Bordeaux, The First Growths
Seven Estates That Do Not Take Bookings
Seven estates anchor this week: Lafite Rothschild, Mouton Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion, Cheval Blanc, and d'Yquem. None of them takes bookings. The doors open through relationships that started at Christie’s and that I’ve kept close ever since.
The structure is deliberate. No more than two estates in a day. One lunch inside a château, one dinner inside a château, and the trade rooms in between that the public never sees. Your group takes La Maison d'Estournel outright, so for four nights the house, the kitchen, and the cellar are yours alone.
LENGTH: Five Nights GROUP: 12 guests, 2 guides BASE: Saint-Estephe, Medoc SEASON: May or June
DAY ONE, PARIS
The night before you travel to Bordeaux.
Cheval Blanc Paris, above the Samaritaine. The house that owns your fourth day owns the building, and sleeping in it first gives the week its shape.
Le Petit Sommelier. Dinner where the wine trade eats when it is in town. Traditional bistro with one of the best wine lists in town.
DAY TWO, THE CITY
You land and go straight to a first growth. Bordeaux does not ease you in.
Château Haut-Brion, Pessac. The oldest name in the 1855 classification and the only first growth inside the city. Fifteen minutes from the runway. Visit, tasting, and a light lunch.
Demptos Cooperage. Two wines, a red and a white, each poured from ten different barrels. Same juice in every glass, and what changed is the wood. In one the fruit sits forward and clean, three barrels later it is buried under clove and smoke. This is the session winemakers run to decide what to buy.
Dinner at Le Pressoir d'Argent. The Michelin-starred room at the InterContinental. The Christofle lobster press works tableside and the cellar runs to a thousand references, two thirds of them Bordeaux.
North to Saint-Estèphe. Forty minutes. The house is lit when you arrive, and Cos d'Estournel is a just up the road.
DAY THREE, MARGAUX AND PAUILLAC
Two first growths is the most one day allows before the wines start blurring together.
Château Margaux. Vineyard, cellar, and tasting.
Chateau Margaux. Lunch in the residence. The Palladian house holds the finest private dining room in the Médoc. When the estate holds it for us, lunch there turns a visit into hospitality. I ask for it on every Bordeaux week.
Château Latour. The enclos, the cellar, and the tasting that closes the southern Médoc.
Cos d'Estournel. A short walk from the house. Private cellar visit, then an aperitif under the pagodas as the light goes. Dinner comes from the Estournel kitchen.
DAY FOUR, PAUILLAC
Lafite and Mouton share a boundary and a family name, and spent one hundred and eighteen years on opposite sides of the 1855 classification.
Château Mouton Rothschild. Cellar, tasting, and a private tour of the Museum of Wine in Art. The Rothschild collection stands alone in the region, and you walk it without another group in the room.
Château Lafite Rothschild. The circular cellar and the tasting that completes the Médoc chapter.
COMO Cordeillan-Bages, or the house. The nineteenth-century château beside Lynch-Bages, long the dining room of the Médoc, reopened under COMO in May 2026. The group decides that afternoon.
DAY FIVE, RIGHT BANK AND SAUTERNES
Different grapes, different soils, and forty minutes away across the river. The day ends on the hill at Yquem with the light going.
Château Cheval Blanc. Visit and tasting on the Right Bank, where cabernet franc runs the show.
Lunch at L'Envers du Décor, Saint-Émilion. The bistro on the rue du Clocher has been the trade's canteen since 1987. I first ate there at Vinexpo in June 2001 with the Christie's team, and I have gone back on every Bordeaux trip since.
Eglise Monolithe de Sain-Emilion. A walk of the monolithic church cut into the rock beneath the village between roughly the 11th and 12th centuries.
Château d'Yquem. Timed to the last full hour of daylight on the hill.
Dinner at Chateau d'Yquem. Asked for, not assumed. If Yquem holds dinner for us, the week ends at the one table in Bordeaux that outranks every restaurant in it.