Martin Walker and Francois-Xavier de St Exupery, owner of Chateau de Tiregand
Many Dordogne meals begin with a soup course. And when among friends, the soup course ends with the question 'on fait chabròl? '.
To the uninitiated, to make chabròl is to pour from a glass of red wine into the dregs of your soup and slurp the mixture directly from the bowl. It is a celebration of friendship and conviviality, and a tradition practiced - under a host of different names - throughout southwest France.
Chabròl is less common among the younger generation, but parents and grandparents slurp their soup with pride, enjoying the wine and cleaning every last drop of soup from their bowls.
The wines of Bruno’s country
Whenever Bruno takes the train from Le Buisson or Sarlat or Bergerac to the biggest nearby city of Bordeaux on the Atlantic coast, the train goes through through two small stations that are among the most renowned in the world of wine – St Emilion and Pomerol. And Bruno and his friends know enough of the small proprietors and wine-makers (vignerons) to have made their own arrangements to buy fine wine direct at the lowest possible prices, by the case or by the barrel.
Bruno has sworn all his friends to secrecy on the small St Emilion vineyard he has found just across a narrow dirt path from the grapes of one of the greatest of the Bordeaux chateaus where the bottles of new wine cost over 200 euros each. Bruno gets his for 8 euros.
But Bergerac is itself a great and (under-valued) wine center, which has been making wine since Roman times. Its sweet and golden Monbazillac wines rival the better known Sauternes and can be much better value, particularly served cold with foie gras or as a pudding wine at the end of a meal. The Cotes de Duras whites can be excellent and the Bergerac reds are winning more and more prizes at the wine fairs in Paris and Bordeaux.
Bruno is a great admirer of some of the British immigrants who have been restoring the great name of Bergerac wines, like Hugh Ryman’s Chateau de la Jaubertie (try the Cuvee Mirabelle red) and Patricia Atkinson’s Clos d’Yvigne and the author William Boyd’s Chateau Pecachard (a great rose) and Charles Martin’s terrific reds from Chateau la Colline. Sadly, La Colline has fallen victim to the recession but his wins can still be found at the great wine cave of Julien de Savignac in Le Bugue.
You can count on any wine that comes from Julien de Savignac, an inspired wine merchant in Le Bugue who grows his own wines (a glorious Monbazillac, Le Clos l’Envege, is my favourite) and makes his own blends and keeps the best-stocked cellar in the region. You can find vintage bottles costing over 2,000 pounds each on his racks, but take along a plastic container and you can also buy wines for just over a euro a litre from huge vats. This is called buying en vrac and the plain Bergerac reds and whites and rose are good value. The rather better Cuvee Cyrano costs a little more but is worth it. Julien’s real name is Patrick Montfort and his son Julien now runs the store and his daughter Amelie makes very good wines at Chateau Briand. Her Bergerac red just won a gold medal at the Bergerac concours and I’m a great fan of her Bergerac sec white.
The one great local wine you won’t find there, for complex local reasons which may one day find their way into a Bruno novel, is worth a detour to the modest showroom of Chateau la Vieille Bergerie, just outside Bergerac on the main N21 road to Perigueux (tel 0553.613519). After winning three gold medals in a row at the great Paris fair, Pierre Desmartis was given a special gold medal (for consistent excellence) for his Bergerac Sec cuvée Quercus. This special brand, under the name Quercus (Latin for oak), for which the grapes are picked by hand and the whole vinification is done in oak barrels, sells at 8.50 euros a bottle at the vineyard. “This is a wine which will never see aluminium,” he tells me, which is striking because the heavy investment in the huge alumnium vats has in the past two decades gone hand in hand with the modernization of the Bergerac wine culture. Now the pendulum swings back to the old ways, with spectacularly good results. His wines are a revelation.
Traditionally, the pride of Bergerac wines have been the red of Pecharmant (it translates as charming hill), which come from the long low ridge that runs north and east of Bergerac itself. The wine-makers are often to be found at the annual wine festivals held in most French towns in the region, and Bruno makes a point of organising the one in St Denis, which is how he came to appreciate Chateau Terre Vieille. Good Pecharmant reds can be found in most local restaurants. look out for the Chateau de Biran, Chateau de Tiregand, Cateau Corbiac and Domaine des Costes.
