Le Vin Devant Soi — Restaurant in Avignon

Found out about this shop from our private guide while in the Luberon area of France. We located the store (two stores side-by-side....one wine and one spirits) in Avignon. Florin (Flo) was managing the wine shop. We are from California (near Sonoma & Napa) we love wine. We know many French wines, but always are looking for more to try and buy. We were so pleasantly surprised that this shop had a wine tasting machine where about 30 wines were available to taste. They have a wonderful process where you are assigned a card that inserts into the machine and you can select the wine, pour size, and quantity you want. Flo was available to help us navigate our tasting, educated us about the various wineries, geographic differences, and introduced us to many we didn't know about. We also were able to purchase a delicious caviar (at an affordable price) served with lovely fresh bread (cheese and meat plates also available). Flo also told us about the evolution of beer production and we were introduced to new beer options (fun part of the shop). We purchased wines to have in our hotel room and take on our trip at incredibly reasonable prices (and we bought some beers to try, too!). We will even stop by tomorrow before our dinner -- it was a wonderful experience (they have a delightful patio area on charming alley where you can enjoy your tasting). My husband's summary was "It was. like having a personal sommelier and wine tour". HIGHLY RECOMMEND...

I had a great experience and would definitely recommend to check them out if you're in Avignon. I came by the shop by chance and the gentleman that helped me was very friendly and quite knowledgeable about whiskey and liqueurs. They had a good selection of French whiskey (which was what I was looking for), but also had a solid selection of Chartreuses and a lot of other different types of liquor. I really appreciated that he took the time to talk to me about the whiskeys and chartreuses. I also was offered small tastings of a few products, which was fun and interesting but also made my decisions easier. I'm still waiting to open up the bottle of Chartreuse VEP, hopefully...

We found this place through the Avignon tourist info website. We were delighted that it was open in November and we were welcomed inside with our dog. A team member explained how the tasting machine worked. You get a card and you use it to sample the wines, the machine shows you the price of each sample amount. He explained where the wines were from etc. We also had the meat/cheese platter and the wine of the day (combo was 14 Euros each and delicious) in addition to sampling using the card. It was a lovely experience and we had a very good time. We bought three bottles to take home to remind us of our visit. ...