Winery Tours Part I: Bordeaux Left Bank

We made a trip to Bordeaux and Rioja recently and visited several Châteaus and Bodegas. 75-85% of the tours are the same but that remaining amount that differs never fails to further enlighten us about the winemaking process. I've broken these posts down by regions.

The left bank, known as the Médoc, is relatively flat with lots of gravel to retain heat. We took a tour of Château Kirwan. The tour guide was fairly incredible as he gave the tour in French, Spanish, and English which was a remarkable feat. It made for a long tour as he repeated most of what he said in French two more times (the French got more info than the rest of us). The founder was Irish and happened to get a great property (luck of the Irish) and he did something crazy by having a huge garden on the estate rather than planting more vines.

We also visited Château Giscours which is just a massive property. They have a huge polo field - I thought it could be a driving range :-). The tasting room is in what used to be the stables (it's very clean). They rent a mobile bottling line for about 3 months every year to bottle the wine and we saw one of these mobile bottling lines over near St. Emilion later in the trip. We tasted a heavy rosé but it's generally not exported. The red wine was very good. They have updated the outside of the main building, but the Dutch owner has another beautiful Château only a few miles away so he uses that as his vacation home.
Finally, we visited Château Pontet-Canet which is next door to Mouton-Rothschild. The Pontet-Canet property is beautiful and we got a tour on a golf cart. The place was very clean and they use biodynamic farming methods and a gravity fed system of filling the fermentation vats after the sorting. They are a rare left bank estate that has an underground cellar. At one point we were talking to Gwen, our tour guide, about Burgundy and Oregon and Jill asked: "Do you drink Pinot?" Gwen said: "that is an aperitif to us!"