LA PETITE SOULAN

As soon as you leave the city, vineyards intrude into the space. All of a sudden, one enters the country of castles, and chartreuses, set on top of a hill. You enter the properties through a beautiful gate, to explore the alley crossing the vineyard, from which you see symmetrical wine cellars framing the residence with its rigorous classicism. In all this lies the harmony of the Médoc world. And in the midst of gentle undulations, the vineyard acts as the guardian of a refined civilization. Paul Claudel wrote: "a great wine is not the work of a man. It is the result of a constant tradition. There are more than a thousand years of history in an old bottle".

Sauterne is also the first vineyard that one crosses when leaving the Landes forest. At the top of the hills are the cellars where the wines are kept, stored, and "matured". Everyone should know of the history of Sauternes, the late harvest, the famous noble rot of Botrytis cinerea, and the risks taken to obtain the desired quality. This knowledge goes back to 1593.

A small country road leaves at right angles from the departmental road. It leads to a place out of time, Saint-Emilion. The bell tower appears, then the sea of roofs that gives the village a reinforced aesthetic unity. It is a charming village which rises in a spiral towards the top of a hill: we vestiges of a church of the 11th century, a citadel and a fortified castle. One enters the maze of small medieval paved streets and one smells the rich, soft, indolent atmosphere of this city.

Elsewhere, it’s a landscape hemmed with vineyards. We only see the straight lines of the rows of vines and nothing else. A tractor straddling the plots of land. We pass in front of some beautiful houses, topped with turrets and slates, and the gigantic Smith Haut-Lafitte residence, flanked by wine cellars, one for red wine and one for white wine.