Working in a wine Château in Bordeaux
To visit the great Châteaux in France and taste their wines is an amazing experience. But when I got the opportunity to work in one of the most renowned Châteaux in Médoc, my appreciation for wine forever changed.
My real interest for wine started with an internship in viticulture in Loire Valley in 2008. Later in 2012 I enrolled in a 2 year master program for Wine, Vine and Terroir Management where I traveled through amazing vineyards in Europe.
I consider myself as being a simple person, down to earth and I don’t really like attention, so I felt identified with discovering small wineries and wines that were not so commercial. I was really satisfied in knowing this humble and simple, but at the same time complex wines.
So when time came to find a job (which I must say was very hard, being a foreigner in France) I was surprised when I got a position in wine tourism at Château Pichon Longueville Baron.
Chateau Pichon Longueville Baron is one of the most prestigious and luxurious wine properties in Médoc, founded in 1694 and ranked as a second growth in the 1855 Bordeaux wine classification. It is under the Pauillac appellation, with a vineyard of around 180 acres and it produces only three wines:
- Chateau Pichon Baron (Top wine)
- Les Tourelles de Longueville
- Les Griffons
Prices of the bottles range from 30 up to around 400 euros, depending on the harvest year.
My activity was to receive international customers and give them a tour of the property. The visit started in the vineyard where we could see endless rows of Cabernet Sauvignon vines with roses at the beginning of the rows.
Next we would stand outside the castle and just admire it while I gave some data on the architecture and history. The castle was actually built in 1851.
Then we would go to the cellars to see the enormous tanks lined up in a circle, with everything so clean and neat. There are two aging cellars filled with barrels, one of them was an underground cellar with circular transparent light entrances in the ceiling. This was my favorite part of the tour because this cellar is actually just beneath the pool outside the castle, so if you looked up through the light entrance you could see the water, and sometimes some frogs!
The tour ended at the tasting room where we would taste 3 wines. Tasting these wines everyday was a unique experience as I am not used to buy wine bottles of hundreds of euros. Quality of these wines is exquisite. The top wine has a very elegant nose, where you can appreciate dark fruits along with some woody notes. It is high in tannins giving it a strong structure, but they are so balanced that they are smooth and don’t give that rough sensation.
I have very nice memories of the people that work there and the enologist is one of the most passionate persons I have ever known. Technology and tradition are two things that, as opposite as they may be, go hand by hand on these kind of wine properties. They invest a lot in technology to have the latest equipment in the winery to ensure the best quality in wine, but at the same time they keep the traditional methods such as still using egg whites to clarify the wine.
Every process in the vineyard and cellar is meticulously examined and performed, making quality one of the most important things in the property. Production can change depending on the year. When there is a year with bad weather that affects the quality of the grape and wine, the property will produce just what it considers is of high quality, so production can be very low some years.
All of these things changed my vision on the big Bordeaux Chateaux. My experience made me understand why the Chateaux are successful and prestigious. Apart from the money being a reason, these kind of properties cannot risk to lose prestige, so the decisions they take are highly analyzed and examined. There is so much passion and hard work in the vineyard and in the winemaking, and this is what will always stay with me from this experience, the passion.
