Happy New Year and Wedding Wine

Happy 2015! With the bangs of Edinburgh's New Year's Eve fireworks still ringing in our ears, what better time to ponder the providence of good wine? And not just any wine, but the wine we shared at our wedding table. Honestly, I was far to excited to be drinking red wine! I was guzzling down gallons of delicious crisp elderflower champagne. But where's the story in that? Let's instead imagine I was quaffing barrels of the finest Bordeaux till the wee hours of the morning...

Would you try and track down your wedding wine?! In one word, YES!! Luckily, my lovely new father in law was keen to select the wines for our wedding, with a couple of wine tasting sessions at home to fine tune the selection! But obviously we hadn't been to the vineyard itself to check out the 'terroir'. That is, until our recent visit to Bordeaux to visit my brother...

The Family, St-Emillion

We took a day trip to the world famous wine-making town of Sant-Emillion, to wander through the quaint streets of the historical and exquisite little town. Deciding it'd be fun to visit a vineyard and sample some wines, we started perusing the never-ending list of local vineyards. Moments before we were totally overcome by the options and melted in the sun, someone had a brain-wave to track down Chateau Bel Air, the red wine served at our wedding!

Inspecting the vines

This is the beast said farmer turned up in!

A brief online search (aaah, smartphones!) quickly turned up a telephone number and address so we called ahead to warn of our arrival. We took a short hop in the car to find the lovely little tumbledown establishment of 'Chateau Bel-Air'. Small, modest and a little unkempt! It was perfect. We snapped a few photos waiting for the proprietors. But it was only when a local farmer stumbled by and we haltering introduced ourselves, in our best French, that we discovered it was the wrong 'Bel Air'!! Turns out they are littered across the Bordeaux region!!

We aren't a family to give up easily on a mission (...I'm looking at you Mont Ventoux!), we pushed on to find the real deal and piled back into the car! The next Bel Air was the right one! And it was gorgeous. A modest 'Chateau' with lovely proprietors and a puppy (who doesn't love a puppy?!!) who showed us around the workshop. The huge vats and barrels holding the 2013 and 2014 wines, 2012 bottled up into hundreds of bottles nestled in the warehouse and waiting to be dispatched. The labelling machine was maybe my favourite thing - very cool and so functional, this was not a tourist attraction, but a real business.

2009 had all long been sent off to their clients, but we sampled some of the later years. We may have made a purchase of a few too. :p Actually we picked one from each subsequent year, to be added to our wine rack until ready to drink - That'll be our anniversary tipple sorted for the next 4 years then!! :)

A lovely experience and wonderful to feel yet an extra connection to our wedding wine. So next time in the off license picking out a wine, desperately trying to look like I know what I'm doing...any recommendations? If not, I'll know exactly what to pick!