Our Blog - Saint-Emilion

We took a long weekend off and headed out of town for a get-together with some friends. In fact, we had never met these friends in person before this weekend. Tom and I have followed a couple forums for several years, ever since we started thinking about and planning our retirement in France. There is one forum where a set of people talk about almost anything. It reminds me of how I would chat about "things" with friends and colleagues at work ... What did we do yesterday? Are our flowers doing well or do we want to see if anyone else has had a problem this year with bugs? I can't believe they were doing construction on the road next to our house all day! ... you get the idea.

So we headed out on Friday morning and decided to wrap our get-together with a visit to the town of Saint-Émilion. Saint-Émilion is a small medieval town of around 2000 people, sitting on a limestone hill, surrounded by lots and lots of vineyards. It is just outside of Bordeaux and many people included it in the "Bordeaux wine region" although it has its' own appellations. We did a couple days of wine tasting in and around Saint-Émilion as well as visiting the town itself. I'll start with the wine and get to the sights of the actual medieval town a bit later.

We took a wine tour with Rustic Vines Wine & Bike Tours as we wanted to get a bit of information and not have to drive while we were doing the tastings. We signed up for the "Famous Monk Tour of St-Émilion" which included 2 different chateau's that have contrasting styles, as well as a bit of history and a little picnic. The first place we went to was the Château de La Rivière, which was pretty impressive to start with. It is a 16th century estate (which is now owned by the Chinese and has a hotel as part of the property). It is a really nice estate, I must admit!

Before the tasting, we headed for a tour of the underground cellars. This area has lots of limestone, which is one of the reasons why it is great for wine. Not only do you have the limestone soil, which certain grapes really do well in, but there are miles and miles of underground caves to store the wine in as well as supplying the limestone blocks to build the magnificent chateaus. The guide told us stories about how, during World War II, the German's took over the Chateau itself. But the French Resistance were hiding in the limestone caves and were never found. The locals had placed a cross at the door and told the Germans that it was the entrance to a set of catacombs (an underground cemetery). They would bring flowers to lay at the door with food hidden underneath for the resistance fighters. So we headed down through the various tunnels, where we saw lots and lots of bottles of wine. Some really old, some not so old ... some normal bottles, other magnums up to 6 liter bottles.

I mentioned that the caves were tunneled out and limestone removed for building blocks. Here you can see the tool marks in the walls and ceiling where they cut blocks of limestone out. The last picture is a natural underground spring which helps keep the proper amount of humidity within the caves (it is actually fresh, drinkable water).

There is a room in the cellars that has a large table and chairs all carved from limestone (even the chairs). I caught the back of Tom sitting on one of the chairs, which are actually each carved from a solid block of stone. There is also a carving on the walls which shows the "winds of the world" which blow (I don't remember all of them, but you can see the lower-left which I believe she indicated was the North American wind, showing a native American, and then Asian wind, etc.

Then we did a tasting of several different wines, which were all quite good. We didn't buy any because we didn't want to port it around with us for the rest of the tour. Good news is that they ship to anywhere in France for free (starting with I think 12 bottles).

Next up was a very different Chateau, Chateau Coutet. The Château de La Rivière is owned by the Chinese and has both the vineyard and a hotel. Chateau Coutet, on the other hand, is an organic (I use that term loosely, I don't remember if it is actually "organic" or deemed "natural" .. there is a slight difference). But during the tour, which was done in the vineyards themselves, she spoke about how there is no chemical treatments used at all. This year, with the wet spring, they have a mildew problem which they can only try to control using natural means and no chemicals. They are also very much a "family" business ... it is being run by the 14th generation (same family since 1601) and 3 generations of the family currently live on the property. They also took us through the harvesting and winemaking process, the use of stainless steel vats and the aging in French oak barrels. An interesting note that I wasn't aware of until someone mentioned it a few months ago ... the French like to give a bottle of wine whose vintage matches the year of your birth as a gift to a child, which is meant to be opened on their 21st birthday. It can also be done as a wedding gift :-) We were looking for our birth year but only had 1962.

We then headed up to the little town of Jarnac (near Cognac) for our luncheon get-together. It was a nice group of American's, Brits, Canadians, and French. Well ... one Canadian and one French gentleman who was married to a British lady :-). Hopefully, the group will do the same type of group get-togethers every year, as we really enjoyed it. We also are hoping to be able to meet up with several of the couples as we visit various areas within France.

The following day, on Sunday, we headed back to Saint-Émilion and, on the way, we stopped for a tour at Chateau Clarisse. This is a small vineyard that is owned by a couple who had a passion for wine and had looked to buy a vineyard. The name "Clarisse" comes from their daughter, who was 3 years old when they bottled their first wine in 2010. While they have only been producing their wine for less than 20 years, the vines are a different story: the average age of the vines for their classic vintage is 25 to 30 years and their "old vines" vintage is made from vines averaging 65 years old. Again, we started our private tour in the vineyards, getting a close-up picture of the vines and grapes. We then moved into their winemaking area and got to see their vats and the French oak barrels. They use concrete vats instead of stainless steel, which is an older method which has been making a comeback and we have seen several different vineyards that are using concrete vats. One note on the last 2 pictures ... you can see the picture that shows gravel under a oak barrel ... the barrels sit on top of dirt and gravel, which is a natural way to get humidity from the earth into the room for proper aging. The last picture is a final pressing machine. Once the red wine comes out of the concrete vats and goes into the barrels for aging, their is still "must" (which is the seeds and skins that are left from the fermentation process) in the vats. The "must" is shoveled out and every tiny bit of wine is pressed out. This "must" wine is very strong from a tannins point of view and is used in the blending process.

