We went to Cap Ferret for lunch at Pinasse Café. Cap Ferret is on the tip of the Basin d’Arcachon, the famous oyster harvesting bay. Pinasse Café in Cap Ferret is a popular restaurant specializing in seafood, with a gorgeous view over the bay, the oyster farms and the village of Arcachon and the Dunes de Pilat, the largest in Europe, in the distance. I had a Plateau des Fruits de Mer. Following lunch, we visited the Earl Ostrea Chanca oyster farm of Ralph Doerfler.
Before driving out for about 45 minutes to Cap Ferret, we visited La Cité du Vin. To visit this stunning museum which opened its doors in the spring of 2016 is a must. Architects Anouk Legendre and Nicolas Desmazières designed a building that evokes – on the outside as well as inside – the wine’s soul and liquid nature through seamless roundness. I quote the museum leaflet: “La Cité du Vin is a unique cultural facility where wine comes to life through an immersive, sensorial approach, all set within an evocative architectural design. La Cité du Vin gives a different view of wine, across the world, across the ages, across all cultures and all civilisations. La Cité du Vin invites you on a lively, eye-opening journey around a world of wine and culture.”
Bordeaux's La Cité du Vin, a cultural center dedicated to everything wine, is the new must-visit destination for any wine lover traveling through Europe.
La Cité du Vin invites you on a lively, eye-opening journey around a world of wine and culture.”
La Cité du Vin
(Ray Isle in Food and Wine n May 26, 2016)
But what is a Cité du Vin? That was what I wanted to know, so I recently took a behind-the-scenes, pre-opening tour with the museum’s president, Sylvie Cazes. I was prepared to be disappointed, as pretty much every wine museum I’ve ever been to has been a snooze or worse: dusty old presses, historic pictures of grape harvests, plaques with dispiriting or mind-numbingly technical text. Instead, I was pretty much blown away by how cool it was.
The first thing you notice about the Cité is the building itself; the architecture is inarguably striking. The fluid, shimmering building, intended to look like wine swirling in a glass (though some people feel it instead resembles a giant glass shoe), rises above a former no-man’s-land of warehouses, now rapidly gentrifying, in the south part of the city. Clad in 900 reflective glass panels and 2,500 gold-hued, lacquered aluminum panels, supported inside by 128 huge wooden spines, the structure stands in stark contrast to much of the city’s 18th century neoclassical architecture.
But the museum’s digital and interactive displays, created by the London design agency Casson-Mann, are even more impressive than the building itself. The 20 different multimedia installations that form the permanent exhibition add up to one of the most entertaining, inspiring explorations into what wine is—culturally, sensorily, historically, economically, you name it—that I’ve ever seen. Video images of winemakers or farmers from a range of countries answer visitors’ questions about wine; vast screens give flyover vistas of the world’s great wine regions; a fifty-seat boat interactively recreates the feel of being on a wine merchant’s voyage over several centuries; on blank white tables ingenious projectors display dinner settings, food, and wine lists, while sommeliers or chefs—Hélène Darroze, for instance—sit in chairs around the table, talking about wine and food. (They aren’t actually there, of course, but it feels as though they are.) The brilliance and creativity of the exhibit designs is remarkable, and as a result this part of the complex feels more like something a movie studio would have come up with than a “museum.”
The overall effect is to make wine fascinating and entertaining, rather than dull and daunting. The Cité also offers a 250-seat auditorium for performances and concerts, a free-of-charge reading room stocked with 1,200 works about wine in five different languages, a restaurant (of course), a wine shop offering more than 800 wines from more than 80 different countries (essentially, everywhere wine is made), and at the top of the tower a panoramic tasting area with views across the city of Bordeaux—and, one supposes, out into the entire world of wine.
