Everyone knows I have a winetooth. (It’s just like having a sweet tooth, but instead of a sugar high with the threat of dental caries, I get a hangover with the threat of a serious brain damage.) So it was natural that during our brief sojourn in Bordeaux, a vineyard visit and wine tasting was a requirement. Milady graciously consented and made the arrangements through the concierge at the hotel. Oliver, who had driven us in from the airport the previous day was our driver and guide. He met us at the hotel, settled us in the car, and as he drove he shared his knowledge of the Acquitane with us. It seems that the same region which gave us Eleanor also blesses us with fine wines. (If you don’t know who Eleanor was, I suggest a brief review of your World History I notes – there will be a quiz.)

St. Emilion is on the right bank of the Garonne, about 30 minutes from downtown Bordeaux. You reach it by driving through a bazillion tiny plots covered in grapevines. St. Emilion is proud of having lots and lots of small vineyards, even if some of them are owned by the same chateaux. Unlike the Medoc, which is the Left Bank, it does not have the 1855 Classification system, it has its own. The 1855 system was set in place by Napolean II and features an incredibly rigid, almost never ever reviewed differentiation by virtue of a vineyard’s merits at that time. The Right Bank system is equally arcane in its organization but has the virtue of decennial reviews, making its participants more interested in upholding quality standards than tradition. St. Emilion is a small, very hilly village with impossibly narrow cobblestone streets and more négociants (wine merchants) than anyone could imagine.

We opted to start our visit with a tour of the underground of St. Emilion. This involved a steep street, a deluge (the likes of which Louis XIV may have alluded to), a motley tour group and a guide named “Fabian”. The first stop is the alleged cave of Mr. Emilion (he didn’t get sainted until after he died) which he called home for the nineteen years he lived there as a hermit. It’s a nice enough cave, with a little rock sleeping platform, a freshwater catch basin (no hot water) and a built-in stone chair. The chair is reputed to have a special feature which should appeal to rightwing conservatives – if you sit in it and want a child, you will become pregnant – but only if you’re female. Mr. Emilion didn’t have a desk that I could see and never bothered to sign up for electricity or phone service – let alone high speed internet. Still, there wasn’t a lot of drippiness even with the torrential rain so I surmise the roof was still sound. The next stop on Fabian’s tour (his voice was OK, but his English pronunciation was unique, and it clearly wasn’t a farewell tour so no one kept asking him to reprise his golden oldies) was the crypts. Nice crypts, but once you’ve seen one crypt the next two thousand are pretty similar. From there we proceeded to the largest monolithic church in Europe. The monolith referred to is not theological, but rather structural. It was carved from a single limestone rock – and a really big rock at that because the main chapel is 19 meters by 38 meters with a ceiling height of 11 meters. Someone forgot to file building plans, so when a bell tower was added above ground, the supporting pillars were found to be insufficient to bear the added weight of the off-center tower, and began to crack. In 1999 engineers working as part of the UNESCO World Heritage project designed trusses to reinforce the pillars. The project was expensive, but private funding to do the work was obtained from an unlikely source. Now, every guide finishes his spiel with “and we are grateful to American Express for paying for and continuing to sponsor the supporting scaffolding. Don’t leave church without it”

Now we were free to get down to the serious businesses of vintner visiting and wine tasting. As the vineyards are small and outside the city, vintners do most of the production outside the city, usually at the chateau which owns the small plots. Most growers sell their wines through merchants. The Bordeaux futures market has been in existence for a very long time, and while Chateau Petrus may have withdrawn, it remains a powerful force – not only by providing a central market for the dozens of small, independent chateaux but also providing the financing mechanism through the sale of wine not yet ready for release. Tastings, therefore, are best arranged by négociants whose connections obviate the need to travel from chateau to chateau (and reduce the accident potential, because after a few tastes, the narrow winding roads and high speeds preferred by local drivers, present a hazard to the most dedicated tasters). Negotiating the négociants and finding the right one to ship home one’s precious bottles is best left to the professionals – and Oliver was on target with his choice.

We met Cedric, our négociant extrodinaire, at his place of business, the firm of Ets Martin & Cie. in downtown St. Emilion, to begin our private tour and tasting. We walked a short distance (yes, uphill in the rain) to the gates of Couvent de Jacobains, a vintner which does not offer tours to the general public. On our arrival, we discovered why. The Couvent is the private home of Mme. Borde, an energetic 78 year old woman who is the third generation of her family to make wine there. The winery was originally home to an order of Benedictine monks, the same order which claims St. Emilion as a brother. When the revolution came (in 1789) the house and grounds were expropriated by the Republic and in due course sold. We toured the cellars, including Mme.’s private collection which contains notable vintages going back to 1947. Cedric walked us through the production steps and was delighted we were present for the bottling and stacking of the 2012 wine. The Couvent de Jacobins produces only 30,000 bottles each year – at 10,000 bottles per day, the bottling and stacking requires only 3 days, so getting to see it was a special bit of luck. The wine is removed from the French oak barrels in which it has been aging (330 bottles to the barrel) for the last year or so. Knowing just when to bottle after oaking is part of the vintner’s art, and why Mme. B is who she is. The oaked wine is returned to the winery’s huge ceramic vats (something that can only be used in a small craft winery – the big guys all use stainless steel). It then travels, gravity propelled, through a hose, to the bottling machine. The bottling machine measures out 75cl into each bottle, and a live human being takes the bottle and moves it to the corking machine. The bottle is corked with a real cork whose top clearly displays “2012”, but is not foiled or labeled. (That will happen only when the wine is released for sale because the humidity in the cave will cause the label to come off the bottle). From there it is placed by another human on a wagon and lugged to the caves. Two really big guys with sure hands remove each bottle from the wagon and lay them side by side in the cellar niche designated for 2012 production.

After visiting the cellars, we walked through Madame’s rose garden which was originally the monks’ contemplative garden, and back into the real world. A brief stroll took us back to Ets Martin where we descended to the private tasting room. I realized that the human male was in deep trouble – the private tour and private tasting room signaled Cedric’s keen sense of the presence of a proto-oenphile. As we sat at the table, Cedric solicited the information that Milady prefers reds over whites, and that wine is an important food group in our household. We tasted eight wines and settled on the purchase of six; 5 from St. Emilion and 1 Pomerol. If you really want to know what we added to the cellar, here’s the list: 2004 and 2009 Couvent de Jacobins (Grand Cru Classe), 2005 Beausejour Becot (1er Grand Cru Classe), 2008 Clos Dubreuil (Grand Cru), and the Pomerol is 2010 Clos de la Vielle Eglise.

The tasting was an experience – the distinctive flavors and weights prompted discussions about food pairings, and resulted in the purchase of two mixed cases. Milady acquitted herself with great honor, accurately describing flavors and relative merits and charming Cedric who, after the wine was paid for, presented her with a small vial of sel de bordeaux, a salt mixture infused (how else would it get into the salt?) with Bordeaux wine. The salt is a charming purple and matches the stains on my winetooth.

Having left a small fortune (I now understand the phrase “king’s ransom” in its original French context) with Cedric, we returned to the car. Oliver, having earlier discussed with Milady the virtues of macaroons made in St. Emilion using the recipe of a 16th century nun, presented her with a box of them. As we rode home in triumph (actually a BMW 750) we shared the cookies and planned our dinner (see Le Pressoir d’Argent for a review of that meal).