Château Cos d’Estournel
It was late on a December afternoon when I first saw Château Cos d’Estournel. It was the week before Christmas, and I was in Bordeaux with a group for a few days of tastings, visiting the likes of Château Brown, Château Sociando-Mallet, Château Margaux and a number of smaller estates. We were on the D2, heading north into Médoc territory, having already left behind the city of Bordeaux and the communes of Margaux, St Julien and Pauillac. Ahead of us our temporary residence for this trip awaited us, prompting thoughts of dinner and an evening of relaxation, all very welcome after a long day of visits and tasting.
Within the car it was warm, but outside was bitterly cold, as it had been since 8am, when our day had begun with a vineyard inspection and quick pruning lesson. And above us, the sky was beginning to darken as night advanced, ousting the dim light of day. And there, situated on a turn on the D2 just ahead of us, catching a few of those final, fading rays, was the golden sandstone of the château at Cos d’Estournel, its exotic pagodas sitting proud and yet conspicuously alien, as if the whole building had recently been lifted and transplanted here from some foreign hilltop.
In subsequent years, each time I passed the property I saw the sun’s rays scattered not across this glimmering edifice, but across scaffolding, cranes, plastic sheeting and more. The sandstone that has given the edifice its fabulously golden glow has not proved as resistant to the effects of the Bordeaux climate as the more familiar creamy-white limestone found throughout the rest of the Médoc, and as a result the property required extensive restoration. Thankfully, proprietor Michel Reybier – owner of the La Réserve and Mama Shelter hotel chains, and with business interests in the cosmetic and healthcare sectors – had no apparent difficulty in funding the work. Now long completed, the plastic sheeting removed, Château Cos d’Estournel (pictured below, after the restoration, in 2012) now serves as a suitably resplendent gateway to the St Estèphe appellation.
