Day 6
An early start despite only three scheduled Chateaux visits, as we needed to be on the rocade ring road at 7:30am and had to check out of our Bordeaux Lac chalet that we had renamed our “château”.
Traffic was heavy at first, though it soon cleared and we made the forty-five-minute journey to Château Climens with time to spare. Bérénice took us through the vintage trying all eight pickings, which was fascinating to try all the components from the lighter, bright and incredibly fresh first pickings, to the “king of the cellar” seventh picking.
It will be an extremely small release, as sadly she only made five hectolitres per hectare. However, the quality is first class. I look forward to tasting the final blend next year.
Onto Château d’Yquem, where they talked us through the vintage using graphs that showed the picking days and weather fluctuations during the growing season. The bulk of the wine was made of only three days’ worth of picking. There was a staggering two months between picking the dry white on August 22nd and the Sauternes harvest, which didn’t begin until October 22nd. No samples were provided as they don’t release Yquem En Primeur anymore.
Our final stop was Pape Clement to taste Bernard Magrez’s collection of Cru Classé, that included Les Grandes Chênes and La Tour Carnet, as well as Fombrauge and his Pape Clement wines. We were then generously given a fantastic lunch.
After enjoying a fantastic lunch courtesy of Bernard Magrez’s, we dashed to the airport in our boy racer Peugeot to catch our flight home. As usual, back in Yorkshire, a creamy and sophisticated pint of Theakston awaits to cleanse our palate. We are coming home… look out for our full report coming soon.
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