You wake up to a sunny June morning, have a good breakfast and a few dozen minutes later, in the shade of a lime tree, a handsome cellarmistress pours you nicely chilled white and rosé wines ...
Could you ask for a nicer summer morning? :-)
The winery is called Domaine de la Solitude, it's in the Pessac-Léognan appellation (there's also a winery of the same name in Châteauneuf-du-Pape) and we stopped there as part of Portes Ouvertes 2022. To take it one step at a time, we tasted these white wines::
Petite Lune 2018
Clos de Lunes 2017
Lune d'Argent 2018
Notre Dame de la Solitude 2016
Domaine de la Solitude 2015
Château Lespault-Martillac 2013
Rosé:
Rosé de la Solitude 2021
and finally red:
Petite Lune 2015
Notre Dame de la Solitude 2018
Prieuré de la Solitude 2019
Château Lespault-Martillac 2014
Domaine de la Solitude 2017
The visit was very nice and we bought a magnum of Domaine de la Solitude 2018 for the evening. We didn't taste that one, but its one year older sister was a good one, and as the 2018 vintage is very well done throughout Bordeaux, we rightly expected an even better experience. They brought it to us nicely packaged and we said goodbye and drove on again ...
This could be the end of the story, but it's not.
In the evening, we unwrapped the lovely magnum and what do we see - the label reads 2019 instead of 2018.
I don't regret that we paid (according to the price list) one euro more, but eighteen is eighteen, and that's the one we wanted.
And what is the lesson here?
Before you take a packaged bottle home from a winery, make sure the inside is exactly what you wanted. You should probably do this tactfully, not right at the counter (if you're going to buy a whole carton, there's no point in unpacking it, of course. If only because the vintage is stamped somewhere on it).
P.S. Even the 2019 was worth it :)