Postings on the Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France (Posted and Forthcoming):
Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours (2015), France
Bordeaux Wine Tour 2013 by ombiasy
Bordeaux Wines and their Classifications: The Basics
Bordeaux - En Primeur, Negociants, Courtiers, the Quai de Chartons and the Place de Bordeaux– A Short Introduction
How Does the Negociant System in Bordeaux Work? Tour and Tasting at Millésima - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Dining and Wining on Boulevard Montparnasse in Paris: La Rotonde, Le Dôme and La Coupole, France – Pre-Bordeaux Wine Tour 2016 by ombiasy WineTours, France
Tour and Tasting from Barrel at Domaine de Chevalier, Graves, Appellation Pessac-Léognan, Grand Cru Classé, with Owner Adrien Bernard - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Dinner with a View: At Restaurant L’Estacade in Bordeaux City - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Schiller’s Favorite Wine Bars in Bordeaux City - An Update
Schiller's Favorite Seafood Places in Bordeaux City, France
Saint Emilion Wines and their Classification, Bordeaux, France
Schiller’s Favorite Wine Bars in St. Emilion, France
The Wine Empire of the von Neipperg Family in France, Bulgaria and Germany
Tour and Tasting at Château Canon La Gaffelière, Appellation Saint-Emilion, Premier Grand Cru Classé – Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Tour and Wine Pairing Lunch at Château Beauséjour, Appellation Puisseguin Saint-Emilion, with Owner/ Winemaker Gérard Dupuis - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Tour and Tasting at Château Figeac, Premier Grand Cru Classé B, in Saint-Émilion– Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Tour and Tasting at Château Beauregard, Appellation Pomerol– Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Tour with Dany Rolland: Château Le Bon Pasteur in Pomerol– Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Wine-pairing Lunch at Château Le Bon Pasteur, Pomerol, with Dany Rolland– Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Tasting were it all Started: At the "Garage" of Jean-Luc Thunevin, Owner and Winermaker of Château Valandraud, Premier Grand Cru Classé since 2012 - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Charcuterie and Fromage at Chez Pascal in Saint Emilion - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Tour and Tasting at Château de Fargues, Sauternes, with Prince Eudes d’Orléans - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Wine-pairing Lunch at the 1-star Michelin Restaurant Claude Darroze, with Marie-Hélène Lévêque, Owner of Châteaux Chantegrive - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Visit: Château de Chantegrive, Appellation Grave, with Owner Marie-Hélène Lévêque - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Visit and Tasting: Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte, Pessac-Léognan, Grand Cru Classé– Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours (2015), France
Lunch at the Château Smith-Haut-Lafitte Restaurant La Grand’ Vigne (Chef: Nicolas Masse, 2 Stars Michelin) - Bordeaux Tour by ombiasy WineTours 2016, France
Tour of the new Musee du Vin in Bordeaux City
Seafood lunch at Pinasse Cafe in Cap Ferret
Tour of the Earl Ostrea Chanca Oyster Farm and Oyster Tasting in Grand-Piquey, with Oyster Farmer Ralph Doerfler
The 5 Premiers Grands Crus Chateaux en 1855 of Bordeaux, France
What is a Bordeaux Cru Bourgeois? France
Tourt and tasting at Château Palmer, Margaux, 3ième Grand Cru Classé
Tour and Tasting at Château Pichon-Longueville-Baron, Pauillac, 2ième Grand Cru Classé
Wine Lunch at Château Pichon-Longueville-Baron, Pauillac, 2ième Grand Cru Classé
Tour and Tasting at Château Lafon-Rochet, Saint-Estèphe, 4ième Grand Cru Classé, with Owner Michel Tesseron
At the Invitation of Owner Michel Tesseron: Private Dinner at Château Lafon-Rochet, Saint-Estèphe, 4ième Grand Cru Classé
Tour and Tasting at Château Sociando Mallet, Appellation Haut-Médoc
How a Barrel is Made: Visit of the Cooperage Berger & Fils in Vertheuil
Lunch were the Locals eat: At Le Peyrat in Saint-Estèphe in Saint Estephe
Tour and Tasting at Château Léoville Poyferré, Saint-Julien, 2ième Grand Cru Classé, with Anne Cuvelier
Tour and Tasting at Château Margaux, Appellation Margaux, 1ière Grand Cru Classé
Tour and Tasting at Château Kirwan, Appellation Margaux, 3ième Grand Cru Classé, with Owner Nathalie Schyler
Picnic Lunch at Château Kirwan, Appellation Margaux, 3ième Grand Cru Classé, with Owner Nathalie Schyler
Tour and Wine Dinner at Château Haut-Bailly, Graves, Appellation Pessac-Léognan, Grand Cru Classé, with Daina Paulin