Bonjour, à tous! Hi,
everybody and welcome again to Cépage
et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog. We’re continuing with our wine, culinary, and
cultural vacation in France. We spent a
week in Burgundy, which you can read in earlier blog posts, then took a couple
of days to transition here to Bordeaux.
Our base of operations is the small town of Montagne. Our gite,
Gite le Lys, is part of a Bordeaux
wine estate called Château Lys de Maisonneuve. Gite le Lys, which sort of translates to “cottage of the lilies,”
is not exactly in town. As we say in the
South when referring to a place in the countryside that is nonetheless
identified with a town name for postal purposes, Gite le Lys is “out from” Montagne.
So, it’s in the commune of Montagne, but not in the village of
Montagne.
In fact, we’re actually closer
to the village of Saint-Christophe-des-Bardes, just on the other side of a
small river called La Barbanne, which borders the property of Château
Lys de Maisonneuve. Where I come from,
La Barbanne would barely qualify as a creek, really more like a ditch that one
can leap across during dry weather, but it divides the two communes and the
value of vineyard property is sharply higher on the Saint-Christophe side,
probably because of its proximity to the prestigious Saint-Émilion area just a
few kilometers away.
A couple of posts ago, I
mentioned that the west side of the Gironde River and its tributary, the
Garonne River, is called the Left Bank.
The area north of the city of Bordeaux is called the Médoc. The Gironde flows north to empty into the
Atlantic, so the part of the river closer to the city of Bordeaux is called the
Haut-Médoc, the upper Médoc. The large
area south of the city is called Graves because of the high gravel content of
the soil. Sand and gravel are well
drained and are good for Cabernet Sauvignon.
Soil with high clay content, which retains moisture, is good for
Merlot. The most widely planted grape on
the Left Bank is Cabernet Sauvignon. The
Left Bank and the Médoc are where we’re spending the day. Here’s the map again to help get your
bearings, once again with thanks to Wine Spectator.
Every once in a while,
Google Maps is incorrect, so we got lost and were late to our first appointment
of the day at Château Brown. By the time
we arrived, a tour was already under way, so we joined in progress. It was still very nice, guided in English by
Laëtitia.
Château Brown is in Pessac-Léognan,
south of the city of Bordeaux and part of the Graves appellation, but nowadays basically a suburb. The estate is centuries old, but surrounded
now by commercial development.
Of about
50 hectares under vine, about 125 acres, slightly over half are planted to
Cabernet Sauvignon, about 40% to Merlot, and a little Petit Verdot. About 11 acres are planted to white grapes,
Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.
We joined the tour in the
barrel room.
Many producers in Bordeaux
and around the world are using concrete eggs for fermentation, along with tanks
and barrels. The shape of the egg and
the earth’s rotation create a vortex action, like a funnel cloud inside the
vessel, keeping the grape skins suspended and enabling extraction of color and
flavor without having to pump over the cap of skins that rise to the top of a
typical fermentation tank.
Laëtitia poured both the blanc et rouge for tasting. Consistent with the appellation and the prevailing style of winemaking, the white was
softer and more round than most New World examples of Sauvignon Blanc. The refreshing citrus notes were present, but
the barrel treatment and the Semillon add a honeyed, almost waxy character. The red was an excellent and complex
expression of a very good Left Bank Bordeaux with its balance of tannin,
acidity, fruit, and elements of spice, leather, and savory herbs.
Our afternoon stop was in
Pauillac (pronounced “poy-yak) in the Haut-Médoc. This area is where many of the most famous
and most expensive Bordeaux wine estates are found. They are categorized into a system of five
classified growths, called crus, established in 1855 on the occasion of
the Paris World’s Fair and based on the trading price at the time, an indication
of the quality of a château. The old
classification does not necessarily indicate the quality of the wines today,
but it does influence price.
We visited a fifth
growth, a cinquièmes
cru, Château Pontet-Canet, adjacent to one of the first growths, Château Mouton Rothschild.
Although not all châteaux in Bordeaux look like this, they’re not
unusual. In contrast to Burgundy and
their farmhouse-style domaines of a few hectares, which we love, many châteaux in Bordeaux
include grand mansions on estates of 50 or 100 or even more hectares, keeping
in mind that a hectare is about 2.5 acres.
