La Table du Lavoir

by Paige Donner

Read Full Article on Bordeaux Food And Wine

La Table du Lavoir is built on the 19th c. site of an old vineyard wash house the wives of the vineyard workmen would use on laundry days. It has been re-built, just across the road from Château Smith Haut Lafitte, stone by stone. Its roof beams are recovered from the 18th c. cellars of Château Lafite-Rothschild.

Photo c. Paige Donner

Its lovely glass doors - "French Doors" - are opened during the warmer Spring and Summer months to accommodate terrace dining overlooking the famous Bordeaux vineyards. During the colder months, or on rainy nights/days, the roaring period fireplace serves two functions: to heat the room and to roast the delicious-smelling meats.

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Photos c. Paige Donner, Local Food And Wine

This is the "Bistro" restaurant of Hotel Les Sources de Caudalie and is run by Michelin starred Nicolas Masse. When he joined the team in 2010, on the 10th anniversary of the Small Luxury Hotel, he brought with him his philosophy of focusing on flavors concentrated in the local specialties of the region. For this, Bordeaux offers a range of both meats and seafoods, because of its proximity to the Atlantic Ocean as well as its country terrain. And, in addition, of course all the fresh produce and miraculous cheeses that the Gironde region, France is known for. 

Photos c. Paige Donner, Local Food And Wine

The menus, printed on antique wooden laundry beaters, hold delights such as Roasted Duck with Stewed Apples and Red Cabbage, a feather-light Cauliflower Puree Soup, Home Made Lemon Tart - whose meringue topping is so picture perfect that your tastebuds can't believe that it can also taste so good! Chef Masse practices seasonality in his cuisine which allows for a rich and varied menu at any time of the year. 

For Local Food And Wine lovers - Two Saturdays a month Chef Masse offers cooking classes at the restaurant. And every Saturday night, Head Sommelier Aurélien Farrouil hosts Wine Tasting Courses in the on-premise La Tour Degustation or Wine Tasting Tower. The Tower that has a part Cuban, with rich latte colored leather chairs, and part English feel to it, drawing on the Aquitaine's regal heritage, overlooks the vineyards. 

Photo c. Paige Donner, Local Food And Wine

The French Paradox Bar is a cozy place to enjoy your pre-dinner (or pre-lunch) aperitif, either facing the 1200 bottle cellar that opens up from the bar or facing out towards the terrace that overlooks the delightful pond, inhabited by swans, and the vast vineyards in the background. The bar serves white and red AOC Graves by the glass which gives you a good opportunity to taste some of the appellation's prestigious wines before continuing on with your Oenotourism.  La Table du Lavoir

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Château Smith Haut Lafitte

By Paige Donner

 Read Complete Article on Bordeaux Food And Wine 

Château Smith Haut Lafitte is one of those wineries in Bordeaux that has its own helipad. Likely, it's one of the only wineries in Bordeaux that has its own helipad, actually. It also has its own weather station and its own cooperage. And, yes, mais oui!, the wine barrels are all made from French Oak.

Château Smith Haut Lafitte's owners, since 20 years, are Mr. and Mrs. Cathiard, a dynamic "Power Couple" who can count Olympic Team competitive skiing, grocery store and sporting goods retail empires and an international advertising executive career as part of their storied pasts. But that was then and wine is now.

Château Smith Haut Lafitte wines are considered one of the top 20 wines of Bordeaux. That is no small feat. Just look at the company they keep. But having reclaimed the historic Graves AOC Bordeaux Château, which, by 1990 had fallen into disrepair, the Cathiards set about doing things their own way. It worked.

To examine just two facets of their innovative approach, let's look at the 2009 vintage, both white and red.

Château Smith Haut Lafitte - 2009 Vintage

Fabien Teitgen, the winemaker, and the Cathiards believe in whole grape fermentation. Grapes are not crushed at this winery. To help achieve this, the 2009 vintage saw two revolutions here: one for de-stemming and the other for grape sorting.

Grape Sorting: they refer to it as Optical Sorting and use a Vistalys Optical Sorting machine. This sensitive machine photographs the fruit and sorts it based on color and shape characteristics. A jet of air eliminates all the detritus and unwanted bits such as debris or under ripe fruit.

Destemming: The second revolution is also grace á a "revolutionary" machine. The destemmer vibrates the grapes which releases them from their stems. No splintering of stems results and only whole grapes, then, are released into the fermentation vats. The Château Smith Haut Lafitte winemaking team is able to use "precision and reproducibility" with these machines as well as keep nothing but whole, perfect grapes for their wines.

2009 Reds are: 64% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Cabernet Franc , 1% Petit Verdot, 30% Merlot  "The wines are taking on a lovely fleshiness. They are full and silky."

2009 Whites are: 90% Sauvignon blanc, 5% Sauvignon gris, 5% Sémillon "Lovely, ripe, concentrated rich wines just like a fine, sunny day. They have nice acidity that reflects the cool summer nights of 2009."

