Route du Château, Lot
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The phone rang in the cellar. Georges Vigouroux, a winegrower from Cahors, liked to hold a tasting over lunch, and in the days before mobile phones a call could empty the table. When the parents came back, their small son confessed to a sip of every wine, and his mother ruled that he was in no state to go to school. That boy, Bertrand-Gabriel, now runs Château de Mercuès, the castle above the Lot that his father bought in 1983 and turned into a wine estate with thirty bedrooms. For a family that judges everything by tasting it, the house deserves a proper tasting note.
Colour: limestone above, almost black below. The castle is a stack of towers and turrets on a rocky outcrop high over the river, and for some seven hundred years it was the summer residence of the count-bishops of Cahors. Beneath it run the vines, nearly all Malbec, the grape that once made Cahors famous for a wine so dark it was simply called black. The gardens and terraces look straight down into the valley, and the pool shares the view.
Nose: oak and cool stone. Georges, an early believer in wine tourism, had the winery carved into the rock beneath the gardens, so the barrels age right under the castle terrace. Tastings with the winemakers start down there among the casks. The top wine, Cuvée 6666, is named after the number of vines father and son planted on each hectare of their finest plots, two-thirds more than local custom, so that every vine has to fight for its share. The name looks like a code. It is a planting plan.
Structure: firm walls, soft edges. Each of the thirty rooms and suites is different, some all stone and beams, others all tapestries and parquet. The best story belongs to the bishop's bedchamber, with mullioned windows over the valley. One bishop had a private door cut through the wall so he could reach his dinner without a detour. Whoever sleeps there now crosses the courtyard to dinner like everybody else.
Palate: generous, and at its fullest after dark. The evening opens on the terrace above the valley, and dinner belongs to Clément Costes, whose kitchen at La Table de Mercuès builds every dish around the estate's Malbecs, with Quercy lamb and truffle never far away. In summer the bistro moves its tables into the main courtyard. Either way the night ends with the house wine, which at Mercuès is no modest phrase, since it is made under the house.
Finish: long, although the season is not. Mercuès opens from spring to late autumn and has no spa to speak of. A car helps, with Cahors ten minutes away and the cliff village of Saint-Cirq-Lapopie within easy reach. Best served to couples whose days are organised around lunch and dinner, and to anyone happier in a cellar than in a museum. Once the plates are cleared, the valley switches off its lights one by one. That is the nightlife.
Tasting notes end with a verdict, and Mercuès can borrow one from the small boy who sipped every glass on his father's table. Worth missing school for.
On record
The underground cellar went up in under six months, between November 1986 and April 1987, slotted between two retaining walls the bishops of Cahors had built centuries earlier.
The underground cellar was built in Romano-Byzantine style between November 1986 and April 1987, set between two retaining walls the bishops had raised centuries earlier. The estate's Malbecs spend twelve months here in oak before bottling on site. Guided tours by reservation end with a tasting among the barrels; hotel guests can also book a Malbec workshop paired with dishes from the kitchen.
The thirty rooms and suites are each decorated differently: some in bare stone and beams, others with tapestries and old parquet. Prestige rooms take up to three people and range from 35 to 79 m², so one can be larger than a suite. Every room looks over the vineyards, the valley or the garden, and the bathrooms have a bath.
La Table de Mercuès seats guests in the dining room and, in good weather, in the courtyard inside the castle walls. Clément Costes cooks three set menus of three, four or six courses, mostly from produce raised within 100 km: lamb, truffle, saffron. Lunch is served at weekends only, and in summer a bistronomic restaurant opens as well.
The outdoor pool is semi-Olympic, 25 metres long, with a large paddling pool for children beside it, reached by stone steps from the gardens on the valley side. There is also an outdoor tennis court, a wooded park and 4 km of private paths for walking or running. Dogs, welcome in the rooms, are not allowed at the pool.
At a glance
Where
Route du Château, 46090 Mercuès, Lot, Occitanie; on a rocky outcrop above the Lot, west of Cahors on the D811. By car via the A20, exit 57 (Cahors). By train from Paris Austerlitz to Cahors, about 5.5 hours, then taxi or bus. Airports: Brive-Vallée de la Dordogne about 45 minutes, Toulouse-Blagnac about 1 hour 15, Bergerac about 1 hour 30, Bordeaux about 2 hours 45. Charging points for electric cars
Why this one
Barrels age below the gardens.
Clément Costes cooks with it.
Twenty-five metres, above the valley.
The Edit Notes
La Table de Mercuès serves dinner from Tuesday to Sunday and lunch only at weekends, so a Monday night here has no gastronomic dinner. A stay of two nights is best placed between Tuesday and Saturday. La Table du Chef is a single table for five inside the kitchen, so a group that wants it should book it before the rooms. Hotel guests can also book the Malbec tasting workshop in the cellar, paired with dishes from the kitchen.
The five categories overlap. A Superior room runs from 28 to 41 m², a Deluxe from 32 to 55 m², and a Prestige room from 35 to as much as 79 m², larger than some Signature Suites. Views are given room by room as valley, vineyards or garden. Since two rooms in one category can differ by double the floor space and face different ways, it is worth asking which room is being offered and what it overlooks.
Several things only happen in the warm months. The organic beauty treatments, run with Institut Phyt's, are offered in July and August only. The bistronomic restaurant and the Sunday brunch buffet are summer services, and on summer Thursday evenings Les Nocturnes du Château bring live music and an apéritif to the park above the valley. Outside summer the house is quieter; from mid-January to the end of February the Toques & Truffes festival centres on the black truffle.
The château dates from the thirteenth century, and the hotel states that it cannot receive wheelchair users, although it welcomes guests with other disabilities and asks them to call reception first. Dogs are accepted in the rooms for a supplement but not at the pool or in the dining room; in the courtyard they stay on a lead. Babysitting is available on request. Arrival is easiest by car: from the A20 at Cahors, then along the D811 towards Mercuès.
The price question
The money buys a night inside a bishops' castle with its own vineyard and cellar underneath, a kitchen that cooks with that wine, and a long pool above the Lot. It does not buy a full spa, a gastronomic dinner every night of the week, or summer's extras out of season. The fair comparison is a wine-country stay where the cellar visit is the main event.
Book it for two or three nights built around one dinner at La Table de Mercuès and a cellar tasting, with a car for Cahors and the valley. A spa weekend, or a stay that depends on step-free rooms, belongs elsewhere.
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The Extra Edit
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