Les Belles Perdrix – Exact Wines

After spending the morning exploring St. Emilion, we headed out to Chateau Troplong Mondot for our first tasting of the day (a tasting after 10:00 am – what was the world coming to?? Ha.). We had scheduled lunch in their restaurant at the Chateau, the lovely Les Belles Perdrix. This was a truly amazing meal in a fantastic setting – we highly recommend it. It had a bit of a Tuscan feel to the place – sort of laid-back and elegant all at once.

Restaurant Les Belles Perdix at Troplong Mondot overlooking the vines and the Dordogne Valley. — Restaurant Les Belles Perdrix at Troplong Mondot overlooking the vines and the Dordogne Valley.

Bordeaux 2013 421 — Part of the view from our table.

The food was anything but laid-back though. The chef at Les Belles Perdrix was turning out some serious food – seriously good food, that is. We had a little fun with our wine selection as well – the rose was one produced at the Chateau primarily for the restaurant’s use – it had a charming label and was a great compliment to our meal.

Some sort of foam with caviar starter. I started it before I remembered to take a picture of it!

Pressed tomatoes from the garden with cottage cheese and basil, "Snacked" tails of Dublin Bay prawns from Britany, souffle bread and black olives. — Pressed tomatoes from the garden with cottage cheese and basil, “snacked” tails of Dublin Bay prawns from Britany, souffle bread and black olives. So good.

Creamy Guanaja chocolate with crunchy hazelnut "praline," slow-cooked Williams pears and lime sorbet. — Creamy Guanaja chocolate with crunchy hazelnut “praline,” slow-cooked Williams pears and lime sorbet.

The rose. — The Les Belles Perdrix rose.

NV Le Rose – Les Belles Perdrix – A deep copper color, nice red berry fruit, very dry with just a hint of sweetness. Very good acid and a nice smooth mouth feel. A medium length clean finish of red berry fruit. Very enjoyable and refreshing on a summer day.

After lunch, we walked around to the side of the Chateau and met up with our guide. Troplong Mondot was one of the first red wine estates we had visited that was harvesting during our tour. It turns out the right bank was harvesting a little earlier than the left. Even as novices, we could easily see that the vines were just bursting with ripe grapes.

On our way to the winery, we stopped by the gardens of the owners of the estate and took in the views.

The estate, with it’s 33 hectacres, sits on the top of a hill; the gentle southwest slope overlooking the village of Saint Emilion and the sharp south-facing hill which extends to Chateau Pavie.

The vineyard is planted on this plateau where it has optimal sunlight and excellent natural drainage. The average age of the vines are thirty years old, planted in a limestone clay soil enhanced with sedimentary fragments of flint and chalk, which they believe adds to the quality of this terrior.

Their vineyards are planted with the Merlot that is the primary varietal of this region and the most widely planted. This is what gives the power and structure to the wines of the right bank. Most of these wines are blended with Cabernet Franc and Cabernet Sauvignon to bring depth and complexity to the wines.

Bob and Christina Watt at Troplong Mondot.

Here’s a bit of the history of Troplong Mondot, as told by the estate. In the beginning, the Mondot estate belonged to one of the most prestigious aristocratic families in Gironde: the de Sèze family. In 1850, Raymond-Théodore Troplong acquired Mondot. It was Edouard Troplong who, at the death of Raymond, inherited the vineyard. Following a trend at that period, he added Mondot to his own name. Thus Troplong Mondot was born.

At the beginning of the 20th century, Alexander Valette, a wine merchant in Paris bought the property shaped by its previous owners. His son Bernard, inherited the estate, then his grandson, Claude, took over the property. In 1981, Claude Valette entrusted the destiny of the vineyard to his daughter Christine.

Soon joined by her husband, Xavier Pariente, they have worked tirelessly to continue to improve the quality and the reputation of their wines worldwide. In 2006 Troplong Mondot became a Premier Grand Cru Classé.

