Goes out to nearly 20.000 Bordeaux Wine Lovers all over the world!
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A great vertical of Second Growth Montrose from Saint Estèphe
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A Personal Note From Ronald,
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Wine and food; I just love this combination. And what better place in the world to enjoy great wine and great food than Bordeaux? But before I concentrate on dining, I will tell you about a tasting I attended at Chateau Montrose in Saint Estèphe. Here, my friend Hervé Berland invited me for a tasting of 15 vintages of this excellent Second Growth. And there were some surprising results in the line up.
Farewell dinner at Chateau Coulon Laurensac
French wine -and especially Bordeaux- is meant to be enjoyed with food. Today the spotlight is on one of the highlights of our tours: the Farewell dinner at our Chateau Coulon Laurensac. Each tour concludes with this very special dinner and you’ll understand why we sometimes see some tears in our guest’s eyes when it is over.
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The meals on our tours are as important as the wines
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Ronald and Margaret, more than just drinking wine
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Our tours, a work of passion
Here in Bordeaux Margaret and I are not “only drinking wine” outside our tour season. Of course we do that too, but we do much more as well.
We happily invest hundreds (yes hundreds!) of collective hours and an enormous amount of attention to many details in our tours.
That, combined with love for what we do, passion and lots of care, continues to make our tours unique in its kind.
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Handcrafted: each and every detail
All this TLC is the hallmark for a true experience and that’s exactly why people come back to us again and again. Or in the words of our guests Bonnie and Jim: “What you offer here is unmatchable. We look forward to our third visit (for another once-in-a-lifetime trip).
Even after 15 years of experience, every possible detail of our tours still gets our personal attention. Margaret and I handpick each and every element of each itinerary. Everything is first tested and tried by us personally. As a result of our passion and experience, our 2018 program is sold out.
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Bonnie and Jim: “What you offer here is unmatchable”
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%%First name%%, I hope you enjoy this issue of our Magazine and I would love to hear your feedback or answer your questions; so please email me (Ronald@BXWINEX.com) or simply reply to this magazine. I love to hear from you.
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Ronald and Margaret love to share
their passion for Bordeaux with you
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And please remember: Don’t drink anything I wouldn’t drink!
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Farewell dinner at Chateau Coulon Laurensac
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One of the most relaxed meals on our tours
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The three-Centuries-old fireplace dominates our dining room
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Three centuries of history
Entering our private dining room is special in its own right. Our Chateau was built in 1724 and the three-Centuries-old fireplace dominates our dining room. You will be surrounded by a part of our art collection as you dine at our antique mahogany dining table predating the Bordeaux 1855 Classification. (Our table is actually 15 years older than this Classification, can you imagine?).
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A local experience
Seeing the First Growths (Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild. Latour Margaux, Haut Brion and Yquem) and tasting those wines -some of them of over 20 years old- is a unique experience. As part of a small, select group we can open doors for our guests that remain closed for others and through our contacts we organize meals in Classified Growths for instance. These are venues not open to the public. And we include the best and the most famous dining experiences varying from Michelin-starred meals to one of the word’s best bistro-style restaurants. This is all exceptional of course, but many guest rave about the very special atmosphere on the Farewell Dinner at our own Chateau Coulon Laurensac.
Decapitating Champagne
We always start the Farewell Dinner with Champagne in our drawing room or on the patio, weather permitting. One of the many honors bestowed upon me is “Seigneur de Champagne”. This means that I was trained and certified to open a bottle of Champagne in the traditional way with a sword. And not just any sword, I have a special sword for this and I will personally decapitate a Magnum of Champagne with my sword in front of our guests.
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Ronald decapitating a Magnum of Champagne for the Farewell Dinner at Chateau Coulon Laurensac
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Champagne on the patio behind Chateau Coulon Laurensac
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An exclusive setting for a glass of Champagne
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A lot of preparation
Our chef Gaelle is busy in the kitchen all afternoon preparing exquisite dishes with fresh produce she found on the market that very day. In the meantime Philippe, our butler, sets the table and lights the candles in our silver candlesticks dating from 1899 (which Margaret and I found in England when we were antique hunting there).
I will personally select an impressive succession of library wines that have been aging in my cellar, sometimes for decades. I always bring them to the wine fridge to get to the right temperature a couple of days before the dinner.
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Wine lover’s heaven
The wine list on the menu on the table is longer than the menu itself. As a result we always serve the wines in flights of two because it is interesting to compare them. We usually serve two 20-year-old First Growths over the cheese dish. Even for us -as spoiled Bordeaux drinkers- it is a special experience comparing two First Growths over dinner. For many of our guests this is a first-timer and a unique experience.
We traditionally conclude this extraordinary night with a well-aged Superior First Growth Chateau Yquem, the King of wines and the wine of Kings, which has been sleeping in my cellar for over 20 years. Can you believe that our guest simply love this night? Who wouldn’t? This is sheer wine lover’s heaven.
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One of the most relaxed meals on our tours
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Well-earned praise for our private chef
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One of the most relaxed meals on our tours
I understand that if you read this, it might seem intimidating. But the interesting thing is, that it isn’t. It is one of the most fun and relaxed meals on our tours. And it goes on and on and on because we simply don’t want this night to end. When it finally does, it is usually after midnight and the hugs exchanged, bear witness of new friendships that have been made here in Bordeaux. This is not simply a tour: this is a Bordeaux Wine Experience at it best.
