A Séjour at Château Siran, 2011: The Nuclear Bunker
We then headed downstairs, into the nuclear bunker. Yes, that’s right, nuclear bunker. Installed by Edouard Miailhe’s father family following the nuclear incident at Three Mile Island in 1979, today this bunker resembles an Aladdin’s cave of vinous delights more than a refuge for times of disaster. It has for a long time been used as a store for back vintages of Siran. It also serves as the Miailhe family cellar; naturally, wines from Palmer, Pichon-Lalande and Ormes de Pez (all properties the Miailhe family have been involved with over the years) feature quite heavily, all protected by a huge steel door weighing 2000 kg. This is, I imagine, the most secure wine cellar in all Bordeaux!
The library of back vintages of Siran is quite remarkable, the oldest vintages I spotted dated back to the very early years of the 20th century. Many other ancient vintages are well represented though, including two cases of the 1912, wines now one hundred years old! The very oldest bottles add to the enchanted atmosphere within; I found I soon forgot that I was creeping around an underground lead-lined bunker as, once inside, this looks much like any other Bordeaux wine cellar, albeit one that houses bottle after bottle of great (and some, perhaps, not so great) vintages. Caked in dust and cobwebs, many of the bottles must have lain here for years, undisturbed, since the bunker was constructed at least. I suspect much of the dust the older bottles carry they brought here with them, having previously spent many decades in some other cellar beneath the château before they arrived here.
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