Dynamic Soil

While the term "bio-dynamic," is not used by Fabien Teitgen,  Château Smith Haut Lafitte's winemaker, there are practices on the vineyard reminiscent of bio-dynamism. For instance:

On a number of vineyard plots, we have applied the same, gradual, empirical approach, to vine protection and developed a system based solely on copper and sulphur (in homeopathic doses) combined with nettle, chestnut, and horsetail tea and herbal concoctions.

This risky step has paid off: the vines are beautiful and healthy. - Fabien Teitgen

Teitgen also credits the use of organic compost - horse manure, vine prunings, pomace - on the 67 hectares of Gunzian gravel terroir with revitalizing it and helping maintain the necessary equilibrium between soil and vine. They use an innovative (not standard) cover crop between the rows of vines which helps revitalize the soil's structure, drainage and dynamics.

So why the helipad? Well, maybe it's for their Rich & Famous friends who have dropped in at the winery, you know, like Mr. and Mrs. Johnny Depp, Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.

Stay at the neighboring Les Sources de Caudalie

33650 Bordeaux - Martillac  www.smith-haut-lafitte.com

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Château Haut-Lagrange, Pessac-Leognan, Bordeaux

“It is always the adventurous who accomplish great things”

Charles de Montesquieu

By Paige Donner

Read Full Article on Local Food And Wine

One early Spring afternoon on a recent trip to the Pessac-Leognan region of Bordeaux, I set off from my hotel on a bicycle in the sunshine. I had not gotten 10 minutes down the pretty grapevine-trimmed country road when the blue sky turned to gray and a drizzle suddenly manifested.

Leaving myself completely in the hands of nature in Montesquieu's childhood region, I took the first gravel-lined road that seemed to lead up to one of the wineries that appeared to have people present.  Not a moment too soon, someone spotted me just as the heavens poured forth the fresh Spring rain and ushered me into the vineyard warehouse where there was some serious bottling underway.

Once they perceived that I spoke English, the lady from the office was called over to welcome me. Her name ended up being Sandrine and she told me that I had wandered onto the Château Haut-Lagrange. Once I explained to her that I had just been out for an afternoon bike ride, she, with all manner of warmth and graciousness, offered to take me on a tour of the winery and allowed me to take pictures. Her English was impressive and she told me that with her husband she spoke Spanish.

She is the Château Haut-Lagrange co-manager and is the kind of person, that when you get the chance to speak with them, like on a rainstorm-Spring-afternoon, you really must count your blessings because not only did she tell me all about the vineyard, she also mentioned her favorite regional delicacy which are "acacia Beignets" or acacia doughnuts that you must eat fresh and which only come around once a year, in early May, when the acacia are in bloom.

AOC Graves

Château Haut-Lagrange is nestled right in with all the other AOC Graves wineries that are so close you can, and ought to, bicycle to them. Though it is one of the newer wineries in this prestigious Bordeaux region, it being the life-long ambition and family-run enterprise ofFrancis Boutemy, whose grandparents were once winemakers of Bordeaux.

Graves, Bordeaux

Graves is the only AOC to take its name from the soil. The soil is a mixture of gravel, pebbles, flint and other stony debris deposited by the Garonne River over the millennia. Pessac-Leognan is part of the Graves area and is the region where Château Haut-Lagrange is (also, Château Haut-Brion) but, technically, the vineyard is not AOC Pessac-Leognan since it was established in 1989, after the 1987 classification.

This is where it comes in handy to know your detailed geography of Bordeaux. If you only looked at the label of this fine wine that sells for about 14 - 20 Euro the bottle, white and red, you might miss the significance of the fact that it shares the same climate, terroir and soil as its neighbors such as Château Haut Bailly and Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte.

If there is a winery in Bordeaux that is high on my list of participating in a harvest, it is this one. Mr. Boutemy has engineered a grape-picking vehicle that allows the pickers to sit as it travels up and down the rows of vines. [Pictured Below].

The white wine is lovely and not afraid to show its fruit. Its top  note is acacia. Yes, add that one to your tasting library. Its strong minerality comes through fully in the mouth and the winemakers here do not subscribe to overly oaking their whites. Only 6,000 bottles of this lovely 50% Sauvignon, 50% Sémillon produced. You must buy a bottle to taste it as they don't have much stock left.

The red is cultivated from 7.5 hectares of Merlot (45%) and Cabernet-Sauvignon (55%). They lay a tier of the juice in new barrels, the rest they leave in the tank. Batonnage is in the barrel. Bottling comes 18 months after the harvest. The vintages available for tasting today are the '06 and '07. It is balanced, elegant, a good wine to accompany with raclettes, Indian food or spicy Antilles cuisine.  50,000 bottles. A good wine to keep for 3 - 10 years, depending on the vintage. It is a great buy. You are getting top Pessac-Leognan wine for about 1/3 of what most of the other bottles in the area sell for.

This winery is a must stop on your Bordeaux wine travels. Friendly, forthcoming Bordelaise wine folk, excellent wines and great prices. They want to talk wine with you.

Château Haut-Lagrange 89, Avenue de La Brède

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