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A wine list longer than the menu
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Original seasonal dishes for the Farewell dinner at Coulon Laurensac
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Tasting 15 vintages of Chateau Montrose
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Ronald with Hervé Berland, the talented manager of Chateau Montrose in Saint Estèphe
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Powerful wines
Nested in the North of the Medoc we find an appellation that sometimes tends to be overlooked. Most visitors stop at Pauillac. And by doing so they are missing out on an appellation well-worth discovering: Saint Estèphe. This most Northern of the famous village appellations is indeed the most rural. The soil -the terroir- here is different and contains gravel on a clay- and limestone subsoil. As a result the wines tend to be even more powerful and structured than those of Pauillac. And they can be a bit more rustic at times. Where Pauillac and Margaux boast First Growths from the 1855 Classification, Saint Estèphe (like Saint Julien) only counts Second Growths at the top of its ranking.
Second Growths
In the Saint Estèphe appellation Cos d’Estournel is the only other chateau that shares the rank of Second Growth with Chateau Montrose. Both these Second Growths outperform their spot in the ranking from time to time and you will understand that both chateaux have their own special place in my wine cellar. Indeed you need some place to store your Saint Estèphe wines because thanks to the strong tannic structure they need many years to show their full potential.
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Saint Estèphe, just North of Pauillac
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Ronald tasting 15 Vintages of Montrose
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Tannic wines
If you’re not used to drinking tannic wines I would recommend staying away from Saint Estèphe wines when they are young.
Young is a relative concept in this appellation.
It may take as much as 10 to 15 years, depending on the vintage, before their stars start shining. I personally have started drinking my Cos d’Estournel 1986 recently and I feel that they have just entered their drinking window.
But even younger these wines can give lots of pleasure and you can predict my reaction when I received an invitation for a tasting of a vertical of 15 vintages of Chateau Montrose.
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New owners since 2006
Chateau Montrose had been owned by three generations of the Charmolüe family when the brothers Martin and Olivier Bouygues acquired Château Montrose in 2006. Martin and Olivier Bouygues own about 20% of the eponymous industrial conglomerate Bouygues Group, a $35 billion firm that operates in more than 100 countries in construction, telecom and media. So with a passion for wine they brought the budget Montrose needed to move from “just a Second Growth” to a “Super Second”, sometimes bordering to First Growth quality.
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Martin Bouygues welcomed us when hosting the
“Fete de la Fleur” at Montrose in 2015
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11-meter-high main barrel hall
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Reducing the estate’s carbon footprint
As a result of this new budget boost, Montrose entered the 21st century with a spectacular reconstruction. Montrose invested in a new 1,000-m², 11-meter-high main barrel hall where the premium wine can mature in ideal conditions. To respect the environment and significantly reduce the estate’s carbon footprint Montrose decided to save and produce energy, especially through a geothermal system and 3,000 m² of rooftop solar panels. As a result the Chateau now produces more electricity than it uses. And they managed this while respecting the overall architecture of Château Montrose in the typical 18th century Bordeaux style.
The Bouygues brothers realized that making wine was not their core business and in 2012 they brought in the talented and experienced Hervé Berland who came from First Growth Mouton Rothschild. I have known Hervé for many years (even while he was still at Mouton) and it was a pleasure to have him as my host for this tasting.
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The signature of Montrose
Without much of the budget restraints that many of his colleagues experience, Berland has the liberty to do whatever it takes to improve Montrose’s quality even further. His eyes started to shine when, while opening the last of the bottles, he told me about the extensive geological studies that were performed here. “Montrose’s vineyards lay on four terraces. Although wines produced at all four terraces carry the signature of Montrose, terrace 3 and 4 are the best. The geology of terrace 4 resembles that of Chateau Latour in Pauillac. The previous generations fortunately planted the exact right grape varieties on exactly the right plots, even without the knowledge from these studies.” Hervé concluded. “Our ancestors knew what they were doing.”
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The same barrel hall during the
“Fete de la Fleur”
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The Montrose 2005 was the winner in my opinion
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Many improvements
One of the many improvements Hervé brought in my opinion is the quality of the tannins. Berland told me that he achieves this by reducing the time in the tanks during the fermentation. Berland also started an even stricter selection in the pressed wine. Under Berland there are three quality levels of the pressed wine and only the best quality makes it into the Grand Vin. “But the signature of Montrose over the years comes from the soil,” Hervé adds with a modest smile. And it was this signature I was going to discover over a tasting of 15 vintages. On my request we tasted the wines from young to old.
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A great line-up of Montrose
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Chateau Coulon Laurensac, simply the best place in the world to taste all five First Growths and Yquem…
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The Bordeaux Wine Magazine
at Chateau Coulon Laurensac
1, chemin de Meydieu
33360 Latresne (BORDEAUX), France
Website : www.BXWINEMAG.com
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Call us:
1-877-203-2665 (toll free from USA & Canada) or
+33 556 20 64 12 (from anywhere else in the world)
(These lines go directly to our Chateau in Bordeaux so please remember that we’re on Paris time!)
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Copyright © 2018 by The Bordeaux Wine Experience. All rights reserved. The content, design and graphical elements of this Magazine are copyrighted. The Bordeaux Wine Experience is a Dutch company specializing in wine and culinary tours in the Bordeaux region for an English speaking international clientele.
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