Which wine to accompany this bounty of shellfish in Arcachon?

During our recent trip to Bordeaux, we ended up renting a car for a couple of days. I showed up at the rental desk (Hertz, pronounced 'Ertz, of course) expecting a snazzy little Citrioën with a manual transmission. The guy behind the desk took one look at me and my terrible French accent and upgraded our car to a French version of a CUV with an automatic transmission. C'est la vie!

The Opel Crossland was a pretty zippy car and was not too big. It was, however, parked on the seventh floor of a parking garage with just a chicken wire fence between the passenger door and the precipice that led to certain death. Très excitant!


The first place we went to was on the sea - Arcachon. It was a lovely place where we could walk along a boardwalk in the sunshine, explore a bustling marked where we could purchase all sorts of interesting canned fish, and then have a delicious seafood lunch at Café de la Plage where I had rather large but tasty oysters and rather small (and less tasty) sea snails, ordered by accident due to my limited French shellfish vocabulary.


After, we climbed up the giant Dune of Pyla, a short drive away. There is a lot of sand there and the only way up the hill is to take off your shoes and stagger up the hill, taking one step back for every two steps forward. But what a view!

On the way back, we decided to stop at a winery suggested to us by Bogdan. He had said that there were no reservations necessary so we just popped in. We found that there were only English tours every hour or so but one was starting in five minutes. Bonne chance!


We started out on the grounds of Chateau Pape Clement, beside the vineyard. The history of the winery is pretty amazing. It is the oldest Chateau in Bordeaux being 713 years old! It was given to an archbishop by his brother  in the 1300s - and the archbishop eventually became Pope Clement V. He's the pope that moved the papacy from Rome to Avignon. The chateau was passed from archbishop to archbishop of Bordeaux until the French Revolution.


After the revolution, the chateau was owned by a few different owners and, by the 1800s, became one of the best chateaux in Bordeaux. Unfortunately, in the 1900s, a neglectful owner as well as WWII almost brought the chateau to ruin. Happily, a new owner purchased the winery in 1939 and basically ripped up everything and started anew. The current owner has partnered with another wine magnate ( Bernard Magrez) and together they own over 30 wineries.


We did the expected tour - and I have to admit that I never tire of seeing those old barrel fermenters.


Like the wineries in Haut Medoc, there were some experimental methods being tried, including this concrete fermenting egg. Incidentally, Chateau Pape Clement is biodynamic - this means that not only are they organic, but they also do some interesting farmer almanac-ky type things like using the zodiac to select harvesting times and burying a sheep's horn full of manure to promote better growth in the vineyard. It's definitely different but there are many wineries who feel this really makes a difference.


When red wine is fermenting, there is a big cap of grape skins that rises to the top. Winemakers want this in the wine as it gives flavours, colours, and tannins to the wine. One way of doing this is punching down - using a big metal thing to push the skins down to the bottom of the vat. This is what that looks like.


The bottled wines are stored in an underground cellar. We were really fortunate in that we were able to visit the cellar at Chateau Pape Clement. Unfortunately, as I later discovered, people in the 1300s were a lot shorter I am. Our Estonian guide (sorry, I forget his name), opened the door and let us in.


First stop was a small underground chapel. It was lovely to look around but not great to exit. I scraped the top of my head on the 700 year old roof and left bits of my scalp in the chapel entryway,. This caused a lot of alarm with our guide but, heck, I had a napkin in my pocket so dabbed my wound with it and encouraged him to continue the tour.


Next was the underground library. Again, we were able to schlep around the wines and take photos of these ancient bottles.


The oldest I found was from 1893.


These bottles were the owner's private stock. That's right - his private wine for when he wants to have some sort of party. How do I get an invite?


On the way back to the tasting room, we were shown a display of the different sizes of bottles that are made. We then tasted four different wine:


First up was Bernard Magrez 2017 Le Prelat Côtes du Rhône Villages Laudun. Obviously, this was one that is made in one of their wineries in the Rhône valley. Worth about 8 bucks a bottle, it was Acceptable. Made from Grenache and Syrah, and grown on limestone and clay, this wine had flavours of blackberry, plum and some pepper spiciness. There was also some oak on this. Although there were tannins on this, I didn't think there was enough in the bottle to age this one.


Another wine was the 2014 Bernard Magrez Chateau des Grands Chênes ($29).  This wine is from Medoc - so on the left bank but not in the named areas of Haut Medoc. It was also a Grand Vin which means it is the best wine in that chateau.  This is also a Cru Bourgeois, according to their website, which means that there is a selection  process to earn that qualification. This wine is 70% Merlot, 29% Cab Sauv, and 1% Cab Franc. There were flavours and aromas of blackberry, black currant and black berry as well as oak, coffee, and vanilla. There were also tertiary flavours of smoke and earth. It was quite tannic and a bit astringent on the palate with a fairly short finish. Overall, it was a pleasant wine that could age for a few years but was good to drink now with a big steak or maybe some spaghetti Bolognese. Good to Very Good.



The big daddy - or big 'Pape' - was left for last when we had the 2015 Bernard Magrez Chateau Pape Clement ($220). This Grand Cru Classé wine (top rating) had all of the big black fruits (blackberry, blueberry, plum, cassis) as well as oaky notes such as tobacco, cedar, and vanilla. It also had those nice tertiary flavours such as smoke, leather, mushroom and barnyard. This wine was a powerhouse Bordeaux wine and would easily age for another 10 years. The mix of 55% Cab Sauv and 45% Merlot made a concentrated wine that was balanced, intense,. complex and had a beautiful long finish. Although I don't think I could afford this one, I still give it an Outstanding Rating.

After another successful wine tour, we bought a tasty bottle of Rosé from their wine shop and left Chateau Pape Clement, walking in the sunshine to our rental car. After such a wonderful day out, we were pretty exhausted and spent the evening sipping Rosé on the balcony, enjoying our repast of baguette, cheese, and meat, and chatting about our day on the sea, the sand and the sip!

Santé!