When we went to the Bordeaux area, Nick advised us that his favorite Bordeaux wines came from St.-Emilion. Thus, our stay there rather than Bordeaux. As it turned out, it was an interesting medieval city as well.
I was struck with how vast the fields of vines were. It reminded me of the never ending fields of corn in Iowa. It was only about 3 weeks to harvest so the grapes were gorgeous hanging on the vines.
St.-Emilion has 4 distinctions of wine. The lowest (or common wine) just carries the name St.-Emilion on the label. The next level up is called, grand cru (which means vintage) the next higher level is grand cru classe. The highest distinction is premier grand cru with an A and B subcategory. There are over 900 vineyards that carry the label St.-Emilion and only 2 labels are Premier grand cru A, and 13 with Premier grand cru B. Just to give you an idea of how important these labels are, Nick said he saw a bottle of a Premier grand cru A at Haskell's and it was over $600 for the bottle.
Anyway, we took a tour of a grand cru classe vineyard which was very interesting and we sampled several different wines. It should surprise no one that we even shipped some home for the future (though sadly, not premier wines). The 2007 vintage is newly bottled and the 2008's are in barrels for 12-18 months in the limestone caves. They are saying that if the weather holds through havest, 2009 could be an excellent vintage.
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