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Square in Bordeaux
A Tour for Lovers of Wine
This was the 2nd tour that we designed. Running the Dordogne tour in 1997 awoke my interest in wine, and inevitably I started reading about the wines of Bordeaux, the greatest wine producing region in the world.
My first plan was to visit the main regions of Bordeaux wine production, namely, St Emilion, the Médoc, Haut Médoc, Graves, Sauternes and the vast but unsung vineyards of Entre Deux Mers.
Stephane and I set off driving around, stopping at hotels, reading wine books, buying armfuls of maps and visiting every Office Du Tourisme we could find.
Our original plan encountered problems. There’s nowhere to stay in Entre Deux Mers. All the roads that lead to Sauternes are too busy and horrible. And the biggest problem of all - Bordeaux’s in the way! It’s too big, there are bottlenecks caused by the Gironde and the two rivers of the Garonne and the Dordogne, and it’s just not nice to cycle there.
So we ended up going back to the drawing board. Stephane knew the area around Bergerac and Ste Foy as far as St Emilion. One look at St Emilion and I was hooked. It’s such a beautiful and atmospheric place, surrounded by very picturesque vineyards. And then we discovered the ferry that crosses the Gironde from Blaye to Lamarque in the Haut Médoc, and the whole route came together.
The Cleverest Bike Tour - The Best Wine Tour
Vineyards in Bordeaux
Of all of our tours, all 7 of them, Bordeaux is the cleverest - the one which took the most work, the most calculation and measurement, and the most visiting and organising.
And in 10 years I don’t think I’ve seen a better ‘wine’ tour anywhere.
Walking vineyard tours are no good for me, you just can’t travel far enough. And coaches really don’t do it for me! And on our trip we meet such a variety of winemakers, and taste such a variety of wines.
Bergerac
In Bergerac, the wines are simple, everyday wines, red, and white and rosé. But even within Bergerac, there are special nuggets to explore, like Pécharment, and the beautiful, deliciously sweet wines of Monbazillac.
The Outlying Vineyards of Bordeaux
Further down the Dordogne we stay in the Bastide of Ste Foy la Grande, home of Bordeaux Ste Foy, the most outlying of all the ‘Bordeaux’ vineyards. We cycle through Montravel, with its white and red wines, and more beautiful dessert wines, then through the Cotes de Castillon, again ordinary wines where the surprise is just how good some of the wines are, and how skilful and dedicated the vignerons, the winemakers.
Castillon is literally a road-width from St Emilion - it should be no surprise the wines are good, but they can’t put ‘St Emilion’ on the label - that means bargain time for you and me.
St Emilion
Then we’re on the climb to St Emilion and Pomerol, whose wines need no introduction.
Next we cycle through Fronsac, a historic pocket of quality on the right bank of the Dordogne, before cycling through the emerging appellations of Côtes de Bourg and Côtes de Blaye (if you’re interested, Bourg is usually considered slightly upmarket, but I prefer Blaye because I like Blaye and know some of the growers - so choose Côtes de Blaye!).
A shop in St Emilion
The Haut Médoc
By now we’re among the historic clarets of the Haut Médoc, the real heavyweights of world wine. People talk about Burgundy, and New World wines, but to paraphrase my Dad, no vineyard owner in the Haut Médoc ever woke up and wondered what it might be like to own a vineyard in the Napa Valley.
And finally we come down the quality scale a little with a day in the vineyards of the Médoc, historically known as the ‘Bas Médoc’, or low medoc, but they didn’t like the connotations, so simple Médoc it is.
A Totally French Wine Experience
It’s such a fabulous exploration of styles and prices and techniques of wine. Every single time we run the Bordeaux Winetrail it’s an education - and can you imagine a nicer classroom than the vineyards and tasting rooms of the Dordogne, St Emilion and the médoc? No, me neither.
Last night I went along to the inaugural meeting of ‘Wines, Vines and Good Times’. Rubbish name, but a very nice lady called Ruth setting up a wine appreciation club in Balham, London.
Last night was just an introduction - so all the wines were on the house - and Ruth had chosen sparkling wines as the introductory topic. Maybe the thinking was that everybody is supposed to like champagne and sparkling wine - it’s never been my favourite, but you can still explore the extraordinary difference in the appearance, smell and taste of apparently similar wines.
Ruth really seems to know her stuff, which I love. I find my wine knowledge is restricted to France, and to Tuscany & Umbria. Have a look at where The Chain Gang operates our bike tours and it will be pretty obvious why. Get me on dessert wines from Monbazillac or the Coteaux du Layon, or the clarets of the 1855 classification, and I’m as happy as a pig in shit.
But, the minute we start talking about South Africa, New Zealand, Chile or the US, and I’m afraid to say I haven’t got a clue. Literally. I know absolutely nothing about them - except that the most southerly vineyard in the world is in New Zealand.
Not terribly useful information, but it is true. So I do enjoy the old blah blah blah about cepage, ageing, blending and single vintage sparkling wines when they relate to all of these ‘New World’ wines. I’m always a bit in awe that anybody can know France, and French wines, and then know all the others as well. But unless she’s a bloody good actress Ruth knew her stuff and it was fascinating.
The last wine of the evening was a vintage champagne from 2001. We tasted it alongside a blend from the same champagne house made to their house style using wines from various years, like most champagne is. The rule is a vintage champagne uses grapes from the same year.
Most champagnes blend from several years to maintain a consistent house style. Not the cheap champagnes (as if such a thing existed!), but all champagnes, including renowned names like Moet & Chandon & Veuve Clicquot. If a champagne bottle has a year printed on the label, it’s a vintage, from a single year.
This doesn’t mean it’s better, although it probably means it’s more distinctive, more interesting. The winemaker, or vigneron, will make decisions about the ‘cepage’, the combination of Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, the three grape varieties allowed in Champagne.
They’ll make decisions about the length of time in the barrel, how long the wine will spend on the lies, how much sugar to add. The most interesting thing about last night’s vintage champagne is that it was from 2001. A rubbish year, when very few champagne houses bothered with a ‘vintage’ so you already have a clue that the winemaker thought they’d done extremely well with their grapes that year.
And it was delicious. Tasting the vintage and the non-vintage side-by-side, the non-vintage tasted lovely, but after tasting the vintage, the non-vintage just seemed to disappear. You always find this when you’re tasting, you have to be careful about the order. A delicious, but subtle wine will seem pallid, odourless and tasteless if you taste it immediately after an over-powering wine.
Anyway, enough of all that. Ruth is planning one event a month, and the next event, on March 13th, is on the subject of Chardonnay. There was a bit of a reaction to the ubiquity of Chardonnay in the late ‘90s, people would chuckle over the mnemonic ‘ABC’, Anything But Chardonnay. It was always unfair.
These same people never realised that the very best champagnes, the ‘blanc de blanc’ (which means white juice from white grapes only, which is a shorthand for 100% Chardonnay) are made from Chardonnay, and the most amazing white wines in the world, the wines from Meursault, Puligny-Montrachet and Chassagne-Montrachet, are also 100% Chardonnay.
So I hope our exploration of Chardonnay is an interesting one, and if anyone is likely to be in Balham, south west London, on March 13th 2008, let’s meet up at Ruth’s ‘Wines, Vines and Good Times’, even if it has got a dodgy name.
See you at Café Melié on Bedford Hill, Thursday 13th March, 8.00pm. Probably not too many of our American, Canadian and Australian friends, but you’ll be welcome in spirit.
