We spent a day on bikes on the hills around and in St. Emilion. Our first stop was Château La Gaffelière just south of the little town. It's been a rough 2008 for all of Bordeaux to this point with Spring freezes and lots of rain during the summer. Everyone is counting on a good, dry September to ripen the fruit. Eric showed us a few leaves with fungus. Their barrel room is under an obelisk monument in their vineyards.
The wine tasting is done at an establishment (La Cadène) in town which is smart because you can buy from there whereas you cannot really buy from a Château. Eric took is motorbike into town while we biked and huffed up the hill. We tasted 8+ wines and bought some wine.
After lunch, we biked to Château Franc Mayne and had a nice tour.
Stacy showed us the cool underground caves and a cutout of the terroir showing the clay on limestone and what the vine roots have to do to get water. During the wine tasting, Jill gave tips about eonline to keep up on the television gossip since they are behind on the shows. It takes a while to translate into French.We biked the back way up to Château Beau-Séjour Bécot. Here Marie gave us a long tour of massive underground cave structures. They used to link all the way to the town itself but have been blocked off since they store wine down there and people could too easily sneak in the "back way". They have 60,000 bottles stored under the property although it apparently used to be 600,000. There are human skulls in there AND the caves abut a cemetery so the tour guide wouldn't go down here at night for fear of ghosts.
The next day we drove to Château de Sales in Pomerol (home of Petrus, which has its own special soil at the highest point of the appellation). This tour was special because the owner himself showed us around and poured generously from the bottle at the end – the 3 of us almost finished a bottle. His philosophy differs from a lot of the other winemakers in that he wants smooth wines that you can drink now instead of waiting a decade or more. He probably has the most drinkable young wines in the area yet there have been times they've opened 30-50 year old bottles and they are still showing well. They only use about 20% new barrels and even buy used barrels from other places (first place we've been to that does that). I would describe the entire place as frugal but we had a great time here. As we left, he invited us back anytime.
Our last stop in the area was Château Figeac and it was cool. The 91 year old owner actually came out and met the tour for a couple of minutes. He looked fantastic and drinks wine every day. This owner was ahead of his time by bottling every varietal 100% on their own 6 decades ago and then waited 10 years to see how they aged.
This helped him decide which grapes work best here and he is focused on quality that is affordable. The owner wants tours to drink something that isn't too young so they hold onto a lot of bottles for this purpose. We had a 1988 tasting. Someone showed up late for the tour which we think prevented us from tasting another vintage – possibly 1998 or 1978? We'll never know.