'In wine there is truth,' and much besides – is Bordeaux shuffling towards Disneyfication?
The plan was simple. Ten Bordeaux châteaux, three days and two nights: tasting wine on the premises. All this was pre-lockdown, of course. In wine there is truth. But there are other things as well.
“French reason, French completeness” are to be found in a glass of red bordeaux, at least according to novelist Henry James. Would this still hold now that Bordeaux’s eminence in wine is being tested, I wondered? After all, this is a time when French youngsters prefer carbonated drinks with herbal extracts from Atlanta rather than the fruit of the vines of the Médoc.
Wine also reveals the French obsession with class and hierarchy: isn’t it pitiless to call a wine Cru Bourgeois? Suburban wine? By contrast, the aristocratic Margaux always used grandiloquent architecture to express its credentials. Its landmark château of 1815 (still imposing on the bottle’s label) was designed by Louis Combes, architect of Bordeaux’s magnificent Hôtel de Ville.
Others followed. Château Pavie (chateaupavie.com), to offer a recent example, had a makeover in 2012 to impress the ever more wine-inclined Chinese who, on this reading, are very impressed by hard, shiny surfaces and cavernous spaces, all observed under diffuse lighting. Robert Parker, the Simon Cowell of the grape, gave Pavie 100 points, leading to an acidulous dispute with other wine critics who felt he was, how shall we say, “wrong”.
Since terroir is so essential to understanding Bordeaux mystique, an enjoyable education can be had from château visits. The more so because many of the great châteaux have guest rooms. There have to be fewer than five of them, because above that number you become a hotel and that – this being France – involves disagreeable levels of bureaucracy. Visits are not necessarily straightforward to organise, so my host was Wine Paths, a local specialist of impeccable credentials.
We began in Bordeaux itself. To Henry James it was a “big, rich, handsome, imposing town”, a crash course in municipal neoclassicism whose grandeur is balanced by the distinctive échoppes or workers’ cottages. But Bordeaux became faded and known as “La Belle Endormie” (Sleeping Beauty): 30 years ago, grubby abandoned warehouses blocked the view of the river. Now these have been cleared and in 1995 the mayor Alain Juppé began a programme of modernisation to make Bordeaux safe for the bourgeois bohémiens who now populate the brocanteurs and bistrots of the handsome Quai de Chartrons.
There were grands projects too. The Pont Chaban-Delmas is a bridge with a 360-foot central section of road which lifts vertically to let cruise ships pass, a fever dream of the École des Ponts et Chaussées, the world’s first civil engineering school.
When the French speak of architecture audacieuse they will now think of the Cité du Vin (laciteduvin.com) by XTU architects, chief symbol of a newly self-conscious Bordeaux. A functionally irrational, asymmetric glass tower, its laboured, formal symbolism of wine sloshing around in a glass will not age as well as fine wine. Still, the Cité du Vin’s rooftop Belvedere offers a grand tour d’horizon of the region and of world wines. Here, as a diversion from first growth claret, I tried a Belgian red. Sniffing and tasting, I thought maybe they should stick to beer.
Into the car. The big distinction in the region, geographically and oenologically, is right bank, left bank. These banks belong to the river Garonne. The right tends to be hilly, the left tends to flatness.
Gravel, limestone and clay, you are persistently told, play their part in the creation of beauty. The Dutch drained the flat, marshy Médoc in the 17th century – and arriving in Margaux you see how very splendidly Frenchmen can improve on God’s version of Nature. Englishmen have recently contributed too, including Sir Norman Foster.
But our tasting began with Sauternes, whose sweet wines are presently unfashionable and therefore bargains. In the years between 2005 and today, sauternes prices rose only 8 per cent while bordeaux generally rose 215 per cent.
Still, you look at an 1895 Château Yquem, Sauternes’ finest, and see that it costs €14,500 (£13,000). Much depends on whether the Chinese and Indian market can be convinced to enjoy sweet wine. Accordingly, there are excitable efforts to promote sauternes-based cocktails.
We stayed one night in the handsome but austere Lafaurie-Peyraguey (lafauriepeyragueylalique.com), producer of a good championship sauterne. Once owned by the utilities group Suez, it now belongs to the Lalique Group, a creation of Basel entrepreneur Silvio Denz and named in honour of the idiosyncratic glassmaker, René Lalique. A recurring motif in Lafaurie-Peyraguey is Lalique’s “Femmes et Raisins”, created for the Côte d’Azur Pullman in 1928. The restaurant has a single Michelin star, but a multitude of affectations. Crispy pig and mushroom, rabbit in yogurt, for example. A glass collar was hooked over a sectioned and reclining sauternes bottle to support these amuse-bouches.
