#closfourtet

[talkmansworld]

#chateu #closfourtet #saitemilion @closfourtet_official #photo #photographer #traveler #photographtraveler #travelerphotographer #sheep (at Saint-Émilion) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwpiX3hHWjl/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=e7n9yhd5pi9e

[talkmansworld]

#chateu #closfourtet #saitemilion @closfourtet_official #photo #photographer #traveler #photographtraveler #travelerphotographer (at Clos Fourtet) https://www.instagram.com/p/BwKyJh0HpXC/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=xyklln9kstxp

[comptoirdesmillesimes]

#closfourtet #2010 #saintemilion #grandcruclasse #winelovers🍷 #vin #

[bromptonwine]

Great visit to Clos Fourtet.

[bromptonwine]

Bordeaux wine tour June

This trip around my favourite wine region was all down to a good lunch.  There is a particular chef/patron, whose company I greatly enjoy – I’ll call him The Chef (TC) from now on.  We meet up 2 or 3 times a year for a good lunch somewhere in London to let off steam over good food and good wine.  We take it turns to choose the venue with varying degrees of success but what is always a certainty is that we’ll have fun and generally put the world to rights.  We’ve know each other for getting on for 20 years and I value his opinions and views on life.  Anyway, after too many glasses of wine at our last lunch we started a rather heated debate on the old Burgundy vs Bordeaux question.  TC is in the Burgundy camp and I am in the Bordeaux camp.  In the end the only way to start his journey to enlightenment was to visit Bordeaux.  Challenge accepted.

Our base was not far from Perigueux in the Dordogne, just to the north of Bergerac.  Too far to visit the Medoc but, in theory, perfect for a good few visits to vineyards on the Right Bank – St Emilion, Pomerol, Castillon etc…  Another friend joined the group.  I made it quite clear that they were both guinea pigs to a certain degree and I planned a trip to visit a mixture of small growers and more illustrious picture postcard Chateaux.  I used a combination of my old contacts, geographical knowledge and Google Maps to plan the visits. My contacts were good but I made the fatal (and quite frankly stupid) mistake of blindly trusting Google Maps for directions and for working out how long the various legs of the journey would take.  If I plan to do more trips bringing clients to Bordeaux etc… I’ll have to plan it a bit better.  Less in more!  I was a bit amateurish on the navigation front and I wasn’t happy about that.

Firstly a little bit of background to Bordeaux and what it means to me.  It may sound like an obvious thing to say for a wine merchant but Bordeaux really gave me my ‘Road to Damascus’ moment.  My grandparents had a charming vineyard in Somerset and I loved the family gatherings over the annual harvest.  The wine itself was fairly average (I’m being polite) and I’m afraid I grew up (as a good West Country boy) drinking cider.  I was 18 when I went to Bordeaux to stay with a wonderful family called the Poujats who had a winery in the Bordeaux suburb of Bassens. I loved it – the wine, the food the people.  We’re not talking Cru Classe but simple, honest claret.  It is easy to forget that Bordeaux is a huge wine region, with the top wines accounting for a tiny percentage of the overall wine produced – I’ll come back to this later as well.  The wines are not always easy to taste but with the right food they come alive – the perfect marriage of food and wine.  An aspect of wine enjoyment that I find hugely pleasurable.  It is a huge frustration to me that so many wine lists in London just don’t get this marriage right.

Over the years I have been fortunate enough to taste most of the so-called great wines in Bordeaux but it is also a huge frustration that so many buyers and merchants only focus on these ‘top’ wines and ignore so many of the great family owned petits chateaux. There is a laziness in our trade that means so many great wines are ignored.  Why? They are harder to sell.  Value to quality they are, however, very hard to beat.  We seem quite happy to list mediocre (quite frankly rubbish) village Burgundy but not decent commune Bordeaux.

There is nowhere else in the world where there is such a perfect synergy of different ingredients to make the whole greater than the sum of the parts: terroirs, grapes, oak and the assemblage.  We were focusing on the Right Bank on this trip so the main grape used is merlot. The cabernets are also grown, along with some malbec and petit verdot.  

