Bordeaux wine country

Ted. When you hear the word Bordeaux, what’s the first thing you think of? Wine, right? When Judy and I decided to explore this part of southwestern France, it seemed only logical to spend some time in the country’s second largest wine producing region. 

If one looks at a satellite view of our village of Pomerol, one sees a few buildings surrounded by hundreds of acres of vineyards. I swear that every tillable inch of ground has a grapevine on it. Think of wheat in Kansas. The vineyards of the Bordeaux region cover over 400 square miles and yield more than 700 million bottles of wine each year. 

Some of the most famous wines are made in the Medoc or Pauillac regions of Bordeaux but Pomerol, the smallest, is no slouch. About a 20 minute walk from our little apartment lies the 28 acre vineyard of Petrus, one of the 5 most expensive wines in the world at roughly $4,000 + per bottle.

There's no sign out front but everyone knows where Petrus is

You may have seen wines from St Émilion which is a large region here and makes excellent wines too. That village is only about 4 miles from Pomerol.

The old town center of Saint Émilion tumbles down a small cliff and one gets some good exercise exploring the winding little streets. 

Fresco in Collegial Church

The Monolith Church is unlike any we have seen before. The modest entrance hides a vast space carved directly out of the limestone hillside. As the name implies, it is formed out of a single chunk of rock. 

For lunch one time, we visited Les Cordeliers,  a winery built in an old cloister that specializes in sparkling wine. They have some beautiful outdoor spaces and sell baguettes, cheese, sausage and spreads to accompany their wine. It is provided in a small wooden basket that you take out to a table for your picnic. 

We chose not to do any tastings at other wineries. Frankly, the big châteaux book months in advance and even the smaller ones usually charge a fee. And then there is the challenge of navigating the windy roads in a rental car after drinking wine. Instead, we visited a wine shop about half a block from our apartment called Copains Comme Raisins which roughly translates to “Friends as close as grapes.” After about an hour chatting with the owner we had learned a lot about the wines of the area and made some purchases for private “tastings” back at our place. 

One bottle we bought was a type of light red wine called a clairet. The shop owner described it as a “fossil wine” because it was most popular during the Middle Ages. The English bought it by the shipload and their word “claret” eventually came to mean any red wine from Bordeaux. The clairet was delicious, by the way.

One evening Gèrard invited us to his home (just downstairs). We savored two excellent local bottles and chatted about life in wine country.

As the sun faded towards the end of each day, Judy and I enjoyed long strolls through the vineyards, watching kestrels hover and then swoop down on unsuspecting mice that were now exposed in the furrows. We noticed that some of the leaves were beginning to turn that deep red, marking the end of another harvest in the Bordeaux wine country.