Back to the medieval town of Saint-Émilion. Supposedly there was a Gallo-Roman villa at the bottom of the hill that the town sits atop where they cultivated wine, as archeologists have discovered various elements of mosaics from the site. Fast-forward into the 8th century, when a baker named Émilion was accused of being a thief and set out on a pilgrimage that brought him to this area. Legend has it that Émilion was working for a Breton count when he was young and was smuggling loaves of bread to give to the poor. One day, the count became suspicious and asked him what he had under his tunic as he left. He said it was firewood (which he was allowed to take as much as he wanted) that he was taking to the poor. When he lifted his tunic, the loaves of bread had changed into wood (his first reported miracle). Later, his second miracle was when he was baking at the monastery and the other monks, who were jealous of his piety, had hidden his tools. Unfazed, he pulled the hot loaves out of the oven with his bare hands totally unharmed (second miracle). He became a hermit and carved out a cave in the limestone here to live. Needing fresh water, he caused a river to divert up to his hermitage where it gushed from the ground as a spring (another miracle). More monks followed, making the town a religious center. Beginning in the 9th century, and taking around 300 years, the monks who were still living there started carving an entire church inside of the limestone hill. It is the largest monolith church in Europe (monolith because it is literally carved out of a single piece of limestone).

The exterior of the Monolithic church is all we got pictures of. The only way to visit is through a tour from the tourist office (which they do in English as well), which we took. So I have seen it, but no pictures as pictures were forbidden. The exterior is nice, but the interior is really impressive purely from the point of view of how big it is and the fact that it was not "built", but rather, carved out. The tour takes you to the cave of Saint-Émilion where you can see the spring of water as well as what is said to be the bed he carved out of the stone. They have now placed a little altar in there. Then we visited (quickly) the catacombs of the church before going into the huge interior of the church. The space is immense, with about 15,000 cubic meters of rock removed. There is a large nave and 2 side aisles and the interior is 35 feet tall. There are 6 huge pillars that separate the space. Additions from 12th to 16th century include huge bell tower, gothic windows, and a spire. Mind you ... there are problems with the weight of the bell tower causing structural problems and so the pillars have been wrapped with steel to reinforce the structure.

We walked around to a viewing platform which basically is built on top of the church and got a good view of the town, spreading out below. Our tour guide took a picture of us, which is one of the few of both of us together in our blogs :-)

As you could see, the town spreads out down the slopes of this limestone hill, and is actually built in the shape of an amphitheater around this hill. There are several "tertes" or steep, winding cobblestone streets, that takes you down the hill from one level to another.

There are several other churches as well, including the Collegiate Church and cloister. It was built in the early 12th century with final completion in the 16th century. The majority of the interior architecture is Gothic, while the entrance is more Romanesque. I really liked the stained-glass windows around the altar, which definitely has a more Gothic look with the spires.

The Trinity chapel was built in the 13th century and dedicated to Saint Émilion. The chapel contains some very well-preserved frescoes. Normally, these types of frescoes were destroyed during the French Revolution, but these were not due to a very interesting situation. At the Revolution, the chapel was sold to a wine barrel maker who set up his workshop inside. To curve the wood for the barrels, the wood was burned and the resulting soot covered all the walls including the frescoes. So they weren't visible to be destroyed, as well as protecting the paintings from UV light. In 1997, the walls were cleaned and the preserved frescoes were discovered.

The 14th century cloister has timber-covered galleries. One part of the first cloister, built in Romanesque style, remains in the East and South sides, with the rest in Gothic. Along the South wall are a set of tombs built in niches, some of them well decorated. With one of them, you can still see the ancient paintings behind their carved limestone frames.

Porte Saint Martin is one of the ancient gates into the city. It was constructed in the 12th century at the same time as the exterior defensive walls. It looks just open now as part of the gate collapsed in 1844.

The La Tour du Roy, or King's tower, is a dungeon-citadel built in 1237 on the order of King Henry III of England. It is the only Romanesque dungeon in this area still visible and from the top, you can get an amazing view of the town (the view isn't too bad just from the hill that it sits on, since we didn't go to the top). The last picture is from another hilltop and we wanted to show what the tower looks like from a distance.

Up on another part of the hill is what is left of the Cloister of the Cordeliers, from the 14th century. As you can see from the pictures, the cloister itself is pretty-much intact but most of the other parts of the building are just a shell. It looks like the government is doing a bit of work on the site although I'm not sure how much of the church will be restored.

Another of the 6 Roman gates to the city, this is the Porte de la Cadene, which was an interior gate. The name comes from the latin "catena", which means "chain". A chain was put across this gate to control circulation from the lower town and the upper town. Just inside the gate is the Maison de la Cadene, which is a 16th century half-timbered house. While the house itself is impressive, the wood carvings that are still in "ok" shape was even more impressive.

At the corner of the square where the Monolith Church sits, the Market hall originally was used to house goods for the grain trade, keeping them out of the weather.

And the vineyards are everywhere on the outskirts of the town. If you walk to just the edge, you can get up-close with grape vines. We were lucky enough to visit just before harvest and so you can spot the bunches of red grapes.

This is the remains of the 12th century Church of the Convent of the Dominicans, which is also just called "Le Grande Muraille" (the great wall). At the beginning of the Hundred Years War, the French troops struggling to reaffirm the power of their king, found refuge in the monastery, which was ideally located near the the walled town. The Dominicans no longer felt safe and left their great monastery to settle inside the walls. When the troops left, they deliberately destroyed the building leaving only this wall. Interesting bit of trivia ... there are grape vines at the foot of the wall and they are part of a vineyard called "Château les Grandes Murailles".