Day 1 – Monday 8th June

I picked up TC from Bergerac airport mid-afternoon and we headed straight to the delightful Ch Les Miaudoux.  The Alfa, like all good Italians, was playing up – no air con.  It was a stunning, roasting June afternoon.  Ch Les Miaudoux has always been a favourite of mine. Lovely, fresh, bright wines which is all the more surprising because they are organic (that topic is for another blog).  Nathalie Cuisset showed us around this charming estate and we tasted several delicious wines: unoaked white, rose and red all 2014, oak aged red and white (the white was particularly good) and a delicious sweet Saussignac.  A thoroughly enjoyable start to the trip.

We then headed back to the house.  TC prepared the most delicious supper of artichoke, rabbit, gigot de chevreau (from the local organic goat farm run by Peter and Louise Dunn), carrots, potatoes – simply delicious.  Did I help? Well if having a swim and drinking a cold beer means I helped then I helped.

We drank grower reserve champagne from Michel Arnould and Chateau Dassault 1995 Grand Cru St Emilion.

Day 2 – Tuesday 9th June

The timings were always going to be tight today but the day got off to a poor start as my decision to rely on Google Maps spectacularly backfired.  We were supposed to head to Christian Veyry’s winery in St Laurent des Combes but Google convinced me that this was an hour north of St Emilion. For those of you who know Castillon – this is a school boy error.  Even though I thought it odd at the time that the winery would be so far away from the vineyards, I blindly did what the map said.  It’s a good 10 years since my previous visit to Christian’s vinery.  We didn’t get to him until much later than planned and were playing catch-up from then on.  The visit itself though was fantastic.  You will not meet a more modest yet supremely talented wine maker in Bordeaux. His wines have always excited me and this was a great tasting.  He has vineyards in Castillon and St Emilion.  We tasted his superb Chateau Veyry, Castillon – 2012, 2009, 2004 and 3 different of samples in barrel of the 2014.

We then raced into St Emilion to visit Clos Fourtet.  As many of you will know, Clos Fourtet sits at the top of the hill with commanding views to the plain below.  It is one of the largest properties in St Emilion and has a staggering 20kms of underground cellars.  They are magnificent.  We tasted the wonderful 2008.  I am a big fan of the 2008 vintage – classic and elegant.  Thank you to Maison Sichel for arranging the visit.

Then a flying visit to Chateau Cardinal Villemaurine.  This is a charming chateau – a slightly bohemian exterior and a very welcoming family. I loved the Tardis-like feel of the place.  A real Aladdin’s Cave:  down a large spiral staircase to huge underground cellars and tunnels full of vintages going back decades.  It was great fun.  We resurfaced into the bright sunshine and sat outside tasting the Grand Cru 2012 and the baby brother Lussac-St Emilion 2012.  Both charming and well-made wines from a difficult vintage.

The rest of the day was a bit of a Horlicks.  We were let down by the vineyard I wanted to visit in Blaye and then headed to the chateau in Chalais for a bite to eat.  It had been recommended to me and I will be having words with my usually reliable source for good places to eat.  The setting was magnificent and it was lovely to sit outside after a long day and drink a good Cheverny while eating some decent oysters.  The main meal was, however, pretty awful – the menu was all over the place and delivery was amateur.  In fact it was just bad.

Day 3 – Wednesday 10th June

Only one visit today before I dropped TC back at the airport.  Those of you who have read my blog before will know how much I like Chateau Suduiraut.  We drove to Sauternes via an unscheduled detour to Bordeaux – I simply can’t multi task. A combination of enjoying a good conversation with TC and not paying attention meant, before I knew it, we had come off the motorway and were driving into the centre of Bordeaux. Anyway, we arrived (late) at Suduiraut and were wonderfully looked after by the hugely talented Pierre Montegut. It is a beautiful place and ended up staying too long tasting some magnificent Sauternes – he was very generous. We tasted 1989, 2002, 2004, 2006 – superb.  Since 2004 Suduiraut does not chaptalize and the resulting wines are have the perfect balance between natural sweetness and acidity.

Then a race back to airport – you guessed it, getting stuck in traffic, wildly underestimating how long it would take.  If it hadn’t been for the flight arriving late then TC would have missed it.

Note to self – for the next trip, plan better, don’t trust Google Maps and build the days around a good lunch!  I certainly loved visiting some old friends and tasting some fantastic wines.  I don’t know if I have convinced TC yet about the merits Bordeaux but I will keep trying.  Left Bank next time!  Ultimately the layers of complexity found in good claret make it a wonderful food wine. These are not wines that drink well on their own but rather cry out for great food – the sort of food that TC creates so magnificently from his kitchen.

RH

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