Lindsay du Vin

Ch. de Camarsac in the Entre-deux-Mers region

When I first arrived in Bordeaux I had the opportunity to spend a day in Médoc. The idea of visiting one of Bordeaux’s, if not all of France’s, most prolific wine regions really excited me. So when I told my then-landlady about my plans, I was quite surprised with her response: “Ugh, I don’t like Médoc. The region’s ugly―everything’s flat and marshy-completely boring.” [Read more]

Thanks to Web 2.0, I had the great fortune of being put in touch with a “friend of a Facebook friend” who owns a chateau out in the Right Bank. Within days of our introduction, I found myself making the two-hour journey (first by tram, then by bus) from Bordeaux’s city center to the village of Saint André de Cubzac located in the heart of La Rive Droit.

Tasting room at Chateau La Gatte

Michael Affatato, a Long Island, NY native, has been running Chateau La Gatte together with his French wife Hélène since 2004. Michael previously informed me that he had only a two-hour window to give me a soup-to-nuts tour of the property. However, for this fast-paced, high-energy New Yorker with the ability to talk a mile a minute, this proved to be a non-issue.

The first part of my tour was spent being whisked around the different vineyards in Michael’s not-quite-off-road SUV. It had poured a few hours before and the fields were muddy, but Michael was confident that if we didn’t stay parked too long we wouldn’t get stuck! He presented me with a very thorough explanation of each vineyard’s terroir, as well as a history of the land itself. Michael explained that both his single-vineyard wines, La Butte and Montalon, achieved AOC Bordeaux Supérieur classification. However, due to a ‘political snafu’ in the 1930s, his commune did not achieve its own distinct appellation to set it apart from the rest of the Bordeaux landscape―unlike neighboring appellations Fronsac and Côtes de Blaye.

However, what impressed me most about Chateau La Gatte is how Michael and his wife are indeed setting themselves apart from other Bordeaux chateaux through their ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit. Perhaps it’s the MBA classes wearing off on me, but almost every day I hear reference to the same dilemma confronted by the majority of Bordeaux chateaux owners, “with over 10,000 producers making Bordeaux wine, how are we ever going to differentiate ourselves?”

One-stop shopping

Downright stunning piece of artisanal dark chocolate filled with Chateau La Gatte’s single-vineyard Montalon wine

What struck me most during my visit was how Chateau La Gatte has diversified its operations beyond wine production to include complimentary businesses. In addition to offering a portfolio of five distinctive wines―three reds, one white (a rather exotic Sauvignon Gris/Sauvignon Blanc blend), and one rosé, its owners also manage a Bed & Breakfast at the chateau, as well as run a third business called Appellation Sensations, specialized in the production of wine-infused artisanal products made on-premise using the chateau’s wine. To sum it up nicely:

Customers can drink La Gatte, eat La Gatte, and sleep in La Gatte―fairly forward-thinking for a Bordeaux chateau!

The remainder of my tour included a trip to the fermentation tanks and cellars, followed by a visit to the B&B guest rooms, and wrapped up with a tasting. The white wine, La Gatte Blanc, was a bit of a novelty due to the aromatics and rounder mouth feel coming from the Sauvignon Gris, which balanced perfectly with the Sauvignon Blanc’s strong acidity; yet, together still managed a strong finish. The reds (particularly, the two single-vineyard wines) had both complexity and aging potential―for sure more intricacy than one would anticipate coming from a Bordeaux Supérieur classification.

Sadly, Michael was completely out of the La Gatte Rosé. However, he made up for it by offering me one of Appellation Sensations’ artisanal Bordeaux wine-filled chocolates… My impression: WOW!!―dark chocolate filled with Merlot = a bite of heaven!

I’m not a huge museum buff, but when I discovered there was a museum just blocks from my apartment devoted to Bordeaux wine and the history of Bordeaux’s wine trade (including two tastings!), I decided it was well-worth a visit. Located in the city’s Chartrons distrinct (where Bordeaux’s wine trade was established and flourished for many centuries), the Musée du Vin et du Négoce de Bordeaux is situated in Louis XV’s Royal Broker’s building at 41 rue Borie. Though full of history, the museum itself opened only recently in December 2008.

Burgundian tasting cups offered to Bordeaux's trade merchants when sampling its wine.

• The event that ignited Bordeaux’s flourishing wine trade occured in 1152 when Henry Plantagenet married Eleanor of Aquitaine. Henry became the King of England a few months later, which lead to the English discovery of the wines of Gascony (region of Southwest France) and in particular, the Bordeaux Clarets (British term for red Bordeaux wine). A huge market was created in which Bordeaux’s vineyards filled England’s cellars.
• Establishment of the Bordeaux “Wine Privilege” by the King of England in the early 1300s specified that Bordeaux wines, exempt of taxes, were to be sold first before other wines from the region. This protected the trading interests of the Bordeaux merchants (even during The Hundred Years’ War, in which both England and France were vying for the French throne). As the decree states: “Whoever tries to buy or acquire wines outside of Bordeaux… will risk a fine of 300 sous, will be dragged through the mire, and confined in prison at Saint Eloi until he has paid the fine.”
• It was not known how to preserve wine until the Dutch introduced the use of sulphur to sterilize barrels in the early 1700s. Until that point, Claret had to be drunk within a year of the grape harvest. Yet, the “Sulphur Revolution” marked the beginning of aging wine in barrels, which lead to the production of a new kind of Claret that was stronger in color and more full-bodied. This wine was referred to as the “new French claret” and allowed France to compete with the full-bodied red wines from Spain and Portugal that were becoming popular on the market.
• Though the 1855 Classification is the most famous, the first classification of Bordeaux wines was made in 1787 by Thomas Jefferson, then U.S. ambassador to France. Jefferson visited the vineyards of the Médoc region and drew up a precise description of the wines’ quality with a classification comprising of three quality levels.

Variation of bottle sizes on display compared with the traditional 750mL bottle (smallest to largest): Mathusalem (6L or 8 bottles); Salmanazar (9L or 12 bottles); Balthazar (12L or 16 bottles); Nabuchodonosor (15L or 20 bottles); Melchior (18L or 24 bottles).