Bordeaux 2024 Primeurs: St Estèphe

My flight landed at Toulouse at some ungodly hour. Well in truth it was only about 10:30 at night, but it is an unusual time to land in readiness for fifteen days of primeur tastings.

I headed through passport control to collect my luggage. As I waited, wondering if the staff at Edinburgh Airport had deigned to place my rigid grey suitcase on the same flight as my rigid grey body, a tannoy announcement informed me that the airport would be closing in ten minutes. Ours was the last inbound flight of the day, and the airport staff were clearly eager to head home. I had only one thought on my mind; would the car hire office still be open?

There was only one way to find out; the luggage deities looked kindly upon me, as a few minutes later my suitcase appeared. I half-walked, half jogged to the car hire offices in the parking area outside. The lights were on. And somebody was home!

After a brief exchange I had the key to my hire car.

A bone-white, nearly new Fiat 500.

“Where’s the Twingo, I asked?” slightly distressed, as I am sure you can imagine – if you have read previous Bordeaux primeur reports, that is. If you haven’t, you might find the psychotic ramblings to come within this series of Bordeaux 2024 reports concerning. By the way, if you did read my Bordeaux 2022 and Bordeaux 2023 reports and you were one of those who contacted my psychiatrist, please don’t do that again. She said she would send me a bill if last year’s farce, when she was inundated with calls about my ramblings, was repeated.

“Sorry, no Twingo models here. You can get them at Bordeaux, but down here in Toulouse we have 500s. Or we have larger models if you wish?”

These guys are always on the upsell, adding extras to maximise their profits, but a seasoned primeurs visitor like me knows how to resist the sales pitch. So, holding out against the pressure to take a bigger car I instead took the key to the Fiat 500, loaded my case into the back seat of the car next to two baby seats, a spare roof rack with ski and canoe adaptors, a roof box (too late to fit them now – a job for tomorrow) and a full set of snow chains. Settling in, I jabbed my destination into the satellite navigation – as soon as the attendant had finished setting it up, for a fee, of course.