France Adventure – Saturday, May 24, 2014 – My Queen Arrives in Bordeaux

Hello, everybody and good morning from Château Royal, the castle in Saint-Saturnin.  Bonjour au château!  Welcome again to Cépage et Cuisine, Mary’s and Brian’s wine and food blog.  We’re driving today to Bordeaux to spend a week there, but now I wish we could spend another day or two here in the Auvergne.  It is very beautiful and Mary loves the castle.  Who is that peeking from behind that bush?

The Auvergne is an area of dormant and extinct volcanoes and many châteaux.  The village of Saint-Saturnin and the nearby villages are actually built on an ancient lava flow.

There are several nearby cones.  I took this photo from the terrace of the château.

The château was built in the 13^th century and was the property of two queens, Catherine de Medicis, wife of King Henry II, and their daughter, Queen Marguerite de Valois, and one king, King Louis XIII.  It is a good example of the fortress architecture of medieval France with its moat, ramparts, and fortified towers.

Here are some photos of the moat.

Imagine an attacker having to get across this with it full of water, then scale the wall to the ramparts.

Here are the towers from the terrace and from down in the moat.

This is the window to our room.

Here's a short video clip of the ascent of the tower to our room.

Here are some views of the village of Saint-Saturnin from the terrace of the château, including the church with its classical Romanesque architecture.

Inside the château, this is the pantry.

This is the library.

The kitchen is on the first level, beautifully restored and furnished.

Madame Penicaud had prepared a breakfast of breads, fruit, meats, local cheeses, cereals, jams, milk, juices, and coffee.

We were the first guests to come to breakfast.  We’re generally the first to appear for any meal, it seems.

Off we went to Bordeaux.  Our destination today is Montagne, which is near Saint Émilion.  Our route put us on the Autoroute for 30 miles or so.  We stopped at an aire for gas and lunch.  These are elaborate versions of what we would call a rest stop or welcome center.  They include gas, a store with groceries, and a restaurant with hot food, sandwiches, and beverages.  We had steak haché et frites, which is basically a burger and fries without the bun.  Here’s a tip for highway travelers in France: when you order the steak haché, you have to tell them you want it cooked well, which is bien cuit.  Ours were cooked only on the outside.  They were rare on the inside, which we Americans don’t usually experience with ground meat.

Also interesting at the aire on the Autoroute is that many people have wine with lunch.  The restaurant sells wine by the glass, the pichet (pitcher), and the bottle.  I regret I didn’t take a photo of the house wine dispenser, rouge, rosé, ou blanc.  It’s basically like a fountain drink dispenser, except it’s wine and it’s cheaper than buying a soft drink.  A small canned Coke will run you about €3 or €4, but a half-liter pitcher of wine might be only about €8.

We arrived late in the afternoon at Gite le Lys, our gite home away from home for the next week.  We didn’t know it when we made the reservation, but the gite is actually part of a working wine estate, Château Lys de Maisonneuve in the Montagne-Saint Émilion appellation.

At this point it is helpful to clarify the meaning of this word, château.  Just like in English, the same spelling of a word in French can have multiple meanings.  Château can be a castle, like Château Royal in Saint-Saturnin or Château de La Rochepot, it can be a mansion-like house surrounded by the vineyards of a wine estate, and it can be the wine estate itself, including multiple buildings on the property, the same way I used the term “domaine” in Burgundy.  So, Château Lys de Maisonneuve includes the gite, the winery, and the surrounding vineyards.

Here’s Mary to describe the gite with a series of photos we took before we unpacked all our clutter.

I love how spacious the kitchen/dining area is.

There is a nice big sunroom off the kitchen.

The fridge is in the room with the washer and dryer and downstairs bathroom.

Upstairs is another salle de bain, a good-sized bathroom with shower, and two bedrooms.

The location is fabulous, right in the middle of a vineyard with roses at the end of most rows. So beautiful!

This is the view from our front door.

Dinner was at Le Clos Mirande in the nearby village of Mirande.

Guess what? Right, we were the first to arrive for dinner.

The weather was pleasant but coolish, so we took an aperitif a la terrace and moved inside later for dinner.

What a beautiful place for a restaurant.  The view of the back side from the terrace was lavishly landscaped and sloped downward into rolling hills of vineyards and woods.  It was very relaxing and serene after a day of travel.

Le Clos Mirande is interesting because one side is a bistrot (can also be spelled bistro) and the other a more upscale white linen tablecloth restaurant.

We opted for the more casual bistrot side.

Mary passed on an entrée, but I had an interesting dish called déclinaison de coquillages gratinés aux beurres composés, pommes gaufrettes, which is complicated name that I'm copying from the carte, mostly mussels in compound butters of various flavors such as lardon, orange zest, and apple.  I thought they were interesting and unusual.  The waffle chips were a nice, crunchy accompaniment.

We both opted for fish for la plat, the main course.  I had a dorade, which is not widely available in the U.S.  It is a small saltwater fish, sometimes called a sea bream, mild in flavor and texture, and tastes similar to red snapper.  It’s not as rich as, say, mahi mahi.

The pommes frites were delicately arranged, stacked in a neat pattern.

Mary had limande sole meunière, lemon sole meuniere.  Unlike most sole or trout meuniere in the U.S., French preparations don’t usually include dredging in flour.  I resolved to try it later.  Here’s Mary to describe it.

Growing up, we often had sole for dinner but Dad always deboned mine.  I had completely forgotten about this until I cut into it.  Brian had similar fish dishes before, so he knew how to take the fish off the bone on one side and then flip it over.  Once that was done, the fish was absolutely delicious, light and lemony.

We shared coffee and an assiette du fromage of brie, Comté, and Saint Nectaire.

Bordeaux is known more for its reds than its whites, but very nice white wines are also available widely.  The white grapes of Bordeaux are Sauvignon Blanc, often referred to in Bordeaux simply as Sauvignon, and Semillon. More often than not, the grape varieties are not listed on the label at all, but this bottle does include the cépage on the back label.

In contrast to most Sauvignon Blanc elsewhere in the world, it often sees a little oak barrel fermentation or aging in Bordeaux.  The blending with Semillon provides additional body and richness.  The basic flavor profile is familiar with grapefruit citrus, sometimes a grassy herbaceous quality, and tree fruit such as apples and pears.

The Chateau de Respide Graves Blanc 2012 was consistent with that profile, a little more round and soft than most New World versions.  It was cool, clean and refreshing and paired well with the fish choices.  We’re planning to visit Graves tomorrow and I’ll talk more about the area in our next post.

That’s our post for today.  Thanks so much for reading us.  Tomorrow will be a busy day.  We’re venturing over to the Left Bank areas of Graves and the Medoc.  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