St Emillion

 30/11/2025

This morning we have an organised tour for half a day to visit St Emillion, have a walking tour of the town, and taste some wine. We are to be picked up in downtown Bordeaux at 8.30 am and it will take us about 30 minutes to get there so we leave our hotel in the dark. The easiest way to get there is to take a tram, as the tram stop is just across the road from our hotel. Despite our experience so far with French rail systems, we give it a go.

To our great surprise the trams are on time, modern and well patronised.

We arrived a bit early, so had a walking tour of around where our pick up point was, which was also near the Bordeaux Christmas market, and an imposing monument

Monument to Gerondins

Right on time our guide, Zoe, arrived in a van and it was then clear that we were the only participants in this mornings tour, so we should have plenty of time. Zoe was well qualified to run the tour as she comes from a wine making family in the Loire Valley, is studying for a qualification in the wine and spirit field and is an intern with Bushmills Whisky.

It will take about 45 minutes to get to St Emillion where we will first stop at a Chateau to meet the owner/ wine maker and have a private tasting. We found out that any house in at Emillion can be a Chateau if you grow grapes, make wine and abide by the strict rules of winemaking here.

We have arrived at Chateau Grangey

It is a small winery, making around 9,000 bottles a year. First we are out looking at the vineyard and getting some information from the winemaker on the grapes they grow, size of the operation and general growing conditions they face. This vineyard had 5 plots, one of which was the oldest and was made up of a mixture of merlot, Malbec and Cabernet franc vines, so wine from this plot was a natural blend, but only sold as an easy drinking wine.

In St Emillion, all red wines are blends of the merlot and Cabernet franc. Merlot is the dominant grade, but they are steadily increasing the portion of Cabernet franc. The remaining 4 plots of vines are each dedicated to either merlot or Cabernet franc. Vines are not irrigated nor are pesticides

used.

We then went inside the Chateau to look at the wine making equipment before commencing our tasting.

One thing I haven’t seen before was the ceramic containers they are using to store the easy drinking reds, not wanting to waste good French oak on them. The other surprising fact was that all wines made go into new oak for 12 to 18 months and the barrels are not reused, but sold on to a local whisky producer.

Anyway, we tasted 4 wines, 2 in the easy drinking style, and 2 Grand Cru from 2 different vintages. The Grand Cru wine from the best vintage was very nice, has a bit of age on it and would last for many more years.

Having survived our first tasting, we moved on to the township of St Emillion, a very scenic little village from Medieval times. The old town wall has largely gone but the steep cobblestone streets, and height above the surrounding area leave a lasting impression that was well protected in the past.

We parked our van at the top level of the village near the Town Hall and Cathedral.

Town Hall

Entrance to the Cathedral

Inside the Cathedral

The Cloisters

The Bell Tower

Underneath the Church is an extensive network of catacombs carved out of limestone. It is referred to as a monolithic church as it was originally an underground church carved out of a single block of limestone.

From near the bell tower you could look down to the lower village.

We went down quite steep cobbled alleys to get down to the lower level and once there you could see the extent of the depth of the church.

Lower town level

Negotiating the steep lanes down

Our guide, Zoe

As we had started early this morning we really hadn’t had any breakfast and asked our guide if there was somewhere we could get a cup of coffee. She knew just the place, a very nice bakery in the middle of town.

It seemed appropriate to have a few pastries with coffee as a substitute for breakfast

We were given a bit of free time to have our coffee before heading off to a wine shop to taste another 4 wines from the region. It included one from Pomerol, a cheaper wine, one from 2011 which was a good vintage, and a straight merlot, which isn’t all that common. The 2011 St Emillion was excellent and the Pomerol wine next best.

The owner of the shop was very knowledgeable and we had a good discussion about each of the wines throughout the tasting.

By now it was time to think about heading back to Bordeaux, so we had to climb back up the hill on a different route seeing a bit more of the village along the way.

There are wine merchants everywhere 

Because it is Sunday, there were not a lot of crowds in St Emillion and apparently we were lucky to get a look inside the cathedral in between sittings of mass.

We were back in Bordeaux close to our pick up point by 12.15 pm, and decided we still had to try the local oysters, having not found anywhere last night where we could close to our hotel. So we caught the tram back towards St Jean station and disembarked at St Michel, we

Here to take a short walk to the markets we visited yesterday where there was no shortage of oysters. On arrival, the size of the crowd was overwhelming. It was clear we weren’t the only ones here to get a feed of oysters and other seafood. There were long lies waiting for a table at one vendor, but luckily we found another where a spare table had become available and we quickly sat down. 

Half a dozen large oysters, bread and a glass of wine for 10 Euro seemed like a pretty good deal to us. The oysters were delicious.

It was only about 1 km walk back to the hotel where we put our feet up for a while. 

Tonight we went back to Bouillon St Jean for a traditional French meal. At 6.45 pm when we arrived it was half full, and it is a big restaurant. By8 pm there was a queue of people waiting to get a table, pretty amazing for a Sunday night.

All of the action was inside, it is very cold here at night at the moment 

Tomorrow we plan to catch the TGV train to Paris in the morning. We have our fingers crossed that they get it right this time. In the meantime they sent me a survey about our experience on the Barcelona to Bordeaux trip. I let them know our view of their service, which I assume was immediately removed from their statistical data.