Bordeaux - St Emillion.

We drove from our accommodation in Graves, at Smith Haut Lafitte, across the river and into St Emillion, not a long drive. The last hotel had been superb, this one shocked by being better, a former Chateau building and a good one. Out on its own as they tend to be, vineyard properties all around. St Emilion blew us away from the start. It's not far, but far enough from Bordeaux city to not encompass any of it's urban sprawl. The district occupies a limestone plateau, generally flat but eroded into valleys and embankments on its margin. The township sits on one of those margins so has more elevated views and steeper streets on one side. An old town that has been occupied for ages, with building remnants back to the 12 th century, mostly of monastic origins. The cobble streeted, limestone built town is sheer magic. With the wine region being broad the chateaux, of which their are many, tend to sit in the centre of vineyards in all directions. The chateaux are smaller and properties more modest so it's an extended and open area of great rural charm. The town is a centre of wine commerce and thick with wine retailers, we have never seen so many. It's not too 'touristic' and a popular place for Bordeaux residents ('Bordelais') to visit for the day and stock up, not that the city isn't also an exceptional place to buy wine. We were taken aback by the foot traffic in St Emillion On our arrival, until we found it was a festival day, celebrating the completion of flowering ( of the vines). All around France seem to be wine fraternities who wear colorful robes and medallions etc, and who periodically march around town and conduct long lunches etc. On this occassion the wine community and families were there in force and we enjoyed the sight of the throng marching the narrow streets led by a small band playing a cheery march. Our wine visiting schedule had relaxed and we had some had time to enjoy the town, to walk and browse. Also time to languish for a few hours in our chateau accommodation. But visits to several estates showed us the range of properties and the idyllic surrounds. Highlights included a hilltop property with its vines on the slopes around, and an insight into the cellars cut into the limestone below the township and many of the chateaux. One of these locations, at Chateau Fortet, in the town itself, was a very extensive cellar of tunnels, passages, often very low ceilings requiring care to not bang your head. Theses cellars were so extensive they far exceed storage requirements, and had been built by hand excavation over the ages. You could possibly get lost in them. Cool, damp walled but dry enough under foot, deeply silent, with occasional lines of barrels or stacks of bottles slumbering in the gloom. This includes old wines and we have seen examples of caches of wine 150 years old or more, in some locations. Two other particular memories were visiting Ch Ausone and driving into Pomerol. Ch Ausone is an old Roman or earlier quarry site and has been growing grapes since Roman days. Pomerol is a region on the St Emilion plateau where deep clays overly the bedrock. We know the wines but don't encounter them often and some of the great names in all of France are there, lovely often monastic derived names like Evangile and Conseillante. One of these properties - Petrus- regularly produces the single most expensive bottle of wine in all of France. The region itself is barely even marked, just a sea of vines with modestwineries buildings dotted about and the only landmark a church spire at its centre. We struggled to find the property we were seeking, with much driving in circles on narrow carriage ways through the vines, and conversations between our driver and vineyard workers encountered on the road. The same applied elsewhere in the area, with vistor impact quite low and a largely resident working population in one industry - wine! St Emilion would be a top candidate as the place to hire a house in the country and settle into a few months of lazy rural French bliss.