Bordeaux in pictures

Keen to seek out talented young winemakers, our first port of call during a recent trip to Bordeaux was to visit Marc and Elodie Milhade, the bother and sister duo at Château Recougne near Libourne the Right Bank. In addition to Bordeaux Superieur, the pair make a Carmenere from vines planted at their estate in 2000, which, they say, is proving a hit in Russia.

After a tasting of their wines, we were given a tour of their beautiful estate where their parents still live.

When life gives you lemons…

During out visit we spotted bunch after bunch of juicy grapes ripe for the picking, with the harvest due to start in earnest the following week.

We were impressed by the efforts being made to improve wine tourism in the region, stopping to lunch at L’Atelier de Candale at Château de Candale.

The restaurant’s young head chef blends French cuisine with Indian and southeast Asian flavours to great effect, though this more traditional dish featuring langoustine and truffle in a scallop bisque wowed us most.

After lunch we paid a visit to Jérôme Caille at Château Robin, who is a relative newbie in the region, having arrived in 2004 from La Reunion with no winemaking experience and bags full of passion.

The stunning view over the vines at Château Robin in Castillon, which Jérôme gets to wake up to every morning.

During a tasting of his wines, we were introduced to his faithful furry friend Mikado.

Next we headed to Vignobles Silvestrini in Lussac-Saint-Emilion to meet with Sabine Silvestrini, who spoke passionately about her believe that Bordeaux reds don’t need to spend time in oak in order to age gracefully. The Silvestrini family came from the Veneto to Bordeaux’s Right Bank in the 1960s. Today they own 35 hectares of vineyard land in Lussac-Saint-Emilion, Montagne-St-Emilion and Pomerol.

The next morning our first pitstop was to Château Doms in Graves, where we were met by affable winemaker Amélie Durand, the fifth generation of all-female proprietors at the estate. During the visit and tasting, Durand told us that she’s upped rosé production at the estate due to a growing thirst for the Provençal style around the world.

Our trusty host, Emanuele Barrasso of RandR Teamwork, couldn’t resist posing next to Bacchus before we left…

A girl can dream…

After a delicious lunch at La Table d’Agassac, we headed to Pauillac first growth Château Mouton Rothschild were we were given a grand tour by communications director Marie-Louise Schyler, who told us estates that didn’t take the market into consideration when deciding their en primeur release price made a “big mistake” this year. She also told us the estate enjoyed a strong en primeur campaign, with healthy sales being reported from the merchants who bought it.

During the tour we walked through Mouton’s impressive new cellars, which allow for microvinificaitons of individual plots.

Rounding the tour off with a tasting of the 2014 vintage, we were also treated to a bottle of the 2007 vintage, which was showing wonderfully with autumnal, earthy notes of mushrooms, spices and forest floor.

Our humble abode for the evening was the fairytale Château Lamothe Bergeron in the Médoc, which had one of the prettiest views we’d ever seen that reminded us of a Monet painting.

Our affable host Anne Melchior kindly agreed to be photographed among the wild flowers

The aforementioned Emanuele couldn’t resist jumping for joy in excitement when he found out where we were staying that night. Wine writer James Lawrence (right) was equally excited but didn’t manage to reach the same heights.

Before dinner we were given a tour of the Lamothe Bergeron cellars, complete with trendy neon lights.

And finally… we encountered this feathered fellow in the lounge