Aviation Tour - Maps on www.bankleft.com: Bordeaux

Monday, December 6, 2010

Bordeaux

We have travelled to all of the other wine regions in France preferentially over the past few years on the baisis that Bordeaux is overrated. It isn't.

The city is has incredibly complete and consistent three hunderd year old stone building stock. It was great fun to cycle in 10 km from Saucats airfield north past grand Chateaux and vinyards into the town of 250,000 people. The small winding streets through the town outskirts boast row after row of facades composed of individually distinct highly decorated houses. The town has the style and class of Paris withouth the attitude or squalor. It has the climate and entertainment value of Nice, without the insecure objection to foreigners or gauche bling. The people were fun, open and friendly. In all, a very comfortable place. The obvious challenge before us, one by no means certainly possible in this region, was to see if we could find some good wine produced at a reasonable price.

We stayed near St George St Emillion, the (hilly, south facing) heart of the purple area to the East of Libourne on the Right Bank;

We ate plenty of horse while in this area - there is plenty around;

This chap is a dedicated horse butcher. Note the lovely Camargue (low med coastal swampy area of southern France) wild horses running through the water in the photo behind him;

The right bank of the Garonne, with the Chateaux that produce the most expensive wine in the world, is surprisingly ordinary;

It is seriously cold overnight now, even this far south. Lovely intense sun in the day though.

Helen knows enough to know that you don't walk in to the good producers in St George St Emilion and expect a tasting. Unencumbered by this knowledge, I overcame my lack of French with a ton of smiling and arm waving and convinced the largest estate in the appelation (operating a quarter of the planted area) to show us their wares. Fantastic they were, too. Such a shame that the plane's cellar is so small.

2005 was such a strong vintage in Bordeaux that many of the small estates have hoarded a proportion of their production to smooth over bad years. This is 12,000 bottles at Chateau Tour St Pierre, a Grand Crue vinyard owned by the Mayor of St Emilion until his death in 2007, now operated by his niece photographed here. Their '08 and '05 are lovely, their '03 was a car crash and there is a bottle of their '01 open on the table in front of me here in Greenwich London that is undrinkably badly corked. Thems the breaks with old Bordeaux I guess.

At the top of the hill right over St Emilion is the incredibly located Premier Crand Cru Classe A (the highest classification in the appelation, we are talking £1,000 a bottle) of Chateaua Ausone. There was bad light at dusk for this shot so unless you've been there, you'll have to take my word for it - it is an outrageously good location.