Month: March 2019

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Where to be Winefull.

Wine as part of a healthy lifestyle is nothing new. The debate around whether wine can be good for you or not continues to rage and I address a few of these questions in The Drinking Woman’s Diet.

The Drinking Woman’s Diet.

Another take on the wine and wellness debate is how the act of wine tasting can be good for you, as a meditative experience. Mindfulness is a buzzword of the wellness sector, so what about Winefullness? Quietening the mind is not easy, yes there are apps for that but what if you could harness your passion to help you?

If you are reading this you are probably passionate about, or at least interested in wine and likely to have a glass of wine in front of you, some time soon. Observing the hue, intensity and density of a wine, the aromas of the bouquet and the taste and feeling on the palate can all be a meditative experience.

Can tasting be a meditative      experience?

Can we adapt our basic tasting techniques, slowing it down to change the experience?  Try this.

– Start with the glass; take your glass of wine, as you pick it up by the stem think about the feel, the temperature and the texture of the glass between your fingers.

– Bring the glass towards you. Look at the colour of the wine, the concentration or depth of the colour.

– Bring the glass to the nose, inhale, exhale, pay attention to the aromas.

– Swirl the wine around in the glass, look at the colours, how they change and reflect as the wine moves in the glass. This is another reason why tasting slows down your drinking, you need to keep your servings of a sensible size so the wine remains in the glass and not down your shirt!

– Breathe the wine again, inhale, exhale – have the aromas changed? Are they different, or more concentrated?

– Taste the wine. As you bring the wine into the mouth be aware of the taste, the texture, the temperature. Pay attention to the flavours on the palate – are they different to what the aromas lead you to expect? Do the flavours change? How long do they stay around for? What is the aftertaste, how long does it last?

– As you swallow, sense the wine as it goes down the throat towards the stomach.

Did your mind wander off? Try again. Bring your attention back to the glass for the second sip. Pause put the glass down, process all that before taking another sip. How is the second sip different from the first?

All this takes time, which is a good thing, after all one of the tenets of healthy drinking is moderation and what better way of moderating your drinking than slowing the whole process down by paying attention to what you are drinking.  The aim is to drink less but better and get more out of those allocated units. Yet another benefit of mindful drinking.

This is something you can do in glorious isolation but it’s much more fun to do with a friend, or perhaps with a wine maker. It’s an experience many chateaux in Bordeaux will be happy to share. Chateau visits always finish with a tasting where you are encouraged to compare and contrast the various wines of the property.  Some vineyards are taking this notion of meditative tasting a step further welcoming guests with a greater emphasis on wine and wellness.

Here are a few of my favourites visits but I’d love to hear of others if you have some to share.

Chateau Boutinet, not far from Saint Emilion, is a family run vineyard where they are keen to share their eco sensitive approach to viticulture but also to tasting. The visit to the vineyard, now under conversion to organic agriculture emphasises the unique bio diversity of the site. The tasting will take place in a yurt, hidden away in the vines but there is more than tasting happening here. Join them foran hour of yoga (all levels are welcome) in this unique eco friendly building. After 45 minutes of yoga poses and 15 minutes of mediation your mind, your palate and your chakras will be open to the tasting experience of the wine.

The yourte in the vines of Château Boutinet

You could head south to Barsac, to Chateau Climens at the heart of Sweet white wine country.

Sunset at Chateau Climens

Here biodynamic producer Bérénice Lurton, harvests wild herbs to create the concoctions she uses for the treatment of her vines. These are dried in the attic above the winery where you can experience a meditative yoga session, breathing in the aromas of the herbs preparing yourself for the tasting of the wines to follow.

La Tisanerie at Château Climens in Barsac

If relaxation is the key to improving your tasting skills, take this to another level with the Sophrology classes at Chateau du Payre. Available on certain Friday afternoons, they are the perfect end to the week and are followed by a tasting of course. Please don’t worry if you are too relaxed to leave afterwards, you can always stay in one of their charming guest rooms for the weekend.

Or how about some forest bathing? Yes it’s a thing; strolling through nature to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells. I have already mentioned the ‘Land Art’ installation, The Forest of the Five Senses’ at Chateau Smith Haut Lafitte.

Follow the path to using your 5 senses

Hidden away in eight hectares of woods between Château Smith Haut Lafitte and neighbouring Château Le Thil, you will discover hidden artworks as well as the natural environment, their stealth cellar and of course it finishes with a tasting.

View of château Le Thil from the Forest path

If all you want to do is just put your feet up, call in at Chateau Lamothe Bergeron, where you can relax in the shade of one of the century old trees in the park of the Chateau. Providing cushions and rugs, they encourage you to settle in and take your time to sip on your glass of wine. This experience is called the ‘Sieste de Bacchus’ so, should you nod off at the end of a long summer’s day, no one is going to come and disturb you – unless it’s to refill your glass!

Enjoy a siesta Chateau Lamothe Bergeron

And breathe.

If you want to know more about wine and wellness buy a copy of ‘The Drinking Woman’s Diet’ here. 

 

 

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La Dame d’Yquem

Women in Wine is a favourite topic of mine, a subject often met with ‘that old chestnut again’ and some women wine makers expressing exasperation that it is even still a subject of discussion.

This attitude may be justified today, but what about the past? France, and even more so Bordeaux, might seem to be a historical bastion of male dominance in the wine industry but this is not so.  We have heard of the Widows of Champagne – their names gracing the labels (Veuve Clicquot being the most famous), but Bordeaux has its wine widows too, and I would like to share the history of one in particular.

Francoise-Josephine de Sauvage d’Yquem died at the grand age of 83 in 1851. Odd perhaps to start a story at the end of a life, but 83 was a long time to live in those days. I’m sure a daily glass of Sauternes must’ve helped.

