For all that, it is a largely unprepossessing landscape made beautiful and dramatic by pristine row upon row of vines, carpeting the grounds of classic and charming châteaux. And it is remarkably recently that this most traditional of wine regions has begun to embrace wine tourists.

The man who measures clouds, by Jan Fabre

La Winery was one such recent, overtly touristic, project made by Philippe Raoux, who also owns nearby Château d’Arsac.  He wanted to bring something of the new world to the region. Certainly the glass and steel greenhouse-style building bears little comparison with those classic châteaux. 

Having opening in 2007, it had already attracted some 50,000 visitors in the following year, with a quarter of them estimated to be from abroad.  But what is it, with its franglais name?  It’s a struggle to classify easily: it’s not a wine château and vineyard with it’s own label. It is a shop with over 1,000 different wines, 40% from Bordeaux, 45% from other parts of France and 15% from other countries. This latter point alone flies in the face of much of vinously parochial France.

It is a restaurant. It is a place, a destination, yet at the beginning of the Médoc, just 25km/half an hour from the city of Bordeaux, where visitors can view modern art, taste wine, hear concerts, learn about wine, and find out their ‘wine sign’. 

Art exhibitions are thrice yearly, and there is an audio guided tour in French and English, for the permanent art installations, which takes about 20 minutes.

But the main attraction, since the beginning, has been the wine sign session, which is great fun and takes about an hour. There are three sittings a day, which can be booked in advance, and in English too, with enough advance warning.  

The wine sign is good fun for people not knowing too much about wine. It tries to identify, in about an hour, what sort of tastes you like, via a blind tasting of six wines.  Depending on how posh the blind wines are, it costs between €16 and €89.

Each person gets a ‘wine sign’ (there are eight categories altogether) and an accompanying booklet explaining your approach to wine.  Your wine ‘logo’, with such evocative names as ‘sensuel’, ‘gourmand’, ‘eternel‘, ‘tendance’ and ‘esthète’, can then be matched to bottles of wine in the store.

At the end of 2009, La Winery was the French national winner of a Great Wine Capitals ‘Best of Wine Tourism’ 2010 award for innovative wine tourism (the global award went to Bodegas Muga in Rioja, Spain).

Armelle Falcy-Cruse of Ch.du Taillan, preparing the blending workshop

A couple of years before La Winery opened, and well into the heartland of the Médoc a group of four women friends, château owners and winemakers got together to do something constructive about sharing their passion for their wines.  

Martine Cazeneuve of Château Paloumey (Haut-Médoc), Armelle Falcy-Cruse of Château du Taillan, (Haut-Médoc), Marie-Laure Lurton of Château La Tour de Bessan (Margaux) and Florence Lafragette of Château Loudenne (Médoc) formed Les Médocaines at a benign moment in history. They invited tourists into their work during the stunning 2005 harvest, receiving one bus a week.  Falcy-Cruse said “In 2005, this was unusual – women demystifying wine, and introducing wine in a fun way.” The novelty value soon worked into a firm fixture. 

Falcy-Cruse explained: “our philosophy is for people to have fun. We are all general managers of our wineries, each with our own story.  But our target is wine and tourism, it is not for specialists of wine. [Our visitors] want to know about wine, but not to be at school, so we do this in a fun way.  It goes against the image of Bordeaux, which is to wear a tie and suit when you come into the chateaux, with lots of protocol.”

Part of their proposition is for tourists to meet with at least two of the owners, along with a visit to two of the four châteaux, which they mix traditional (18^th century Taillan and 19^th century Loudenne) and modern (the new cellar at Paloumey and the ‘bunker’ of Bessan).

The organised visits have to be booked through the tourism office. Though visitors wanting the traditional visit and tasting can turn up during the week, as usual.    

A day’s visit in late Sept/early Oct 2010 will cost €80 all in, including transport from Bordeaux city. Falcy-Cruse said: “we pick grapes for an hour, work at the sorting table, have lunch with real pickers, taste four Médocaines wines.  After lunch, we see the vinification, and taste from vat, or taste the grapes or must (juice) from the day.  We show our job from the inside, it’s not like a theatre.”

Pre-Christmas visitors to the city might like to do a blending workshop on a Monday morning in November or December for €45. Falcy-Cruse said “we explain about the grape varieties, typicity, how we taste – the colour, the nose, how it’s easier to compare two glasses than to have only one.  It’s a very interactive workshop. It’s important for everyone to participate“.

Château Lanessan's stables

For a less active view of the Médoc, horse-drawn carriages in the 264-hectare estate of Château Lanessan are an option. Just 40 hectares are vineyard, and it is the horse-ware that’s the main attraction here. A late 19^th century stables of opulence was installed with running water when most human habitations lacked it. Pyrenean marble troughs and brass fixtures are some indication of the level of luxury afforded to the owner’s prized horses. Ten carriages are kept in working order including a Phaeton from 1884.

