Uncorking the secrets of Bordeaux

A Frenchman was given a few drops of wine to moisten his lips on his death bed. The story goes that he tasted the wine, then spoke his last words: “Lafite ’70.”

My palate will never be as refined as that, but since I moved to France a year and a half ago, I’ve been studying wine, especially the reds. The best way to learn is by visiting wine-producing regions, which combines two enjoyable pastimes.

I’ve gone wine-touring in California, but in France the enterprise is more low-key, less commercial. Some of the most celebrated chateaux are little more than farmhouses where travelers meet growers and see how they work. When the cork finally comes out, the point is not to guzzle, but to appreciate subtleties and connect the names on labels to tastes, thus ensuring that you will buy wisely and not be intimidated by the massive wine lists at fancy restaurants.

Last summer, I went to Bordeaux, a region in southwest France that is to the oenophile what Shakespeare is to literary scholars. Though the area surrounding the city of Bordeaux, near the confluence of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers, makes only about one-twelfth of all French wines, it is home to a third of the country’s best chateaux. The Bordeaux region is divided into two: the left bank, whence come the wines that are primarily Cabernet Sauvignon, and the right bank, where the Merlot/Cabernet Franc-based wines are produced.

Since the Middle Ages, when Bordeaux was ruled by the kings of England, a strip of gravelly, scrub-forested land north of the city, known as the Medoc, has been the source of some of the richest, most complex and compelling French reds, made of Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Cabernet Franc grapes. Among them are the celebrated Margaux, Lafite, Latour and Mouton-Rothschild, which, God willing, I’ll someday taste.

But this trip, I concentrated on the St. Emilion appellation, a little territory about 20 miles east of the city of Bordeaux, clustered around a medieval hilltop village that was named a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999, thanks to its catacombs and underground church. The wines of St. Emilion are composed of more Merlot grapes than other wines from the region.

As in the rest of Bordeaux, St. Emilion’s chateaux are often minuscule, made up of a patchwork of vineyards. Chateau Ausone, considered one of St. Emilion’s finest, harvests grapes from just 17 acres of soil that looks -- to the unschooled eye -- dry, pebbly and inhospitable.

Driving into Bordeaux from the south, along the muddy Garonne River, I caught my first sight of the unlikely terrain that yields some of the world’s most acclaimed wines. Just to see the landscape was to understand what gives Bordeaux wines their distinctive flavors, often with traces of minerals tapped by roots forced to tunnel for moisture deep into the ground. A hot, dry summer had accelerated the maturation of the grapes, which were already turning purple, and growers were busy culling excess bunches from vines to concentrate flavor in those left behind.

Everyone else seemed to have gone on vacation. The bistro at the Hauterive St.-James, a small, chic, contemporary hotel where I’d booked a room for two nights, was closed, and there were only a few guests around the vineyard-bordered swimming pool.

All of them looked blissful, which was understandable at the Hauterive, designed in 1989 by French architect Jean Nouvel, creator of the smashing Arab World Institute in Paris. It is for people who have already stayed in venerable French chateaux hotels, with their swagged drapes and Louis XV settees.

The hotel, on the heights above the city in the hamlet of Bouliac, is made up of four rectangular pavilions covered in a fretwork of metal shades that can be raised and lowered using a control panel. My loft-like room was wedge-shaped and bright white. It had stylish midcentury-modern chairs and a high platform bed.

It was there that I had breakfast the next morning: an exquisitely presented bento box of delicacies, including pistachio creme brulee and rice pudding with blueberries.

Then I drove into the city to join a daylong tour of St. Emilion, organized by the Bordeaux tourist bureau, which also mounts expeditions to the nearby Medoc, Entre-Deux-Mers and Sauternes regions. Bus tours have all the cachet of plonk, but these are excellent introductions to the viniculture of Bordeaux, beautifully devised and executed, led by guides who speak English and French.

The first stop on our tour was the distinguished Chateau Beau-Sejour Becot. Lunch at Chateau Haut-Sarpe was followed by a stroll through St. Emilion and a visit to its eerie, underground 8th-to-11th century church, dedicated to the hermit who gave the town its name.

The guide described the regions we passed through on the way to St. Emilion: Entre-Deux-Mers, between the Garonne and Dordogne rivers, known for its whites, especially drinkable with oysters; and tiny Pomerol, known for Chateau Petrus.

Generally, she said, Bordeaux grapes are picked 100 days after the vines flower and are crushed into juice, put in oak barrels and labeled according to vineyard. Later, the contents are blended to optimize color and taste, then are checked by experts, partly to determine whether a vintage should be kept in the cellar or released.

At Beau-Sejour Becot, owned by the same family since the French Revolution, my tour group wandered through wine cellars underneath a cemetery. There, the chateau hid its best bottles during the German occupation of France in World War II.

At Haut-Sarpe, we saw the graceful chateau, occupied since 1929 by the vineyard’s 92-year-old mistress, Marie-Antoinette Janoueix. Over lunch, we sampled its Grand Cru 2000 and Moulin de Sarpe 1998.

Then, after touring the sweet, if touristy, village of St. Emilion, I made my way to a wine store, where I bought two bottles of Chateau La Serre 1994, priced at about $20 each. I don’t have a cave, so I stashed them on the shelf in my kitchen.

Meanwhile, a $60 bottle of Chateau Beau-Sejour Becot 1997, which I tasted and found divine, stares at me no matter where I seek refuge from it in my Paris apartment. I’m going to uncork it when I’ve won a lotto jackpot or just want to spend a rainy day drinking extraordinary Bordeaux wine.

Susan Spano also writes “Postcards From Paris,” which can be read at latimes.com/susanspano.

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Where the wine is

Bordeaux Office of Tourism, 12 Cours du XXX Juillet, 33080, Bordeaux, France; 011-33-5-5600-66-25 for tour reservations, www.bordeaux-tourisme.com.

Hauterive St.-James, 3 Place Camille Hostein, 33270, Bouilac, France, 011-33-5-57-97-06-00, www.saintjames-bouliac.com.