Chateau de Tiregand is my particular favourite, because the wine is so good that it’s where I buy en primeur, which means I buy it in barrel and wait for 18 months until it is bottled and then I collect and keep it in the cellar I have built beneath my pigeon tower. Its best wine, the Grand Millesime, deservedly took the Gold Medal for Best Wines of France at Mâcon in 2009 and last year won another Gold medal at the International Challenge of Wines. But I’m also fond of the team at the chateau, led by the owner Francis-Xavier de St. Exupery, of the family of the famous French aviation pioneer who wrote le Petit Prince. Pascal Zanuto runs the vineyard and the wine-making with the support of the oenologist Jean-Marc Dournel. When journalists from abroad come to interview me in Perigord and want to get a sense of the wines of Bergerac, it is to Chateau de Tiregand and its splendid terrace and marvelous view over the Dordogne valley that I take them. They makes excellent white and rose wines, but the reds are special. I had the pleasure of tasting a whole flight of their reds from the last 15 years in one of the grand rooms of the chateau, and we discussed the origins of the name. Tiregand could be translated as drawing the gauntlet and legend suggests that one Seigneur of the chateau in the middle ages was a prickly type who liked getting into duels and would drawn his gauntlet to mount a challenge. It is a more peaceful and agreeable place these days which also organises terrific jazz festivals.
A good way to start discovering the splendid Bergac wines is at the Maison des Vins at 1, Rue des Recollets in Bergerac, tel 0553-635757, email contact@VINS-BERGERAC.FR they offer a small but very useful map and booklet on the Bergerac wine route, which tells which vineyards and open and when, what wines they offer and whether they speak English. Some vineyards offer special tours, like the splendid Chateau de Tiregand in Creysse, at the gateway to Bergerac, where hour-long tours of the history of a 17th century vineyard are offered.
From the terrace of Chateau de Tiregand you can gaze across the river and see the enchanting renaissance Chateau de Monbazillac, which has an attractive restaurant as well as tasting rooms. Its glorious golden dessert wine should not be missed.
Like most French people, Bruno appreciates fine wine but is not awed by it, nor does he reject good, plain wines like the plain Bergerac reds that may be cheap but are well made. And as elsewhere, the cheap and standardised wines coming from South Africa and Chile and Australia are starting to make inroads into the French market, being sold for less than 2 euros a bottle in the discount supermarkets like Lidl. You get a better price and better quality by taking your plastic 5-litre cube to Julien de Savignac and filling up from the vat.
Bruno has sworn all his friends to secrecy on the small St Emilion vineyard he has found just across a narrow dirt path from the grapes of one of the greatest of the Bordeaux chateaus where the bottles of new wine cost over 200 euros each. Bruno gets his for 8 euros.
But Bergerac is itself a great and (under-valued) wine center, which has been making wine since Roman times. Its sweet and golden Monbazillac wines rival the better known Sauternes and can be much better value, particularly served cold with foie gras or as a pudding wine at the end of a meal. The Cotes de Duras whites can be excellent and the Bergerac reds are winning more and more prizes at the wine fairs in Paris and Bordeaux.
Bruno is a great admirer of some of the British immigrants who have been restoring the great name of Bergerac wines, like Hugh Ryman’s Chateau de la Jaubertie (try the Cuvee Mirabelle red) and Patricia Atkinson’s Clos d’Yvigne and the author William Boyd’s Chateau Pecachard (a great rose) and Charles Martin’s terrific reds from Chateau la Colline. Sadly, La Colline has fallen victim to the recession but his wins can still be found at the great wine cave of Julien de Savignac in Le Bugue.
You can count on any wine that comes from Julien de Savignac, an inspired wine merchant in Le Bugue who grows his own wines (a glorious Monbazillac, Le Clos l’Envege, is my favourite) and makes his own blends and keeps the best-stocked cellar in the region. You can find vintage bottles costing over 2,000 pounds each on his racks, but take along a plastic container and you can also buy wines for just over a euro a litre from huge vats. This is called buying en vrac and the plain Bergerac reds and whites and rose are good value. The rather better Cuvee Cyrano costs a little more but is worth it. Julien’s real name is Patrick Montfort and his son Julien now runs the store and his daughter Amelie makes very good wines at Chateau Briand. Her Bergerac red just won a gold medal at the Bergerac concours and I’m a great fan of her Bergerac sec white.
The one great local wine you won’t find there, for complex local reasons which may one day find their way into a Bruno novel, is worth a detour to the modest showroom of Chateau la Vieille Bergerie, just outside Bergerac on the main N21 road to Perigueux (tel 0553.613519). After winning three gold medals in a row at the great Paris fair, Pierre Desmartis was given a special gold medal (for consistent excellence) for his Bergerac Sec cuvée Quercus. This special brand, under the name Quercus (Latin for oak), for which the grapes are picked by hand and the whole vinification is done in oak barrels, sells at 8.50 euros a bottle at the vineyard. “This is a wine which will never see aluminium,” he tells me, which is striking because the heavy investment in the huge alumnium vats has in the past two decades gone hand in hand with the modernization of the Bergerac wine culture. Now the pendulum swings back to the old ways, with spectacularly good results. His wines are a revelation.