Visits are available throughout the year, to explore the horse museum, or to do a winemaking and blending tour, but you must do one of these to get half an hour of the vineyards in a horse-drawn carriage, all for €125 for five people. Bookings are directly with the Château, and can be in English, German or Spanish, with enough advance notice.

Read part one here, and part two here.  

This article was inspired by a visit to the region in May 2009 sponsored by the CIVB.

The defining moment for South Africa that the world knows was the release of Nelson Mandela in 1990. Four years later the rainbow nation achieved democracy.

As far as South Africa’s wine industry is concerned, it may well have the longest viticultural history of all the new world countries, with wine first being made there in 1659, during the times when the Cape was a stopover trading and refuelling post on the great sea routes. But the latest liberating chapter in the country’s renewal was the early 1990s scrapping of a quota system which dictated what was grown and where it was grown.  And exports were freed up once the old controlling state co-operative was privatised in 1997. 

Flying by Elim vineyards, Indian Ocean

Since then it seems that everyone has been fleeing to the coasts and the cooling coastal breezes to find new and different places to grow grapes.  A big chunk of the vineyard is already ‘within sight’ of the oceans – the saying goes if you can see the ocean it’s a good place for a vineyard, presumably because of those cooling breezes, though quite how far inland they reach and actively moderate the vineyard climate is not always clear.

Closer to the coast there’s no argument, leaves waft in afternoon breezes. And with this great proximity to the oceans, Cape South Africans can satisfy two great passions simultaneously: making wine, with sauvignon blanc most definitely being flavour of the moment, and messing about on the water, in this case rather serious water in the guise of the Atlantic and Indian oceans. In the decade since 1997, sauvignon blanc plantings have increased from 5 to 8% of the vineyard area. And sauvignon blanc goes pretty well with fresh and simply prepared fish.

But there’s much more to Cape cuisine than fish, and Stellenbosch, at about 20 km from the sea, is the heart of the Cape Winelands, and nearby wineries long ago took the lead to offer local foods with the local wines.  Indeed Delheim, less than 10 minutes from the town, were one of the earliest down this route when they started serving cheese platters in 1976. 

The view from Delheim

Proprietor Nora Sperling-Thiel said they “started serving food as guests arrived in middle of day and were looking for something to eat, so we kept it simple with fresh farm bread cheese and paté. At the time we were the only farm with a restaurant and served 50 guests at a time but did two sittings a day in high season.” Now they have a busy lunchtime restaurant serving local food to accompany their wines. Their Pinotage rosé has become something of a legend in its own lifetime. 

A little further toward Paarl, Fairview has built on its long association with homemade cheeses as well as wine. Four years ago owner Charles Back turned his old winery into The Goat Shed, a breakfast and lunchtime restaurant that’s packed to the rafters at weekends. The dirt paddock at the front has become tailored lawns dressed with tables and chairs immediately next to the closest vineyards.

To keep some of the winery feel, and to break up the large space, Charles said: “we cut out the concrete tanks by three quarters. And” he said “we wanted to use local people, and the kids of the farm workers. It took a lot of training, it took us a year to come out of the woods” while new staff got to grips with the service culture and the professionalism required to efficiently wait tables.  And no surprise given the restaurant has more than 200 covers.  Charles added that having the restaurant meant his “finger is on the pulse, because it elevates wine into the food environment. You have to focus on where you’re going; and you have a product testing-ground on site.”  

A Fairview Goat

As well as the Fairview range, Back also makes the Goats do Roam and Spice Route ranges, so the restaurant has plenty of opportunity to test plenty of products. With so many wines, Back sources fruit from some of the newer vineyard plantings, and his Spice Route sauvignon blanc comes from the Darling region, an hour’s drive north of Cape Town, about 10km inland from the Atlantic Ocean, which he said: “is a seaward facing vineyard, getting breezes off the coast. The vineyard gets 5-6°C lower than [Paarl], and the harvest is about a month later.”  This later ripening helps preserve some of the typical zesty and grassy characters in sauvignon blanc.

Futher up the West Coast, about 300km north of Cape Town, is an even more recently planted vineyard area, around Lambert’s Bay, where the Sir Lambert property can be found, and Fryer’s Cove, lying another half an hour north on a dirt track. Both are producing light, zesty, grass and lemongrass style sauvignon blancs, which are back on track with the local fish at the key attraction of the region, the Muisbosskerm restaurant, an all-South African experience.

