“My adoptive father put sugar in Bordeaux. Suffice to say that, when it came to wine, I started from scratch.”

We visited Hervé Le Tellier, 67, in his home in Drôme, in Montjoux, not far from Dieulefit, which he mentions at the start of his latest story, The Name on the Wall (Gallimard, 176 pages, 19.80 euros), published in the spring. The novelist’s life changed with The Anomaly (Gallimard, 2020), translated into 46 languages ​​and sold 1.5 million copies, making it the best-selling Prix Goncourt in history, behind The Loverby Marguerite Duras (Editions de Minuit, 1984). Le Tellier is the author of around thirty works and numerous short stories, often humorous in tone, in which wines and alcohols are frequently mentioned.

One of your first books, “Bar Sonatas” (Seghers, 1991), which you published at the age of 34, is a collection of 86 short stories, each offering a cocktail recipe. In the room where we are, in your house in Drôme, there is a magnificent bar surrounded by an impressive quantity of bottles of alcohol. So you really like cocktails. Which one do you prefer?

I was a bartender in San Francisco in the late 1970s, a night job in a gay bar. I was the “straight French bartender.” I learned how to make all the cocktails, and that led to this book. And then I bought myself this massive wooden bar.

To answer your question, I’m more of a Manhattanite. [whisky ou bourbon, vermouth et bitter]. But, in fact, it all depends on the level of alcohol you expect when you taste a cocktail. If you want to drink very strongly right away, I opt for a black Russian. [vodka et liqueur de café – à noter la variante, mentionnée dans Sonates de bar, du black italian, grappa et liqueur de café]. If you want to drink slowly, it will be a Manhattan. If you want to take it easy, you have a mojito. [rhum, eau gazeuse, citron vert, sucre et feuilles de menthe].

I still make cocktails, but I never drink beyond the state I want to reach, which is a soft consumption that I adopted when I was a bartender. In fact, a doctor friend, seeing my bar, told me: “We can see that you are not an alcoholic because alcoholics never have that many full bottles.”

So, are you more of an alcohol or wine person?

Rather wine. Because the cocktail corresponds above all to the evening – at the end or at the beginning. A whole meal with a mojito is complicated. Wine is more subtle. The wine par excellence, for me, is Saint-Julien. And if I had to choose a not too expensive one, so not a Saint-Julien, it would be a Haut-Médoc that can be found for less than 10 euros. I take this opportunity to say that I do not understand the current disaffection for Bordeaux.

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