French Cellar's chocolates, biscuits complement wine
By Suzanne Cristallo
Pooches, even with wet paws, are welcome in The French Cellar in Los Gatos. Jay Druian and Sallie Robbins-Druian, owners of the exclusively French wine shop on E. Main Street with its wine-complementing chocolates and biscuits, welcome both bowsers and browsers. "It's a French tradition," says Sallie of the extended welcome to pets and window-shoppers.
Browsers will find a lot to look at. Each of the seven wine regions of France are represented by areas of the store that were designed by Sallie, a theater set designer and artist. She has created illusionary rooms for Côte du Rhône, Bordeaux, Champagne, the Loire Valley, Beaujolais, Burgundy and Alsace, where the wines of the regions are displayed along with art and antiques relating to the wine connoisseur. Chocolates and dainty biscuits further enhance the wine selections and can be arranged in gift baskets.
"We wanted something to complement the wine," explains Sallie. "There has always been a direct relationship of wine to food, particularly dark chocolate to red wine and savory or sweet biscuits to champagne."
The store carries the dark chocolates featured by Angelina Rumpelmayer, the oldest tea salon in Paris where couturiers gather during their breaks to sip hot chocolate "thick enough to hold a spoon upright" and nibble dense bars made of 85 percent chocolate. Tins of the chocolates run from $6 to $28.
Champagne biscuits made by Fossier are the same as they were in the 18th century. There are pralines--the brittle confection made of almonds and caramelized sugar--from Provence, nougats--chewy goodies of roasted nuts, candied fruit and honey--packaged in art deco tins from Montelimar, and cookies from Hediard.
Lady fingers and dipped chocolats seuilletes from La Tour D'Argent, the oldest restaurant in Paris established in 1582, come packaged in a box with embossed shiny paper patterned after a 16th-century silver box.
A fascination with things French comes naturally to Jay Druian, 53, who was born in Leon, France. During World War II, the chateau that had been in his family for generations was liberated by the Allied Forces, one of whom--an American--married his mother. The family later moved to the Midwest, where young Jay attended elementary school.
A subsequent marriage by Jay's mother to an officer in the Air Force stationed the family in Germany that led to Jay's secondary education in Europe. He studied economics and Russian in college, visiting his grandparents at the chateau of his childhood on holidays.
About this time, Sallie, a native San Franciscan, traveled to Florence, Italy, for her master's studies in theater set design. An outing during Oktoberfest brought her to a beer tent in Munich where she met Jay. Soon after they married, they settled first in San Francisco, where he finished his studies in economics, later entering the insurance field as a broker. Eventually, the couple moved to Los Gatos in 1978, settling in the mountains above town.
After years of working as a freelance set designer, Sallie began marketing her own art as posters, signed prints, postcards, T-shirts and aprons. It was an out-of-the-blue question by Jay that changed their lives' direction: "What would you think of our opening an exclusively French wine shop with illusionary rooms?" he said. That is exactly what they created.
The French Cellar, 32 E. Main St., Los Gatos. Holiday hours Mon.- Sat. 11 a.m.-6 p.m., Sun. 11 a.m.-4 p.m. 408.354.0993.
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Los Gatos, California Since 1881
