Sophisticated St Emilion

We left our wind blown but dramatic spot by the Plage d’Esperance, near Fouras, around 09.30 on Thursday, September 11, to make our way to the Bordeaux area. However, we first stopped off at another Plus Beau Village, Brouage. It used to be a port that was fortified by Cardinal Richelieu in response to the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle. The port silted up as the sea receded. The old citadel’s arsenal used to make the cannons for the rest of France. It was, in fact, quite a pretty town with easy parking under the same ramparts that a young Louis XIV would pine for his sweetheart, Marie Mancini, after being persuaded to marry the Infanta of Spain. The other claim to fame of the town was that it was the birthplace of Samuel de Champlain who founded Quebec in 1608. Quite a history for such a sleepy town!

From there we continued onto the city of Bordeaux where we managed to dodge the rain again and found a parking space down a side street near the old town. We didn’t expect to see a cruise liner moored on the river at the end of the street though! Bordeaux felt quite large in comparison to other places we visited and a little impersonal but the old part was quite interesting.

We left there to make our way south to the Médoc area where we parked up at another France Passion vineyard, Chateau d’Osmond, near Paulliac. When we arrived around 18.00, the heavens opened but it was still magical to be parked by the vines. We even managed a wine tasting before buying a couple of bottles of their lovely wine.

Pauillac is on the western shore of the Gironde Estuary and nearby wineries included St-Estephe, Mouton Rothschild and Margaux. Pauillac itself had an excellent Maison du Vin where we could try and then purchase many different local wines.

After a walk around the town we headed south to Margaux where we were underwhelmed by the village itself but the actual Chateau Margaux was pretty impressive. We did manage to buy a couple of bottles from the local cave!

We then drove onto St Emilion to the east of Bordeaux. A lovely medieval village set up on top of a hill with many restaurants, bars and wine merchants. We had a delicious meal at one of them, Lard et Bouchon, after having another wine tasting at our vineyard stop for the night, Chateau Rol. It was an easy ten minute cycle ride from our park up to town although not so easy on the way back in the pitch dark!