What a truly glorious and magical evening; as we arrived the clouds parted and Bordeaux’s most beautiful chateau was bathed in sunshine.
The Norman Foster building is wonderful, it doesn’t have a wow factor as it is deliberately designed not to. It doesn’t compete with or dominate the Louis Combes structures, it compliments them beautifully. It just has wonderful balance like the wines of Ch Margaux themselves.
What does have real impact is the new “library” for the old wines; 80 metres long, eight metres high and eight metres wide. This photo simply does not convey how impressive this is. I am hugely looking forward to my next visit in the new tasting room overlooking the “vinotheque”.
Then it was into dinner. Again my photograph doesn’t do it justice; the dining room was majestic. It incorporated the facade of Versailles and looked as if it too had been built in 1815. The flowers, the food and the theatre of the whole evening were extraordinary and it really was a huge privilege to be there.
Then of course there were the wines. We started with Krug Grand Cuvée, the white was the 2012 Pavillon. Then followed a trio of the Grand Vins; 2000 still amazingly youthful but lovely. Then the absolute star wine, the 1996, this was fantastic, superb now but will go on getting even better. And to finish, the 1985 which was good but feeling it’s age a little.
An amazing evening and my huge thanks to Madame Mentzelopoulos.