Bordeaux in pictures

Stunning sculpture, creative food pairings, hot tubs and a cat taking liberties: the drinks business brings you highlights from a trip to Bordeaux last week.

This leaping hare, one of many sculptures dotted around Graves estate Château Smith Haut Lafitte, set a striking pose above the gold-tinted leaves in the vineyard.

Daniel Cathiard (right), who as owner of Smith Haut Lafitte has spent the last two decades carrying out extensive renovations at the property, shows off some of the estate’s historic vintages that lie in this hidden cellar beneath the tasting room.

Thanks to this investment by the Cathiard family, Smith Haut Lafitte is the only estate outside Bordeaux’s first growths to boast its own cooperage. From this workshop, one cooper producers around 500 barrels each year, almost all the château’s requirement.

And what happens to the old barrels? Well this one found a useful second incarnation as a hot tub in the next door hotel and spa at Les Sources de Caudalie. The business was set up by Cathiard’s daughter Alice Tourbier-Cathiard using the grape based beauty products created by her equally entrepreneurial elder sister Mathilde Thomas-Cathiard.

Moving back to the more workmanlike end of Bordeaux, db admired this innovative picking machine resting after the harvest at fellow Graves estate Château Haut Lagrange. The design allows workers to pick three rows at once from the comfort of these built in seats, with the grapes being funneled straight onto the sorting table above.

db’s Gabriel Savage finds the perfect elevenses pick-me-up in the form of this 2007 Château d’Yquem. Having decided not to produce its famous sweet wine in 2012, the Sauternes first growth is hopeful of better luck this year, with the cool, wet conditions providing “pretty homogeneous” development of noble rot.

Although the final 2013 yield of 10 hectolitres per hectare was above the estate’s 8hl/ha average, the final quantities will depend on the quality of 17 different batches – a separate fermentation is carried out for grapes picked on each day of the harvest – which will not undergo a final blend for another two years.

Chef Georges Gotrand prepares an inventive line-up of dishes to highlight the breadth of food pairings suited to Bordeaux’s sweet wine styles. From scallops to spicy chicken and veal stew, this gastronomic angle forms a key element of a wider Sweet Bordeaux campaign, which aims to help the region’s producers expand the audience for their wines.

Nestled between Sauternes first growths Climens and Coutet, Château Gravas has cultivated a complementary relationship with Alsatian artist Paul Flickinger. As well as adding a splash of surrealist-inspired colour to the cellars, one of his pieces is now due to make an eye-catching statement on the label of the estate’s second wine, L’Esprit de Gravas.

What happens when the inventor who gave the world the Epilady channels his eye for functional creativity at his own wine estate? Yves Vathelot, owner of Entre Deux Mers’ “unclassified Grand Cru” Château Reignac, has devised this large Lazy Susan as a centerpiece of the former dovecote which has been converted into a tasting room. The device also allows wines featured in the estate’s regular blind tasting exercises to be dropped down anonymously from the floor above.

Vathelot also has a patent pending on stainless steel bars inserted into the barrel, which the estate finds helps to achieve a smooth extraction of tannins as the barrel is rotated during the maturation process.

And finally… Rushing to our next appointment, it became clear that delicate diplomatic negotiations were going to be required before the cat at Barsac’s Château La Bouade was going to let us leave.