Clos Cantenac
I think it was 2003 that I first visited Stonehenge. I was en route for the Loire Valley, on a family holiday if truth be told. I had the entire family in tow, which meant three small children, more precisely one four-year-old and two-year-old twins. So perhaps ‘holiday’ is not the right word.
Trying to keep this relevant to wine, we stayed at a well-regarded family-run hotel, one located somewhere nearby. The hotel restaurant was particularly good; I have only vague recollections of several smartly presented dishes, although the identity of my wine choice remains lodged in my memory with certainty, despite more than twenty years having passed. I plucked from the wine list a bottle of the 1996 Château La Tour Carnet, a pre-Magrez vintage (the property changed hands in 1999). The wines were much more classically styled back then, and I could afford to drink it – a classed growth Bordeaux, please note – off a restaurant wine list. Different times, I guess.
I also have a good memory of our trip to see Stonehenge the next day. There was something intensely primal about the standing stones, knowing that they were manhandled into place by ancient peoples, a triumph of determination, manpower and sweat. And yet their purpose is lost to us; nobody can ever tell us for certain whether it was a calendar, a meeting place, or some sort of religious conduit to long-forgotten deities. Of course this uncertainty only amplifies the sense of mysticism the stones possess; just ask your friendly neighbourhood Druid, I am sure he will agree.
What does all this have to do with Clos Cantenac? Well, it was as I approached the estate and its vines that I caught sight of south-west France’s largest megalith, the Menhir de Pierrefitte. Not quite Stonehenge, but impressive all the same.
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