A Town of Rare Vintage

Saint-Emilion wines aren't cheap -- anywhere from $17 to $300 for a recent vintage -- so knowing a bit about them is important.

All Saint-Emilion wines are made from hand-harvested merlot and cabernet varietals and are classified in a very French manner by a series of regulations and evaluations over time.

Basic wines are simply labeled Saint-Emilion or Saint-Emilion grand cru . The wines that meet the highest standards over time are classified as Saint-Emilion grand cru classé (pronounced "class-ay") or the ultimate -- Saint-Emilion premier grand cru classé . The most expensive, prestigious and complex wines are almost always from chateaux on the high ground around Saint-Emilion village. The more pedestrian are grown on the valley floor toward the Dordogne River.

In the 1990s, Saint-Emilion became a center for "garage wines"--super-concentrated powerful wines produced in tiny amounts by garagistes , who challenged the status quo by seizing the wine world's attention with wines from less than noble plots. But "garage" can also be misleading and has managed to become synonymous with "ridiculously expensive." At L'Essentiel, a mod-chic Saint-Emilion wine and cheese bar where bottles are displayed like Gucci shoes, one glass of the garage wine Valandraud is priced at more than $40 a glass -- seven times more than a glass of good champagne.

A Taste of Old Europe

"We don't make jam here, we make wine," explained Beatrice Amadieu, the young woman who gives private tours in English and French at Chateau Canon.

By using the pejorative "jam," with an edgeless smile, Amadieu was, I assumed, saying in a nice old-Europe way that Canon is a traditional Saint-Emilion estate and not some newcomer or garagiste trying to appeal to trendy tastes typified by a certain large beer- and Coke-guzzling country on the other side of the Atlantic.

Walking the grounds of Canon that morning -- a premier grand cru classé property next to a little church with a 1,000-year-old cemetery and views of the Saint-Emilion clock tower -- it was hard not to get sucked in by the Old World ease of the place.

The gates leading up to the 18th-century country estate remained wide open on a private dirt road. There were no tour buses, no signs and no boutique selling ball caps or even wine.

As Amadieu guided me through the cellars below the chateau -- there are about 40 acres of excavated caves under the vines -- she explained that the billionaire Wertheimer family, owners of Chanel, purchased the chateau in 1996, primarily for the wine cellar containing vintages as old as 1868.

"Just how many bottles are there?" I asked, peering through a set of iron gates at row upon row of dusty bottles illuminated by a faint lamp.

"Nobody knows," she answered. "Maybe 35,000. They've never been totaled. What would be the point?"

Indeed, Chateau Trump this was not.