Fady and Antoine Sfeir created Pif à papa, an Ile-de-France wine-producing company at the foot of the towers of La Défense. – Daddy
- Antoine and Fady Sfeir have created Pif à papa, an urban cellar at the foot of the towers of La Défense (Hauts-de-Seine) where they will produce one cuvée per month.
- Eight wines – 2,000 bottles for each vintage – are planned for 2021.
- The family start-up has also just launched a crowdfunding operation to acquire vines in Ile-de-France.
A passion passed down from son to father. At more than 55 years old, Fady Sfeir took up a university course as an oenology technician at the University of Dijon to follow his son, Antoine, in his passion for wine and launch Daddy. The idea of this family start-up? An urban cellar in Courbevoie (Hauts-de-Seine) where the son and father produce a cuvée of 2,000 bottles per month. Eight wines are announced for 2021, seven single-varietals and a Gamay-Cabernet Franc blend. The first: a natural white called Mom’s Chenin. We stay with the family.
However to carry out their project, the father and the son approached a winegrower of Touraine and two winegrowers of Anjou – “who work in biodynamics”, announces Fady – to find grapes because there were no vineyards in kinship. “We turned to grapes from the Val-de-Loire to produce as locally as possible,” explains Antoine, who prepares the Master of Wine diploma. There, we are two and a half or three hours from Courbevoie. »Five grape varieties were selected: chenin blanc, chardonnay, sauvignon blanc, gamay, cabernet franc.
A vineyard and a “neo-guinguette” planned
“These are grape varieties that can be planted in Ile-de-France,” he continues. His father continues: “Ultimately, we want to produce wine with grapes from the Ile-de-France region. “Because Pif à papa aims to acquire a vineyard in Ile-de-France. For this, the start-up has just launched a crowdfunding operation to raise 20,000 euros. “We have several avenues because it is not easy to find agricultural land in the region, the most serious is today in Seine-et-Marne”, announces Fady.
And the son and the father also have in mind the idea of a “neo-guinguette”. “This was the initial project with an urban cellar, a cheese bar and a concert hall,” explains Antoine. But the Covid-19 forced Pif à papa to shift this opening. But not those of their bottles.