Visits to the following Bordeaux chateaux...

Salut/Hi Dan Gravell,

le/on Mon, 12 Jul 2004 14:47:43 +0100, tu disais/you said:-

You might be surprised to find that you can't buy from the Chateau. I've often - but not always - found that to be the case.

If you want to try a property with no reputation, but with an _excellent_ quality/price ratio, you could try the Ch Lalande de Gravelongue. Michael Pronay introduced me to the wine, and we agreed that it was excellent, especially the cuvée "La Croix"

I can't find their address on a quick skim through, so if you are interested, (they're right in the north of the Medoc) I can dig it out for you, fairly easily.

Château Prieuré-Lichine in Cantenac is very open to visitors.

At Pichon-Baron you can buy (the have a visitor reception area), but quite often these châteaux offer not their best vintages, so probably they will have the 1997 of offer.

As Lascombes is co-owned by an American investors group, they probably will have some wine on offer, too.

M.

I visited last year and was highly disapointed. very cold reception, poor wines and average food. very commercial oriented ...

a few that I enjoyed and that hosted us generously were

-fieuzal .. although their reds weren`t the greatest , the whites from the early 80`s were interesting..and the owner`s daughter Audrey is quite pretty

-yquem was outstanding, we called the same day to squeeze in a quick tour,.. they took the 4 of us and a few others for a tour of the château and vignoble ..what a memory, Sandrine the winemaker is cute too

-a smaller one that i very much enjoyed was Pontet-Tessier, bdx supérieur IIRC, great hospitality, the food was great, the wines were half decent and the winemaker Virginie has an elegant beauty which makes the wine that much better ;)

a few off the top of my head.. but one thing i noticed is not to buy wines at the château because the price isnt a great deal.. I compared a few wines available here in Quebec and the prices corrolated roughly to what they were selling them for in the château.. so before you leave look at what you have access to in your local shops as to avoid shipping

..chris