The best table at a Saint-Émilion estate is not in the dining room but is out on the terrace at dusk, where the wine in the glass was grown on the slope you can see from your chair; the plate in front of you came from the kitchen garden below it. This is what the American who travels for the food and wine, not the landmarks, is after. The working wine estate itself, not the hotel with a good list, where the family, the vineyard, the kitchen and the cellar all answer to the same people.
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