La Mission Haut-Brion, A Château With True Soul

by Paige Donner (all photos copyright 2017)

Château La Mission Haut-Brion's chapel for me sums up the essence of the property. It has been for centuries, and still is, a family home. A home where people have worshipped, where they have begun their lives and taken their last breaths, where meals have been shared, verses read, fine wines enjoyed after a day's labor in the vineyards. 

The elegance of Château La Mission Haut-Brion is that it blends its luxury and taste with absolutely no aristocratic airs. These are some of the oldest vineyards of Bordeaux. I count myself as extraordinarily lucky to have been invited to overnight there on a recent trip to Bordeaux. Granted, this is why most of the wine estates keep up their châteaux, yes because of the vineyards surrounding them and the cellars and vinification rooms and all the acoutrements that go with making great Bordeaux wines. But also to welcome guests, usually who work in or for the wine industry or those who are especially loyal appreciators of the wines. Few château owners actually live on their properties themseves, at least not in Bordeaux. 

The entire property still has echoes of piousness threaded into all of its structures and its tasting room feels like one in which a monk would feel at ease. Indeed the owner, Prince Robert of Luxembourg, who re-did the tasting room and its reception area only a few years ago, handpicked art pieces and even the the design of the iron-framed high-backed bishop's chairs that encircle the tasting room table. 

If you ever get lucky enough to gain entry into the chapel, look high above, at the molding just above the authentic and ancient (16th c.) stained glass windows. There you will see the years of the château's Millésimes - vintage years - engraved in a band across the four walls.  After 2015 and 2016 are added, there will be room enough only for a few more. So in another 4 or 5 centuries it would be interesting to see if perhaps the entire walls are engraved with numbers noting good vintage years. 

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Dinner At Château Latour Bordeaux Grand Cru Classé en 1855

Bordeaux, June 18, 2017 

by Paige Donner  (photos copyright 2017)

On a hot summer evening in the Médoc's Pauillac, Bordeaux guests arriving for the 1855 Grands Crus Classés dinner held this year at Château Latour were greeted with a marching Scottish-sounding band and flutes of Roederer champagne (who happens to own the closest neighboring château, Pichon Comtesse). 

The Belle of the Ball, namely Madame Salma Hayak Pinault kept herself demurely sheltered inside the reception hall from the intense heat of the evening that persisted until after the sun went down. Thankfully, her and her Kering husband, François-Henri Pinault, offered the option of mingling in the cellar's anteroom (as opposed to outdoors on the inner patio lawn) which was cleared out, save for an elegant display of the Grands Crus Classés en 1855 wines that were to be served at dinner. As a response to the sweltering heat of those few days in June, this ideally accommodated the several hundred privileged guests. 

These dinners, the official opening of Vinexpo Bordeaux held every two years, are always lavish events. It's where international and French journalists/ wine writers meet and mingle with these prestige wine estate owners and venerable Bordelais families, many of whose roots in the soil of the region run deeper even than U.S. modern history. 

The choice of the chef is always a pivotal statement, too, of how the year's chosen chateau will express their taste and style during the event. This year it was Chef Michel Guérard who ranks among the living legends of French chefs. .. .

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