanies the tasting of wines selected by Bernard Neveu, head sommelier of the Ducasse Paris group.

The bottles are displayed on shelves at the ideal temperature, on a metal promontory. A few steps lead up to a platform on which guests are invited to savor the wine of their choice. The 360° view of Gérard Garouste's work is as powerful as the tasting of fine wines. If the painter has hidden details about the secret of crystal creation in his circular painting, he is not inclined to reveal them, convinced, like Alain Ducasse, that it is the one who looks, or who tastes, who makes the piece.

Gérard Garouste

Artist painter

Gérard Garouste is resolutely beyond time and fashion. A student at the Beaux-arts de Paris in the late 1960s, he is known for his exuberant paintings, which play with mythology, religion, fairy tales and the unconscious.

Gérard Garouste's life and work form a striking dialogue. With his large figurative canvases, the artist revisits the history of art through the genres of painting, which he seeks to exhaust.