Chef Gusteau will be turning in his grave – the restaurant which inspired Disney’s Ratatouille can’t seem to find some of its wine. It’s very expensive wine, too.
Here at Film Stories, we can’t get enough of two things: wine, and crime stories featuring anthropomorphic rodents.
Oh, and films, I suppose. They’re very much the third of the three, though.
You can imagine our excitement, then, when our Sauvignon Blanc -infused rewatch of The Great Mouse Detective was interrupted by a chilling bit of true crime trivia. La Tour d’Argent, one of the oldest restaurants in Paris and inspiration for 2007’s Ratatouille, has lost rather a lot of wine. It has, they suspect, BEEN STOLEN!
According to the BBC, the missing vintages were spotted last week during a routine inventory of the venue’s wine cellar, thought to be “the largest cellar in Paris”, and the incident has been reported to police – though no evidence of a robbery has been found yet.
La Tour d’Argent often claims to be “the oldest restaurant in Paris”, dating back 442 years to the reign of Henry III of France in 1582. Historians have remained skeptical about that, though – “the notion of a restaurant as an establishment in the 16th Century doesn’t work”, a researcher from the Université Paris Cité told the BBC.
An estimated 83 bottles seem to have vanished, according to the last inventory carried out in 2020. Among them were bottles from Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, a Burgundy estate whose wines are frequently valued in the five figures. A 1945 bottle of Romanée-Conti was sold for €482,000 (£410,905) in 2018, becoming the most expensive bottle of wine in the world at the time. They’ll keep those on the top shelf of Tesco, we reckon.
But we’re not just bringing this to your attention because of wine – there’s a film link too. While making Ratatouille, director Brad Bird spent days sketching La Tour d’Argent’s dining room, capturing details including its lamps, cheese trolley and maitre d’s outfit for use in the film.
A small illustration of Remy the rat even hangs in the kitchen, signed by Bird himself. There we go. Film quota satisfied.
Back to the wine. Did you know La Tour d’Argent’s wine list weighs 8kg? Fascinating.