The Livre de Cave runs to 2,500 items and had to be supported on a side table. Meanwhile, chef was busy with lobster and coconut, the latter peculiarly in denial of the principles of terroir. Lamb was stuffed with nuts to resemble chicken kiev. This sort of cooking disdains vegetables. My wife asked for some and an elfin waiter was sent to the potager. She was served seven peas.
The next day, we found ourselves Entre-Deux-Mers. The name refers to rivers not seas: the territory between the Garonne and the Dordogne. Here you see the disturbing reality of modern rural France: commuting Peugeots parked in vineyards where gilets jaunes work the grapes, delivering a luxury product they will never enjoy.
Our first stop was Beauregard (chateau-beauregard.com), a classic chartreuse with a modernist B&B. “I have a girlfriend in the Graves. She’s been organic for quite a long time,” I was told by the proprietor. Second wines are diffusion lines made from (theoretically) inferior pressings, offering a Grand Vin experience at a modest cost. The version here is called Benjamin and I found it more delicious than the first, with its open nose and dark fruit. Another glass? “Grossiere de refuser,” I learnt to say. It would be rude to say no.
At Pomerol’s Château Clinet (chateauclinet.com), the association between fine wine and architecture is less secure, since the property is in sight of a hideous church and an infestation of sad bungalows. The second wine, a blend called Ronan by Clinet, after the owner, was delicious.
Back in the car, we were steered onwards by Wine Paths’ knowledgeable Wendy Narby, a Leamington native who has lived here for 30 years and is author of The Drinking Woman’s Diet. The diet stopped at La Terrasse Rouge (laterrasserouge.com), the rooftop restaurant of Château La Dominique on the St Emilion/Pomerol border.
It’s a fine place to contemplate modern architecture’s contribution to the visitor’s perception of modern wines. The architect is Jean Nouvel, who has partially covered the roof with a million glass “grapes”.
The building is clad in glazed metal wine-coloured panels and the habitually black-clad Nouvel designed the handsome, bulky paysan furniture. La Terrasse has a fine view across the vines to neighbour Cheval Blanc, which itself was designed by the showy Christian de Portzamparc. I thought it seemed inspired by Saarinen’s midcentury terminal at JFK, although it has a green roof.
Saint-Émilion is an exceptionally pretty town. Dinner at the Logis de la Cadène included a pigeon three ways. And one of those ways was a giblet spring roll. We spent the night at the absolutely enormous and deserted Château Soutard (chateau-soutard.com) just outside this Unesco World Heritage site. There was mist and total silence apart from very distant traffic. In the morning, viennoiseries in a brown paper bag arrived at the kitchen door and we ate breakfast in a silent courtyard as swallows swooped.
At Marquis d’Alesmes (chateau-labegorce.fr) in Margaux the relationship of wine, architecture and corporate identity reaches an impressive pinnacle. Architect Fabien Pédelaborde, who also worked on Château Soutard, nods to Marie Antoinette’s Versailles and, simultaneously, to Beijing’s Forbidden City in deference to the half-Chinese owner. You enter the cellars through mysterious “Dongmen” or moon doors. It sounds absurd and the reconciliation of neoclassicism and orientalism is peculiar, but perfect: a complex taste, just like the wines. If I could live anywhere, probably it would be in the pavilion at Marquis d’Alesmes. But fine wine enjoyed in sunshine does that to you.
But perhaps Château Beychevelle (beychevelle.com) offers wine tourism at its very finest, a single storey chartreuse of impressive grandeur facing a view of the Garonne across half a mile of perfect lawn. Indeed, I almost forgot the cellar tour. This is where wine tourism shows its limitations, since châteaux are rightly proud of their vats – but all vats, frankly, look the same and, as a tourist, a degree of simulation becomes necessary in the matter of enthusiasm.
Vats were soon forgotten with an elegant dinner in Beychevelle’s salon. It was an experience beyond taste and rationality into mysticism – and it was very nearly perfect. Supernatural imbuing, you could call it.
I still have my doubts. Aristocratic Bordeaux is, with the Cité du Vin and the ever more formalised château tours, shuffling towards the conceptual territory of Eataly and Disney. To illustrate the curiosity of the current wine trade, and perhaps the strangeness of Macron’s France, Beychevelle staged a tasting at Lord’s. It was not cricket, but it was degustation.
In wine there is truth… and beauty, but there are absurdity, money and status too. One Chinese customer, we were told in a voice mingling hush with awe, likes to order his Beychevelle in bespoke bottles of 27 litres. The glass bottle alone costs £1,265 and requires a special machine to lift.
He will probably never drink it.
How to do it
Wine Paths (winepaths.com) offers bespoke tours of Bordeaux, with this Wine and Design tour costing from £3,970 for two people. The price includes two nights’ full-board accommodation, tours, tastings, and private transfers with a bilingual driver.
The policy on travel to France may change. Check the latest advice at gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-
covid-19-travel-corridors
