Yesterday, Last Bottle sent an email offer with the subject line “Mysterious Under $25 Chablis!!!” In the body of the email, they wrote: “Some say it’s de-classified Leflaive. In fact, a British importer caught some heat over connecting the dots between all of the Joseph Paget Grand Cru, Premier Cru, and other Lieu Dit Village level offerings — concluding that Leflaive was the ONLY Burgundy producer that made ALL of these separate Joseph Paget bottlings. Of course, Leflaive was furious…and I’m sure an army of lawyers snuffed that potential wildfire out in record time. But the question remains…”
Today, First Bottle sent another email about “the mysterious Joseph Paget” and again suggested that “Joseph Paget is actually de-classified Leflaive” and “Leflaive has neither confirmed or denied the allegations.”
But a five-minute Google search shows that’s not true. This Burgundy Report blog post from 2018, titled predatory wine retailing?, says Leflaive “were pretty unhappy when they heard about this” and “want to underline that it has absolutely nothing to do with them.” This corporate disclosure connects Joseph Paget to a Beaune negociant called VIA Belena SAS, owned by a guy named Stephane Guidot. And page 17 of this PDF from another negociant makes it clear that Guidot is the owner, not Leflaive: “Stephane GUIDOT: A Passion for Burgundy. Having worked as a so-called “country” wine broker in Beaune for 20 years, the desire to develop his own wine selection became a natural next step for him. His passion for Burgundy and the various encounters with producers and négociants are at the origin of this project. He also decided to pay tribute to his grandfather — all his wines are therefore signed with his name: Joseph PAGET, the man who passed on to him the love of wine and the desire to dedicate his life to this passion.”
Again, this was easy to find from a quick Google search. I also have no doubt that the Joseph Paget wines are great, and I’ll remain a buyer from Last Bottle when there are deals to be had. But I was disappointed to see Last/First Bottle trading on the Leflaive name when it’s easy to Google and find out that the connection is basically nonexistent.
by Estel2