Sniff at this: French gourmets have their apron ties in a twist over news that the mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë is selling off half of the wines in the cellar of his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, housed in a vault beneath Paris’s landmark Hotel de Ville (pictured here). It’s not that Delanoë, like our head of state here in America, is a teetotaler; it’s just that unlike Chirac, who loved to pour old, rare vintages for his special guests (“Drinking even 1,000 bottles a year is not enormous,” said the cellarmaster who built Chirac’s collection of his boss’s consumption), Delanoë perfers just an occasional Champagne reception. The proposed sale is seen as a political embarrassment by Anthony Rowley, a French food historian: “In London, they receive you with a sumptuous Porto … [Instead, Mr. Delanoë] thinks it is fashionable and modern to serve little democratic wines.” Hate to think what he’d say to a diet coke at the White House.