The price of the wine swiftly superseded that of its most prestigious peers, and was exported to lands as distant as
the Indian subcontinent to grace the lavish tables of maharajahs and East India Company nabobs alike.
This feat earned Louis Gaspard d'Estournel the moniker of the 'Maharajah of Saint-Estèphe'. This was PR gold, and the
showman from Quercy was exactly the kind of zealous visionary to seize the day. Scheherazade herself would have been
hard put to weave a mythology as beguiling. To celebrate his faraway conquests, our irrepressible hero wasted no
time in erecting exotic pagodas surmounting his cellars hewn from golden sandstone (rather than the creamy stone
more typical of Bordelais châteaux); importing a 'bulanddarwaza' ('great gateway') elaborately carved with vines,
grapes, flowers and leaves from the palace of a sultan in Zanzibar; orchestrating fantastical fetes and swanky
soirees; and presenting the who's who of the day with bottles inscribed 'R' for 'Retour des Indes' ('Returned from
India' - he was of the view that his wines demonstrated a significant improvement after a round-trip to the
subcontinent).
Unsurprisingly, celebrity endorsement poured forth fast and furious. Patrons ran the gamut from royalty like Queen
Victoria of England, Tsar Nicholas I of Russia and Emperor Napoleon III of France to intellectuals like Stendhal
(aka Henri-Marie Beyle), Jules Verne, Eugène Labiche, Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx. Regardless of stature, all
were equally enamoured with Cos d'Estournel.
In recent years, the cellars have been restored to the magnificence of their halcyon days. And so, approaching this
Orientalist edifice in - of all places - Médoc is quite the out-of-body experience. You are first greeted by an
imposing ceremonial arch, bearing a coat-of- arms upheld by a lion and a unicorn. Beneath reads the inscription
'Semper Fidelis' ('Always Faithful'), the slogan more readily identified with military regiments than Bordeaux
wines. Beyond this, elephant topiaries and pink Indian paving stones meet you at every turn.
Like the Dance of the Seven Veils, the true enthrallment of Château Cos d'Estournel only begins to unfurl when you
cross the threshold of that otherworldly door from the faraway sultanate into Neverland. Starchitect Jean-Michel
Wilmotte (he of the restrained, minimalist line) and celebrated designer Jacques Garcia (he of the exuberant,
maximalist gesture) have somehow, magically, in Château Cos d'Estournel, made their apparently at-odds ideologies
dovetail in a project of singularly captivating magnitude.
The vat room, that most workaday of winery workspaces, has been transformed into a Bond-worthy gallery by Wilmotte.
Only his unique perspective could have elevated the seemingly ordinary into such a spectacle of high art. Spread
across two floors - the upper skimming across the tops of vats, the lower allowing side access - the room glows with
the incandescence of seemingly innumerable stainless- steel, conical vessels under a vast, arched ceiling of
immaculate blond wood. Four monolithic ascenseurs à cuves - immense vats encased within glass lift shafts - make it
possible to complete the entire vinification process using exclusively the gentle force of gravity. Achieving wine
transfer via the laws of gravity in lieu of pumping is akin to finding the Rosetta Stone. It is critical both to
improving tannic profile and texture as well as the preservation of the fruit. So, if form is informed by function,
then the Cos d'Estournel vat room is as beautiful a spectacle as it is a rationalisation of workspace. The barrel
cellar, lit by luminescent glass columns, dazzles similarly with its space-age aspect.
The original part of the chai (an above-ground structure used for wine storage and ageing), which lies just steps
from the Zanzibar entrance, meanwhile, has been luxuriously appointed by Garcia. The high- ceilinged space is all
Bordeaux-hued walls, flickering candlelight, mirrors, deep pile carpets, silk wall hangings, dark wood beams and
stone elephants standing guard at doors - a perfect space for hosting intimate tastings and receptions, as well as
inducting Cos d'Estournel acolytes. Just as enchanting is the atmospheric bottle cellar, a library of vintages that
makes you as giddy as if you'd stumbled into Aladdin's cave itself.
The secondary phase of the ambitious renovation - converting nearby structures into guest rooms, a boutique, a
tasting room and other public spaces - is currently underway. Given that Michel Reybier of La Réserve fame, and
Dimitri Augenblick (see page 252), Château Cos d'Estournel's dapper Development Director, are the gentlemen behind
this impetus, we can only anticipate the extraordinary.