Château Pontet-Canet is
an estate and a wine that we really like.
It’s a little pricey, but not out of reach and we have several in our
collection at home for special occasions.
They haven’t given in to market pressures to produce riper and riper
wines with high alcohol and a loss of structure and character.
Here’s a photo in the
vineyard. See how the soil is almost
white from its gravelly, pebbly composition.
The estate has 80 hectares, about 200 acres, with a mix of soils, including
these, which are good for Cabernet Sauvignon, but also including some clay that
is good for growing Merlot.
The viticulture is all
organic, no herbicides, insecticides, or fertilizers. The vineyards are worked with horses instead
of tractors to reduce compaction of the soil.
When harvested grapes are
brought to the winery, they are inspected on a sorting table like this to
eliminate bunches that are underripe, rotted, and to get out leaves and other
debris. The grapes go into the destemmer
but not crushed.
Grapes come out of the
destemmer through holes like these. You
can see that Merlot grapes are larger than Cabernet Sauvignon.
The destemmed grapes are
fed by gravity into fermentation vats below, some oak and some concrete.
Coils in the vats control
the temperature of the fermenting grapes, called must.
After fermentation, lasting
two to three weeks, the wine is transferred to oak barrels for aging for 16
months.
Château Pontet-Canet also
uses these interesting concrete amphorae on an experimental basis.
Down in the cellar is the library, containing wines back to 1943. Sadly, wines from before 1943 were lost to
the Nazi occupation in World War II.
Our excellent tour guide,
Alice, poured the 2007 for tasting. I
was pleased that we could taste a wine that had a little time to mature.
It is an absolutely lovely wine,
well-structured with a perfume of cedar, leather, and tobacco, what some wine
writers call cigar box, and fruit aromas of dark cherry and anise. The palate showed it still has a long life to
live and the tannins were not fully resolved.
The cherry, current, mint and spice flavors were nicely balanced by the
acidity and tannins. It’s not as elegant
as a great Burgundy, to be sure. It’s a
brawnier wine, built for hearty food. I
would enjoy sipping it, but this is a wine to share with friends over dinner.
Just a minute or two away
in Pauillac is Château Pichon-Longueville.
We didn’t visit, but we stopped to take a photo of the château, an
iconic image of Bordeaux.
We made our way back to
Montagne and the gite, navigating the
city of Bordeaux during rush hour. It
took us about two hours in the morning to get to Château Brown in Leognan, then
over an hour and a half to get from Leognan to Pauillac, then two hours to get
back to Montagne. All of that is the
Bordeaux region and is only part of it.
It is such a huge place!
We had no reservations
for dinner, so we went to Saint-Émilion to see what was open. We took a chance on Les Giron’ Dines.
The amuse was an
appetizing nibble similar to a bruschetta with olives, tomatoes, and avocado.
Here’s the carte for the evening.
Mary enjoyed a simple
preparation of poellée de St. Jacques,
seared scallops with vegetables.
After Mary’s experience a
couple of days earlier with sole meuniére, I was eager to try it. In the U.S. it is usually dredged in flour so
I don’t generally order it, but the French prepare it without flour. I enjoyed the light, mild flavor with the
butter, parsley, and lemon.
Mary enjoyed a splendid
dessert of macarons glacés, delicate
macaron wafers and refreshing currant and pineapple glace.
I had my usual assiette du fromage.
The wine was a light and
refreshing Château Saint-Hilaire Graves 2012.
We were both in the mood for
seafood so this wine was just the ticket.
It had nice aromas of citrus and herbs, a smooth palate of fresh
acidity, lemon and green apple, a softness from the oak barrels and the
Semillon.
Saint Émilion is
beautiful in the evening light around 9:00 p.m.
The ruins of an ancient
church are seen here. It’s interesting
to contemplate the interior of the church where people worshipped all those
centuries ago is now a vineyard.
That’s our post for
today. Thanks so much for reading us. We have lots more to share. Check back for more at Cépage et Cuisine as we continue
our wine, culinary, and cultural travels in France. In the meantime,
Cheers!
Mary♥Brian
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