Some Bottles In and Of Bordeaux

Diane and I are just back from a long week of vacating in Bordeaux, most of it a cruise on the Garonne and Gironde plus a few days in the city of Bordeaux at the end. The cruise was a bit disappointing – iffy weather, long bus excursions, and an uninspired chef on board. But Bordeaux itself was wonderful – a beautiful city, with abundant pedestrianized areas in the historic center and some very fine food, not to mention an abundance of excellent Bordeaux wines (what else?).

At strolling distance from our hotel we found the Maison du Vin, a wine school whose wine bar – the succinctly named Bar à Vin – provided us exactly the kind of amply lubricated light lunch we enjoy.
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And only a short distance further on was the Brasserie Bordelaise, an establishment with a lengthy local wine list and a devotion to traditional Bordelaise cuisine. We had arranged for two dinners there, and wound up taking two lunches at the wine bar, so we had two splendid days in Bordeaux, with casual walking and sightseeing and a little shopping, regularly punctuated by a generous intake of red wine. Not only is red wine Bordeaux’s best production, but the shipboard menu had leaned heavily towards whites, so we had to reset the balance. Which, I assure you, we did.

For this post, I’ll talk only about the lunch wines. These pleasing light meals featured several glasses of wines from most of the left-bank appellations, from Pessac-Léognan (formerly Graves) in the south up through St. Estèphe, and on to the Médoc. The entire list offered 30 wines, all Bordeaux, and all by the glass. On the first day we started simply, with a charcuterie plate and two glasses of Les Hautes de Smith Pessac-Léognan.
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We noticed several patrons giving themselves tasting lessons – two glasses of wine, side by side, carefully tasted and noted. I was on vacation and so refused to take a single note, but we did give ourselves a comparative tasting of two cru bourgeois wines. A glass of Château La Cardonne Médoc and one of Château Larose Perganson Haut Médoc accompanied a plate of foie gras quite pleasurably, and with no perceptible difference in quality: both tasted classically Bordeaux, with dominant Cabernet Sauvignon fruit and nicely rounded tannins.
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For our second lunch, we started with a white Pessac-Léognan, Château Olivier, to accompany our opening dish of trout rillettes. Then we moved on to cheeses and charcuterie, which we matched with a St. Estèphe, Chateau Tour des Termes, and a St. Emilion, Pavillon du Haut Rocher, a very satisfactory pairing after our brief white wine divagation.
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All the wines we tasted were excellent of their kind, and I can safely urge anyone visiting Bordeaux and curious about the range of its wines to spend a little time at the Bar à Vin. You’ll learn a lot, and you’ll enjoy it. Just as a for-instance: It had been a long while since I’d drunk a red Graves (that first Pessac-Léognan), and it was a real pleasure to rediscover the cedary accent that so delightfully distinguishes the wines of that region from the more northerly appellations (Margaux, St. Julien – you know, that bunch).

My next post will be about our dinner wines at the Brasserie Bordelaise.