Travel France
The only thing better than a glass of wine is a glass of French wine drunk at the vineyard in which it was made, says Mark Hedges
ONE afternoon, after I got back from work in London, Peter, our builder, asked if I wanted a cellar. My heart jumped—of course, but how much would it cost? ‘Not much, the digger’s already here.’ In the end, the electric door in the utility floor was double the price of the cellar itself.
My new cellar has only three bottles of wine in it. But what a start they are. Each of them is from Château Troplong Mondot, a Premier Grand Cru Classé from Saint-Émilion, France. It is one of Bordeaux’s greatest wines, which, this year, has celebrated 20 years of insecticide and herbicide-free cultivation. The land is ploughed by a team of 12 horses, as Indian runner ducks control the slugs. Best of all, I went to stay there and that makes this trio of bottles even more special. I know their story.
I know that the 43-hectare (106-acre) estate sits on a hilltop, making it among the highest wine estates in Bordeaux. I’ve held the base of its terroir, the flint and clay that lies above a limestone plateau, in my hands. I’ve drunk the great wine from different vintages. The stay made Château Troplong Mondot personal. It wasn’t just wine—this is now my wine. It is immersive tourism at its best.
I cannot think of anywhere else where holidays of this kind would work as well. In France, wine is so much more important than in any other country. It is intrinsic to being French—the people’s passion, culture and civilisation represented in a bottle.
