Well the special place known as Sauternes is also within Graves. This place makes an incredible dessert white wine that essentially exists only because of the weather conditions there and rot on the grapes that they want called noble rot (botrytis cinerea) rather than rot they don't want call gray rot.
I can't do the process justice if you want to read more, but essentially it boils down to this.
There is the largest planted forest in Europe to the south and there is a tributary to the Garonne River called the Ciron that is shaded by this forest thus keeping that tributary water cool. When it merges with the warmer Garonne, it causes a fog to cover the vines in this area in Sept/Oct that burns off by mid-day. This process allows the rot to develop but not become bad rot because the sun is able to come out and dry things out. The grapes shrivel and concentrate the remaining juice. It doesn't work perfectly every year, but when it does, magic happens.I must give credit to that explanation to Nicole who explained the above as a teacher would explain to a student. She gave a wonderful tour of the vines, the process, and the winery Château d'Arche. This Château is right in the middle of the 3 Premier Cru Supérieur wineries as this map shows (slightly exaggerating topography but very nice touch!)
It was great we got this tour first since Nicole is from Baltimore but speaks fluent French (and English!) and really laid out the whole process so well. She also generously poured us 3 different tastings. The following tours were with native French speakers and one was fairly hard to understand but we already had the basics down pat.Next we went to Château Filhot. The amazing thing about this place was the vast amount of past vintages just sitting there in the bottles. The bottles are just waiting to be ordered and then the labels and capsules will be put on before it is sent out (you can tell what they are by the cork which is labeled).
We had lunch in the town (small town) at Le Saprien. This nice little place had a great view of Château Guiraud and vines. It was a beautiful setting and a great lunch.
Finally, we went to Château Suduiraut which has a great view of Château d'Yquem (the most famous of all Sauternes). This property was absolutely beautiful and great to tour and holds a lot of events/weddings.
The gardens were gorgeous and symmetrical. There were vegetable gardens and herb gardens and it was just so serene. Sadly, we had to leave Sauternes as the day was ending and we were headed to San Sebastián the following day.