View from Muissbosskerm

The Muisbosskerm is as close to the Atlantic coast as it’s possible to get … being on the beach. It takes its name from temporary shelters made from the local mouse bush plant. The restaurant started out feeding family and friends, but it’s been a highlight on the tourist trail for many years, and it’s the clients who have to turn up on time for the freshest straight-from-the-ocean fish. Those local sauvignon blancs match well the atmosphere and the open-grilled and baked kingklip, hake, crayfish, snoek, steenbras and Cape salmon fish braai, whatever’s in season. The traditional stickily-sweet sweet potato somehow works well as one of the accompaniments.

In 2009, the South African wine industry celebrated its 350^th birthday, but it’s the freshness of the last decade that’s getting folk really excited as producers carve out a new identity for the 21^st century.

This article was inspired by a visit to the Cape winelands in March 2009, sponsored by Wines of South Africa.

St. Emilion

A settlement was founded here by an 8th century monk, called Emilion, on the highest point of the limestone ridge, at around 100m above sea level. It’s a short, but gymnastically steep distance from the top at the Place du Clocher where the 15th century bell tower was built over the monolithic church, and the Place du Marché at the bottom of the slope.

Indeed the middle ages were the town’s heyday, after the golden age of pilgrimages in Europe had made the town a stopping place on the route to Santiago de Compostela, in the north western tip of Spain.

A long religious and political history surrounds the town and the vineyard culture, and a guided tour organised from the tourist office will furnish you with so much more than interesting stories of monks and nuns, the English rule during the 12^th century when responsibility for the quality of the wine was given to twelve men, who also had jurisdiction over the town and it environs.

An hour and a half’s guided tour, available from the tourist office, will take in the hermit’s cave, the catacombs, Trinity chapel and the monolithic church. This latter is carved out of the limestone escarpment, with perfect proportions as though it had been constructed rather than excavated. It was once lavishly decorated and embellished, but time and dampness have taken their toll.  Nonetheless two masses are held inside each year.

For anyone with a vinous bent, but not having made private appointments to visit wine properties, the tourist office also offers various wine tasting, visit and tour options.

If you want to stay in the vineyards rather than the town, Château Franc Mayne has nine rooms at its adjacent Le Relais de Franc Mayne. Each of the rooms is individually and uniquely designed: a blood-red and black Asian-theme; the muted browns and tans of the French country theme. I stayed in the richly decorated ‘British landscape’ room and felt like a welcome intruder into a plush country pile. The room looked out onto what they call a ‘natural swimming pool’ which the fluff said is ‘biologically purified using plants and micro-organisms”, with a regeneration zone and a filtration zone.  It looked pretty, and relaxing, with vineyard views.  

Franc Mayne limestone quarry

The Château has its own quarries on the property, dating from the 12^th and 13^th centuries, as do most of the quarries around St. Emilion, where barrels of the estate wine mature for 12 months. With a pretty constant 13°C and 80% relative humidity, these are decent natural conditions for wine maturation. And much like the monolithic church it looks as though the quarry walls have been constructed, with neat block lines, rather than deconstructed.

There’s an old post house (for the post/mail) on the Franc Mayne property which has just been renovated to become a new, dedicated tasting room, so the tour now takes you all the way through their quarry, emerging at the post house, ready to taste.

After which, a delightful 20 minute walk/30 minute stroll through the vineyards, coming out at the back of Beauséjour-Bécot, will take you the 1 kilometre into St. Emilion town, where the restaurant L’Envers du Décors is undoubtedly one of the best-known, and characterful watering holes, where the tables are topped with the branded ends of wines’ wooden boxes. Food was tasty, too.

A bit further out of St. Emilion, across the Dordogne and into the Entre-Deux-Mers, is one of the most family-friendly winery properties in Bordeaux.  Château Cablanc lies in a protected nature reserve in the valley of the river Gamage, a tributary of the Dordogne. The reserve offers protection for such rare species as the European mink and four species of orchid. But dogs are still allowed, though not in the cellar.

Jean-Daniel Debart is the third generation to run the property. Since his grandfather bought the property 50 years ago, the vineyard has expanded to 60 ha, and the whole estate covers almost 120 ha of secluded farm and woodland. 

Cablanc activity trail

This surrounding restive woodland provides the terrain for Debart’s ‘secrets of the valley’ nature trail.  It is a fun discovery trail for children and the child in all of us. Kids are given quiz and activity sheets appropriate to their age, and the family can spend a couple of hours on the trail, learning about woodland, the vineyard and wine. There are a series of shuttered boxes on the trail as part of the activities.  At the top of the hill is a play and picnic area, and if you’ve forgotten to bring your own, picnics can be bought at the château.

