The concept of ordering a glass of wine at the bar in France is pretty new.

Oh, one could always get un rouge at the local café, the sort of place that used to be full of Gauloise smoke before smoking was declared illegal, and still has four noisy kids playing foosball in the back, but decent wine by the glass was an entirely alien concept until an Englishman, Mark Williamson, came along and showed the French how to do it.

Wine bars were already well established in England when he opened Willi’s Wine Bar in Paris in 1980 and it’s still thriving today, as charming, delightful and full of interesting wines as ever.

Recently Williamson expanded his operation by opening a larger, more formal restaurant, Maceo, next door at 15 rue des Petits-Champs in the 1er (01 42 97 53 85). Happily Maceo’s more upmarket digs haven’t affected his passion for less well-known, artisanal wines, particularly those from the Rhone Valley, and it was when dining there this fall that my eyes alighted on a property, Delas Freres, that I had visited just a few days before, and whose wine had particularly impressed me.

View from the hill of Hermitage.

Maceo was offering the Delas Freres Hermitage, Marquise de la Tourette 2001 ($68 US retail price) which, despite its grand sounding name is the producer’s “basic” Hermitage cuvée.

This should not however be taken in any way as a diminution – Hermitage is a very small, very exclusive appellation and Dellas a super producer, so this is a very superior wine.

In many ways it’s an old fashioned Hermitage in that it’s a muscular, robust red just packed with punchy take-no-prisoners flavor. It’s all leather and smoke and black olives and pungent spiciness – yes, there’s plenty of that peppery spice one expects in syrah – and this made it the perfect accompaniment for Maceo’s imaginative, champignon­-themed seasonal menu I savored that evening.

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Note on availability: The current release is the 2006 which is a bit young for this great wine, but older vintages are available at http://www.wine-searcher.com.