Bordeaux 2015 Primeurs: Pessac-Léognan
One place you should never take your family car (or your hire car, more pertinently) is down onto the beach. I suppose this doesn’t apply if your family car is the Land Rover you use on the farm, or the Chelsea Tractor you use to ferry the brood those difficult few kilometres to school, but otherwise this rule is probably a good one for most of us to follow. For one thing, there’s a chance you will be stranded, with all four wheels bedded down in soft shingle or sand. But even if you avoid this predicament it causes too many raised eyebrows at the Hertz office at Bordeaux airport when you drop the hire car off festooned with barnacles and seaweed.
Bordeaux isn’t renowned for the quality of its beaches, you have to drive down for Arcachon for that, but some of the vineyards around St Emilion have a remarkably similar sandy feel (I know, I have taken some very questionable short cuts between appointments over the years). The other beach-driving experience the region regularly offers is, strangely, to be found in Pessac-Léognan. If the depth of gravel in a château’s car park says anything about the status of the property, then Château Pape-Clément (pictured) wins hands down.
Arriving for my tasting at 9am on Monday morning I pointed my car into the parking area and I soon felt the steering go strangely light as the wheels struggled for grip in a bed of deep gravel. Quickly banishing from my head the thought that this loss of grip could be used as an analogy for the relationship between Bordeaux and reality when it comes to pricing, I sought instead to bring the car to a halt before I crashed into any of the others already there (always wise). I stepped out and my feet sank into the deep gravel of this Bordeaux beach, surely a good nine inches deep in parts. All that was needed to complete the scene were a few sun loungers, parasols and maybe an Orangina bar. I must suggest this to Bernard Magrez next time I see him.
