Bordeaux

St. Emilion

Last weekend my wine club, Tabula Rasa, traveled to St. Emilion in Bordeaux. The plan was to drink good wine, obviously. We were going to visit three different wine producers and our guide had made reservation in advance.

Grapes one week before harvest.

I harbored a silent worry that we wouldn't learn much interesting after the first visit, imagining that each of the Chateau would want to give the same introduction level speech about how to make wine. In some respect this was what happened, but they all managed to include some very interesting pieces of knowledge. So each and every visit was a learning opportunity.  The three producers were very different, and the presentations were also quite varied.

St. Emilion is a very small town, only about 2.500 people live there permanently. It's a beautiful town with old traditional houses surrounded by vineyards. I gather that from any location in the town you can walk less than five minute and find yourself standing next to a field of grape wines. The town have more wine shops than any other town I have seen - every street has at least two wine shops. I guess there are only three kinds of jobs in town, wine farmer/producer, restaurant worker, or wine seller.

Ch. Quercy

First on our list of wine producers were Chateau Quercy, a small 6 hektar producer. It's located 30 minutes by car outside of St. Emilion. The presentation was done by a very enthusiastic woman, who brought us out among the wines talking about many aspects of wine making.

Afterward, we were shown some of the machinery used in the harvesting process. Even though the grapes are picked by hand, they use some conveyor belts and such to get them where they need to be. At the moment, the big talking point on the farm was when to start the harvest. The cellar master wanted to wait a bit to let the grapes mature more, while the person in charge of the fields wanted to harvest before frost or rain could damage them. On the other hand they had already sent some grapes off to be analyzed. So making the decision of when to harvest is half science and half gut feeling. When harvesting they use 16 pickers, 4 people to carry the grapes,  6 people to sort the good ones from the bad ones, and 2 tractors. A crew like this could harvest one hectar per day.

Their wine was good, but a bit on the expensive side. 35€ for a bottle of 2007.

Saint Pierre Cellar

Later the same day we went to Tour Saint Pierre, located just a few minutes outside of St. Emilion. They have about 12 hectar. Here the presentation was less enthusiastic, but no less informative. They seem to have a somewhat different attitude towards the production than Ch. Quercy. At Saint Pierre the harvesting started a 100 days after the first flowering.

After tasting the 2003 vintage we wondered what it cost. We were told 13€ a bottle. I was sure that our French "speaking" wine-club-member had misinterpreted 30 for 13, but I was pleasantly surprised to be wrong. She brought the price list which listed 1998 vintage at 14€ a bottle. Seeing this, we promptly bought one and opened it on the spot. It was very good. Which in turn resulted in some worries about getting the bottles back home. Shipping from France was very expensive, and would easily double the price of the wine, and that is before we calculate in Norwegian taxes. I ended up buying 10 bottles, which I'm very happy to report all made it back safely with out any added shipping cost or overweight on the flight.

Ch. Kiwan

The next day we drove for a while, well actually quite a long bit but that was mostly caused by a closed bridge in Bordeaux city, and the lack of good GPS to get us around the closed bridge. The trip should have taken about an hour and a half. Because of the delay, we missed our appointment, but was able to reschedule for a couple of hours later.

Chateau Kiwan is a larger chateau in the Margeaux district. It has 35 hectar, placed on a old sump area that was drained due to some canals built by the Dutch. This was the first chateau where we were actually invited to taste the grapes. The representative from the chateau was a very skilled person presenter, and did a wonderful job of explaining the history of the Chateau as well as explaining about the terroir, and the production method. Unfortunately for the chateau and future visitors he is quitting to start working at a different chateau.

Kiwan, being a more known Chateau than the others, is also a bit more pricey. Their first wine was 46€ a bottle, and their second wine about half that. The first wine is made from wines that are 15 to 70 years of age, while the second wine is made of the younger wines.

View of Ch. Kiwan vinyard.