See St Emilion and Die

The pleasures of wine travel are seldom scenic. The corduroy regularity of vineyards may be greenly soothing in summer, but in leafless winter the rows of pruned stumps can look as gaunt and bleak as a military cemetery. The finer the vineyard land, moreover, the more rigorously monocultural it is likely to be. The contemplative excitement of the vine-gazing visitor to Burgundy, Champagne or Bordeaux generally lies as much in the memory of past bottles, or in the prospect of lunch, as it does in any topographical felicity.

Bordeaux's St Emilion sub-region is an exception. In contrast to the shapeless Médoc, which sprawls alongside the Gironde estuary like a long, vine-covered shingle beach, St Emilion has a notable hill slope (La Côte) to give the area shape and definition. Nestled into that hill is a stroller's town full of historical surprise. The vineyards in this, the less grandiose 'right bank' of Bordeaux, are discoverably small, and the roads and footpaths which interlace them safe enough to amble along. The town stays open, restaurants included, in the winter; every third shop sells wine, so no one need go home empty-handed (though the benefits of buying in situ are sentimental more than financial).

The St Emilion which meets the eye, though, is only half its story. That distinctive hill slope, carved millennia ago by the now-distant Dordogne, is made of soft, almost mustard-coloured limestone. This was, for many centuries, excavated for building purposes (much of the city of Bordeaux is made of stone from St Emilion), to the extent that all of the visible town, and much of the nearby vineyard land too, is echoed by dark world of caves and cellars beneath. The centrepiece is the monolithic church, a still-mysterious achievement of dark-age devotion, entirely carved out of the mother rock.

Revolutionary desecration (when the church walls, already mouldy, were systematically raked to extract saltpetre for gunpowder) left little of the flavour of the original painted interior; and the fact that, in 1990, the bell tower above the church was discovered to be in danger of plunging down into its dark and gloomy heart has meant that the central columns in the 20-metre high nave have had to be reinforced with 38 cement pillars. Its monumental interior, nonethless, is hard to forget: troubling as well as inspiring, with its strange zodiacal carvings and altar stones showing a snake-like ectoplasm emerging from mysterious flasks. Catacombs once thick with human bones are included in the tour of what the tourist office describes as an ensemble troglodytique exceptionnel.

The town's subterranean entrails feature in its best-known historical chapter, too, when a band of seven fugitive Girondins attempted to escape to escape France's Revolutionary Terror over the course of 14 months in 1793-4. The hapless moderates spent much of this time hiding in dank caverns in St Emilion's limestone, one of which was only accessible by climbing down into a well. Four were eventually beheaded, including the man after whom the town's main thoroughfare is named, Marguerite-Elie Guadet; two committed suicide on the run, after which their bodies were gnawed by wolves; one escaped to tell the tale. Just three weeks later, Robespierre was dead and the Terror was over.

It might seem logical to excise these nightmares by maturing vintage after vintage of the town's almost meaty red wine, the product of peace and plenty, in the subterranean streets and alleys which lie to hand. Even in this respect, though, the caverns are fickle: unless kept well-ventilated, dry rot soon destroys wine barrels and gnaws the heart out of corks. Sometimes entire portions of the vineyard, too, go crashing down into the stone gulfs below; Château Belair has been a repeated victim. Visits to those properties near to the town often include tours of the old quarries, where the vine roots can be seen, dangling like unkempt hair, through fissures in the rock, and where black stains mark the places where the quarrymen used to hang their lamps. If you leave at dusk, tiny bats flit shyly out into the night with you.

To shake off the shadows of the underworld, town visitors are encouraged to climb the monolithic church tower (the second highest in the Gironde département) as well as the squat donjon or Château du Roy built when Aquitaine was ruled by the English. The airy views come as a relief, once you've got your breath back, and bring understanding of the vineyards beyond the freckled roof tiles. Personally, though, it is ground level I enjoy the most, since the town is full of tiny passages, well-worn steps, grassy breaks, strange courtyards and hidden ingresses; the many monastic ruins, too, all contribute to the feeling that the present is simply the final stone on an elegantly constructed cairn. Living in a town of almost medieval intricacy, though, is impractical, and the population is declining.

There's a friendliness about vineyard visits in St Emilion which is sometimes hard to find in the aloof Médoc, though even here it is always essential to make arrangements in advance by telephone or email. At least two châteaux, Grand Barrail and Franc-Mayne, offer hotel accommodation if you want to wake up surrounded by vineyards, while the Hostellerie de Plaisance in the centre of the town, with its hanging gardens and fine restaurant, lives up to its Relais et Châteaux billing.

The town's many other restaurants are patchy in quality, as is so often the case when trade comes easily, but the prettiness and tranquillity of the setting combined with the reconciling qualities of a good bottle of St Emilion ensure that their failings are at least kept in proportion. And the chance, then, to walk off your dinner under the moonlight as you stroll around the walled vineyards of Canon, past the tree-lined drive leading to Clos Fourtet and over towards the looming, ghostly monastery fragments which watch over the vineyard known as Grandes Murailles is precious. Nowhere else in Bordeaux, still regarded by most as the world's finest wine area, can offer an experience to match it.

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  • The Monolithic Church can only be visited as part of a guided tour of 'Underground St Emilion'. Tours are available 365 days a year, beginning at the Tourist Office in the Place des Créneaux:
    www.st-emilion-tourisme.com (00 33 5 57 55 28 28).

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