France Adventure – Friday, May 30, 2014 – Last Day in Bordeaux

Bonjour à tous!  Hello, everyone.  Welcome again to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  Today is our last day in Bordeaux, our last day in France before going home.  We wanted to make the most of it, but stay near Saint Émilion.  I picked up one last fresh croissant for Mary at the boulangerie in Montagne before we ventured out for the day.

We spent the morning touring Saint Émilion.  Despite how many tourists (like us) are there, it is a beautiful and historic place to visit.  It is an ancient, medieval town.  Here in the market square, one can easily see the exterior of the Monolithic Church.  The word means “one stone.”  The church was not built with blocks of stone, but instead was completely carved out of limestone rock more than 900 years ago.

Some 100-300 years later, the gigantic bell tower was added.

The monk, Émilion, arrived from Brittany around 750 A.D. to continue his ministry.  Natural erosion had created caves in the limestone where he lived as a hermit.  The cave is part of a fascinating tour, but photography is not permitted inside.  It includes a spring that Émilion used for baptizing.  There is also a stone meditation chair, also called a fertility chair.  According to local legend, if a woman sits on the chair and prays to become a mother, she will become pregnant soon.

The Trinity chapel was built in the early 13^th century and has both Romanesque and Gothic features.  Painting on the ceilings date to the 14^th century.  No religious service has been conducted in the chapel since the French Revolution.

Near the hermitage and under the Monolithic Church are the catacombs.  Once again, no photography is permitted.  The catacombs are an underground cemetery.  The tombs are carved from the limestone rock.  A cupola stands over the tombs with carvings of three men stretching their arms to leave the tomb, a symbol of resurrection.  Light from a carved spiral staircase showed the way to heaven.  Interesting to me, documents show that three categories of people could be buried in the tombs: important members of the church, wealthy people, and stillborn infants, considered too young to have sinned.

From these windows outside, the volume of the church cannot be imagined.  The chambers are, quite simply, enormous.  Mary and I always wonder, how in the world did they do it with the tools available to them at that time?

Back up the cobblestone alley we go.

Our afternoon appointment was at Château de la Dauphine in Fronsac, a village about 15 minutes away.  

We arrived around 12:30 in time for lunch at the only restaurant in town, La Bonne Fourchette, which translates to The Good Fork.

We had simple lunches of salade la chèvre chaud, warm goat cheese.

And omelet et frites.  The place is a small roadside diner, basically.  Lunch comes with a small pichet of wine.  I watched some men sitting outside at a picnic table and saw one of them tear his bread and drop it into the wine.  Mary didn’t understand that at all, but somehow it made sense to me that a working man in the French countryside would tear French bread into wine at lunch.  It reminded me of how my father liked to crumble cornbread into buttermilk, which I do myself from time to time.

Fronsac is a village on the Dordogne River.  Château de la Dauphine is within a few hundred yards of the river, which provides a moderating influence all year, preventing frost in the winter and spring and cooling the vineyards slightly during the growing season.

I wanted to visit Château de la Dauphine because I had tasted their wine before, the 2001 vintage, and it was delicious, even spectacular.  In fact, I still have two bottles of the 2001 at home.

It is a grand estate, park-like in its beauty.

The château is like many we have seen in Bordeaux, an 18^th century mansion for the family of the owners at the time.

The dauphine was the heir to the French throne or the wife of the dauphin.  The dauphine never lived at Château de la Dauphine, but Princess Maria-Josepha of Saxony, the Dauphine of France and mother of King Louis XVI, did visit shortly after the château was built around 1750.

The château is beautifully furnished and occupied by its current owner.

Here’s the rear of the château.  That’s Mary strolling across the courtyard.

The gate shows the view up the hill to the Merlot vineyards.

Despite the rural character of the place, the church bell tower is right outside the gates.

Château de la Dauphine was bought in 2000 by the current owners, the family that owns Carrefour, a large grocery superstore chain in France that is described by our guide as the “Walmart of France.”  The château was restored and the winemaking facilities upgraded from this …

… to this, a gleaming, circular, two-story, gravity flow operation.

A sorting table uses a laser-technology optical scanner to reject all but desired grapes.

A computer console controls everything.

Here’s the barrel aging room at Château de la Dauphine.

Marion, our wonderful guide, escorted us to the “boutique” for the tasting.  Marion has excellent English language skills, having worked and lived in the San Francisco area as an au pair.

The 2008 was delicious, polished and fleshy, approachable for immediate enjoyment, with prominent dark fruit notes but good acidity and tannic structure for balance.  As much as we both enjoyed it, I must say I love the 2001 even more, which was made in the older, more primitive facility.

The wall of the boutique is a chalkboard where visitors can leave a message. 

We went back to Saint Émilion for our final dinner of the trip to France.  We walked through the current church and took this photo.

Back down the steep, cobblestone alley we went.

We selected the most convenient place on the market square, Amelia Canta.

The town is practically deserted in the evening, plus, we’re always the first to arrive for dinner.

I had a first course of compotee legumes, stewed vegetables and mozzarella cheese.

My main course was salade nicoise.  Bring on the anchovies!

Mary enjoyed carre d’agneau, lamb chops with mashed potatoes.

The wine was Maison Blanche Montagne-Saint-Émilion 2006, mostly Merlot with a little Cabernet Franc.  Like other wines from Saint Émilion satellite appellations, it was fine but not remarkable.  It offered classic aromas and flavors of red fruit, currant, herbs, with medium acidity. 

We finished the dinner with coffee, which came out with irregular cup handles, one vertical and the other horizontal.

That’s our post for today.  We hope you enjoyed it.  Thanks again very much for reading us.  We were both tired on our last evening in France and thinking of packing and an early start to get to the airport.  Back to the USA tomorrow.  Keep checking back at Cépage et Cuisine as we wind up our wine, food, and cultural vacation in France and head home to Plymouth.  In the meantime,

Cheers!

Mary♥Brian