THE WINERY
This is St. JOHN’s winery, Boulevard Napoleon, in the Languedoc village of La Livinière. As Boulevard Napoleon winemaker Benjamin Darnault puts it, “When you drink a bottle of wine you drink a name, a story and your own associations.”
In a twist of perfect porcine serendipity, the building is an old pig sty, making Trevor’s local nickname (The Pig*) particularly apt – as you can imagine, he spends rather a lot of time here.
Instead of rolling the St. JOHN brand into France, Trevor and Fergus decided to apply the idea behind the name of the original restaurant – named, as it is, after St. John Street on which it sits. So Boulevard Napoleon is exactly that – a boulevard, called after Napoleon – a French winery that shares with its British restaurant sibling its people, its principles and the genealogy of its name.
*The nickname is because of the logo, of course. Or at least, that's what he hopes!
Words by Mina Holland, photographs by Elena Heatherwick