Jean-Daniel, with three young boys of his own, has even managed to make the winery and cellar tour child-friendly and educational for all.  It includes the use of toy machines to explain harvest, and listening to a recording of fermenting wine as a red strobe light flickers inside an empty vat. Adults get to taste the finished product in a tasting room that includes a table and chairs with colouring equipment and word games for younger ones.

For all of this, Château Cablanc has won the Great Wine Capitals of the world ‘Best of’ award for Sustainable Wine Tourism Practices.

Heading back across the river Dordogne, into the right bank, and 45 km north of Bordeaux city, is Blaye, where the citadel just last year (2008) became another in the clutch of Unesco world heritage sites for the Bordeaux region. 

Blaye citadel fortifications

Blaye is not really a promontory, but more of a slight and strategic bulge into the Gironde estuary, and giving good enough reconnaissance for the Romans to have established a military base on the rocky protuberance.

The bulge narrows the estuary sufficiently for a more recent ferry service to be sited there, going to Lamarque (between Margaux and St. Julien communes), which avoids the long schlep into, through, and out again, of Bordeaux city to access the left bank.

The Roman base was replaced by a medieval fortress, and it was Vauban (Sébastien le Prestre, field marshall Vauban, b. 1633, d. 1707) who was the architect of the current imposing fortifications, one of 33 fortresses he created.

Blaye had evidently long been a key strategic defensive point for Bordeaux, and Vauban endeavoured to seal off the entire Gironde from marauding ships, by also constructing a fortress on the left bank – Fort Médoc – and on an island in between – Fort Paté.  The Blaye citadel alone covers 33 hectares, or ¾ of a kilometre at its longest and nearly ½ kilometre at its widest.

The citadel is free to enter, there’s even a campsite at its heart, but it’s well worth booking a guided tour, both for the wealth of information as well as access to otherwise locked labyrinthine underground parts of the citadel. For the knowledge-hungry, the tourist office has a comprehensive document, all in English, detailing the history of Blaye’s citadel and Vauban’s influence.

The Romans didn’t just build a military base, they also brought vines, as to other parts of Bordeaux, and Blaye’s vineyards now extend over some 10,000 hectares.  The region’s wines can be identified on the label by the appellation: Côtes de Bordeaux – Blaye.   

La Rose Bellevue

It is in this appellation that another touristic gem lies, right up in the top corner of the right bank, 20km north of Blaye, before the land heads off into Cognac territory. This is the poetically named Château La Rose Bellevue, where there is a pink and purple theme that’s close to my heart. Even the winery doors and several unused barrels are painted nearly-purple.

Winemaker Jérôme Eymas, fourth generation at the property, has a clutch of high profile work on his CV, including with Pfeiffer in Australia’s Rutherglen and Domaine Michel and Stéphane Ogier in Côte-Rôtie.   

Aside from the refreshing wines, both of which whites – the Cuvee Tradition, and the barrel fermented Prestige – were really rather nice, it is for organising boat trips on the Gironde estuary that this enterprising property has more recently made its name, winning the Great Wine Capitals’ ‘Best of’ award for Innovative Wine Tourism Experiences in 2009.

Jérôme Eymas in the secret garden

Leaving from Blaye port floating dock, the three hour tour includes wine tasting, a seafood lunch of oysters, langoustines, mussels, shrimps etc., and the ebullient Jérôme regaling you with his wines and quirky sense of humour.

If that’s enough to entice an exploration to the property itself, their ‘secret garden’, with a bring-your-own food barbecue, and pétanque, offers a more laid back way to enjoy a visit, and taste the wines.  The ‘secret garden’ is more akin to ‘living alcoves’ of pink roses, evergreen bushes and a cherry tree planted by Jérôme’s grandfather.  And if you’ve arrived sans picnic, you can buy one made up of local produce from the château. The secret garden creates a lovely image, the vineyard is right there, and Jérôme is a full-on friendly cellar guide. 

Having had your fill of winery visits extra cases can be added at Planète Bordeaux.  Or if you don’t have time to spend a luxurious day or two exploring the picturesque, rolling, mixed countryside of the right bank, you can pop the 30 minutes or so out of Bordeaux city and make a selection from the more than 1,000 producers of Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur, that are stocked at this maison du vin. The wines are sold at the same price as at the Châteaux.

In addition to a well stocked cellar Planète Bordeaux offers visitors a listen, read and sniff exploration of wine and winemaking. There are loads of sniff and learn aromas: blackcurrant, oak, citrus, grapefruit, the whole spectrum of flavours in the glass. And there’s a series of educational spaces which take the visitor through grape growing, harvest and winemaking. It needs a bit of updating, but if you’re short of time or an enthusiastic oeno-neophyte, this could be a good starting point to get a feel for the basics.

This article was inspired by a visit to the region in May 2009 sponsored by the CIVB.