The elixir to a long life? Certainly an exciting one

She outlived her husband and her son passing down the reins of her vineyard to her grandson upon her demise.

Françoise-Joséphine was born in 1768 into a noble family, owner of Yquem since 1593. An only child, she lost both her parents in 1785 at just 17 years old and, as arranged by her parents, married Louis-Amédée de Lur Saluces on 6th June the same year in the Chapel of Château d’Yquem. Named on the marriage certificate as ‘Dame of Yquem of Podensac, of Saint Cri, etc.’

It was a good match between two staunchly royalist families; she had prestige although perhaps not beauty. Rumour has it she may have suffered smallpox earlier and still bore the scars. Her dowry was Château d’Yquem, alongside servants, silverware and other accoutrements of a noble house.

The Majestic Chateau d’Yquem,

Although Yquem was prestigious it may well have been in debt due to family purchases of land to expand the vineyard and build the chateau. Louis-Amédée was the oldest son of a powerful and rich family, who owned the neighbouring chateaux of Malle and Fargues, therefore reuniting three leading properties of the appellation.

Unsurprisingly, her new husband took over the running of the estate before returning to the army. When he died in a riding accident in 1788, he left Françoise-Joséphine a 20 year old widow and mother of two, at the dawn of the French Revolution. Not great timing for a royalist.

This was just the beginning of her tribulations; in 1790 she lost her mother-in-law, whilst her brother in law escaped the French revolution by emigrating. Her father-in-law and her steward were both arrested, her father-in-law executed.

In 1794 it was her turn to be arrested. She was thrown into prison with her sister-in-law for 15 days before being transferred to home under guard. One can only imagine what a great prize it would be for the revolutionaries to get their hands on Yquem. She managed to hold on to it, despite being noble, by proving that the family had moved from tenants to owners in 1711 through an act of purchase and had the right to hold onto their goods. This saved both Francoise-Josephine’s neck and her property.

Some time later she was then accused of harbouring criminals, quite possible given her royalist leanings, and was again thrown into prison but this time paid the bail to get herself out.

She lost both her daughter and her sister-in-law during this difficult time. She must have been a strong person to survive so much, and to hold on to a property as a widow. Her rather determined stance in a portrait with crossed arms suggests as much.

Francoise-Josephine d’Yquem

She rose to the occasion running the vineyard herself, helped by her estate manager Jean Garros. This desire to hold on to the family property and transmit it to her remaining child transformed her from the traditional role of wife and mother to a business woman at the head of what was to become this most highly prized wine of the region.

She didn’t just hold on, she transformed the property. In 1826 she built a new cellar, allowing wine making in the best possible conditions, ageing wine in the barrels at the vineyard when most growers sent the wine down river to be aged in the cellars of wine merchants in the city of Bordeaux,

She also continued the family habit of buying more plots of land adding to what is now a 113 ha property, increasing the diversity of terroir, adding even more complexity to the wine.

But her most notable achievement, as far as the quality of Yquem is concerned, was introducing the practise of ‘tries’.

The precision selection introduced by Francoise-Josephine to ensure the constant quality of the wines of Chateau d’Yquem

Growers in the region were producing sweet wines by late harvest as early as the 16th century. The common practice was to pick all the grapes together later. This included grapes affected by noble rot, giving the wonderful sweet wines we associate with Sauternes today, but often some under-ripe grapes or others affected by grey rot.  This affected the consistency of the crop both from barrel to barrel and year to year.

The introduction of ‘tries’, or successive passages by grape pickers through the vines, meant only the grapes that reached the optimum level of ripeness were selected, ensuring more consistency in the quality across the harvest. This operation is now a legal obligation in the production of Sauternes and Barsac and most other sweet white Bordeaux appellations.

Confident in the resulting quality, she was as astute at marketing the product as she was at making it, corresponding with John Bonfield, buying on behalf of Thomas Jefferson. She held out for higher prices than the neighbours and Jefferson still bought the wine.

More tragedy was to befall her; she lost her only son at 55. Her eldest grandson Romain-Betrand was only 10 years old and she raised him and his siblings at the Chateau alongside her daughter-in-law, Marie-Françoise de Filhot. It was Romain-Bertrand she trained to take over the property, ensuring his future and that of the property by arranging a prestigious marriage with the daughter of the rich and powerful Duc de Duras.

She died in 1851, aged 83. Her grandson followed in his grandmothers footsteps, becoming known as the “Emperor of Sauternes” maintaining the vineyard and seeing it awarded the highest accolade of 1er Grand Cru Classé Exceptionel in the 1855 Classification, this despite her refusal again as a staunch royalist to welcome the Emperor Napoleon to the Chateau several years earlier.

Her grand son Romain-Bertrand the Lurs Saluces died in 1867 but the Lur Saluces family remained a strong influence in Sauternes. In the 19th century, they owned Château d’Yquem, Château Filhot, Château Coutet (where they had their stables), Château de Fargues (the seat of the family) and Château de Malle.

The spectacular Chateau de Fargues, seat of the Lurs Saluces family

Chateau d’Yquem may no longer be in the hands of The Lurs Saluces family, who sold to LVMH in 2000, but they still own neighbouring Chateau de Fargues still run by Philippe de Lur Saluces, son of Alexandre, the last Lurs Saluces to run Yquem.

Still today there is a woman at the head of wine making at Château d’Yquem. Sandrine Garbay is the cellar master of this prestigious property; the spirit of Francoise-Josephine ‘La Dame d’Yquem’ lives on.

Sandrine Garbay, cellar master at Chateau d’Yquem. © Gérard Uféras