Christina's friends at home would've loved the chandeliers in this tasting room. — Christina’s friends at home would’ve loved the chandeliers in this tasting room.

I thought the sphinx was pretty cool too.

Here’s the wine we tried on our visit:

2006 Troplong Mondot, St. Emilion – Absolutely beautiful nose of small dark berries, chocolate and subtle spices. In the mouth, deep dark rich blackberry fruit, chocolate, some spice and minerality. Very good acidity and a strong ripe very fine tannin structure. This wine has a very long dark fruit and tannic finish. This wine is still a very young, but it is excellent and will get better as it ages gracefully over the next decade and will drink well for two more decades past that. A wine to look for as a gem in the cellar.

Buoyed by the fact that we were finally getting to experience harvest, we headed off to our next appointment at the famed Chateau Angelus…

It was a bit of a drive from our hotel to St. Emilion, and we had no idea what to expect. Our tour operator had recommended that we do a guided tour of the medieval village and underground monuments. We’re not really big “guided tour” people, but we decided it might be interesting to learn more about the area, and we were glad to learn more, since we spent a fair bit of the next two days here.

Overlooking the town. — The view overlooking the town.

Beautiful town. — A famous church steeple.

When we pulled into town, we were immediately charmed by how cute it was – it was definitely a destination worth exploring. In fact, we found ourselves wishing we had decided to just stay in St. Emilion for the last two days of our trip, as it would have made the driving a little more agreeable and it was a really enchanting spot.

We started out with a trip into the catacombs and ended with a tour of a massive underground church – truly an impressive site to see. They didn’t allow you to take photographs inside the monuments, but this gives you a feel for the style. All of the monuments were carved into the living rock.

We spent an afternoon the following day poking into shops and exploring through the winding streets. My wife spotted this storefront, and insisted we take this photo:

We met this guy while wandering around:

This guy is more friendly than he looks too.

And we hung out here for a while one day while waiting for dinner. The town had something we had never experienced before – they played music throughout the streets in the early evening. While we were wandering through town, Cat Stevens was singing “Hey baby, it’s a wild world,” and Boston was asking to, “Let me take you home tonight…” Made the whole place feel like a laid-back party, and it was a little surreal with old American pop songs as the backdrop.

We lingered here for a while in the afternoon.

Which was a good thing, because this was the trick – our hotel was too far away to go to, and our dinner reservations were traditionally later in the evening, so we wound up with two days of long afternoons in St. Emilion, killing time. I managed to pass a lot of time quite well browsing in the many, many wine shops in town. It was interesting to see how many of them there were. They were certainly hungry for business, though given my collecting habits at home and the prices of the wines now vs. on release, it didn’t make a whole lot sense, in my opinion, to buy and ship from there. But to buy and drink that night – that was a whole different story!

One of the many wine shops in St. Emilion.

We’ll skip ahead and mention that after our afternoon tastings and after hanging out in the courtyard cafes, we enjoyed dinner at L’Envers du Decor on the first day in St. Emilion. We had seen the restaurant written up in many places, so wanted to give it a try. It was actually a pretty casual affair, and to be quite honest, we were so tired and knew we had an hour drive back to the hotel in front of us, so we gave the rest of our bottle of wine to the nice couple at the table next to us, who had just arrived that day from Chicago to start their trip.

Dinner was good though, and so was the wine. Here’s what we had:

2005 Chateau Fontenil, Fronsac – Deep black/purple color with a dark ruby rim. Dark blackberry and slight red currant flavors, with very bright acidity and good ripe fine grained tannic structure. Smooth in the mouth, medium bodied, with a medium-long black fruit tannic finish. This wine is still young, but it is already drinking well today. Chateau Fontenil did a very nice job with their 2005 and it is a good value wine in Bordeaux. Drink over the next ten years.

Up next – our day in reverse – going back to lunch at Les Belles Perdrix and our tour of Troplong Mondot!