Traditionally, the pride of Bergerac wines have been the red of Pecharmant (it translates as charming hill), which come from the long low ridge that runs north and east of Bergerac itself. The wine-makers are often to be found at the annual wine festivals held in most French towns in the region, and Bruno makes a point of organising the one in St Denis, which is how he came to appreciate Chateau Terre Vieille. Good Pecharmant reds can be found in most local restaurants. look out for the Chateau de Biran, Chateau de Tiregand, Cateau Corbiac and Domaine des Costes.
Chateau de Tiregand is my particular favourite, because the wine is so good that it’s where I buy en primeur, which means I buy it in barrel and wait for 18 months until it is bottled and then I collect and keep it in the cellar I have built beneath my pigeon tower. Its best wine, the Grand Millesime, deservedly took the Gold Medal for Best Wines of France at Mâcon in 2009 and last year won another Gold medal at the International Challenge of Wines. But I’m also fond of the team at the chateau, led by the owner Francis-Xavier de St. Exupery, of the family of the famous French aviation pioneer who wrote le Petit Prince. Pascal Zanuto runs the vineyard and the wine-making with the support of the oenologist Jean-Marc Dournel. When journalists from abroad come to interview me in Perigord and want to get a sense of the wines of Bergerac, it is to Chateau de Tiregand and its splendid terrace and marvelous view over the Dordogne valley that I take them. They makes excellent white and rose wines, but the reds are special. I had the pleasure of tasting a whole flight of their reds from the last 15 years in one of the grand rooms of the chateau, and we discussed the origins of the name. Tiregand could be translated as drawing the gauntlet and legend suggests that one Seigneur of the chateau in the middle ages was a prickly type who liked getting into duels and would drawn his gauntlet to mount a challenge. It is a more peaceful and agreeable place these days which also organises terrific jazz festivals.
A good way to start discovering the splendid Bergac wines is at the Maison des Vins at 1, Rue des Recollets in Bergerac, tel 0553-635757, email contact@VINS-BERGERAC.FR they offer a small but very useful map and booklet on the Bergerac wine route, which tells which vineyards and open and when, what wines they offer and whether they speak English. Some vineyards offer special tours, like the splendid Chateau de Tiregand in Creysse, at the gateway to Bergerac, where hour-long tours of the history of a 17th century vineyard are offered.
From the terrace of Chateau de Tiregand you can gaze across the river and see the enchanting renaissance Chateau de Monbazillac, which has an attractive restaurant as well as tasting rooms. Its glorious golden dessert wine should not be missed.
Like most French people, Bruno appreciates fine wine but is not awed by it, nor does he reject good, plain wines like the plain Bergerac reds that may be cheap but are well made. And as elsewhere, the cheap and standardised wines coming from South Africa and Chile and Australia are starting to make inroads into the French market, being sold for less than 2 euros a bottle in the discount supermarkets like Lidl. You get a better price and better quality by taking your plastic 5-litre cube to Julien de Savignac and filling up from the vat.
Bruno’s tips
A delightful and refreshing summer drink is Kameleon from Chateau des Eyssards, a fruity but stylish Bergerac Sec white for less than 5 euros..
The 2010 cuvee Anthologia from Chateau Tour des Gendres is a spectacularly good wine; not cheap, at 48 euros a bottle, but it stands comparison with far more expensive Bordeaux.
The 2009 cuvee Ortus from Chateau Belingard is a Cotes de Bergerac red but in a blind tasting most people would think they had come across a wonderfully rich Californian red from the Napa valley.
The prize for the most improved wine in the region goes to the Domaine de la Vitrolle, one the road between Limeuil and Le Bugue, which is the place that inspired part of the plot in the novel Dark Vineyard. The new wine maker is an Englishman, John Alexander, and although the place does not have an appellation controllee the vins de table are remarkably good and the Demoiselle de Limeuil is strongly recommended.
The 2010 cuvee Anthologia from Chateau Tour des Gendres is a spectacularly good wine; not cheap, at 48 euros a bottle, but it stands comparison with far more expensive Bordeaux.
The 2009 cuvee Ortus from Chateau Belingard is a Cotes de Bergerac red but in a blind tasting most people would think they had come across a wonderfully rich Californian red from the Napa valley.
The prize for the most improved wine in the region goes to the Domaine de la Vitrolle, one the road between Limeuil and Le Bugue, which is the place that inspired part of the plot in the novel Dark Vineyard. The new wine maker is an Englishman, John Alexander, and although the place does not have an appellation controllee the vins de table are remarkably good and the Demoiselle de Limeuil is strongly recommended.
