Wine - France
No wonder it is so difficult to hail a cab in London on a Friday night, they are taking fares in a Bordeaux vineyard instead.
by Tristan Rutherford
The Carbodies Fairway was the ultimate London taxi. Three punters could recline on a wide bench, while two pals perched on jump seats across. The black cab’s wheels could literally turn sideways. This allowed the vehicle to spin around a pub car park in a turning circle tighter than a glass of discount Pinot Grigio.
There was just one problem. The taxi’s territory was limited to Clapham via Elephant and Castle. While driver bantz included imigration, football and the ‘wankers’ in local government. Fun all the way.
Frenchman Antoine Beucher spied a gap in the market. The Fairway’s glass bubble design was perfect for perusing the 8,000 vineyards surrounding his native Bordeaux. Hop-in-hop-out access promised a quick escape into the chateau. Or an easy car dash when the River Gironde’s London-style weather blew.
Beucher purchased three Carbodies Fairways and drove them south by southwest. I was the first wine writer to ride shotgun.
Beucher’s Wine Cab concept is smoother than a Chateau Margaux. The jump seats in his black cabs have been converted into flip-down repositories for wine tasting vials and chateaux maps. Both prove key to comprehending an area with a preposterous 54 Appellation d'origine contrôlée regions. It’s Bordeaux, guys. The global epicentre of wine.
Wine Cab’s tours include the AOC Graves region. Thirsty Brits have imported Bordeaux by boat from here for 800 years, thereby avoiding ‘mainland’ French machinations. Château Haut-Brion, the favoured wine of London diarist and piss-artist Samuel Pepys, can be found here. Further north the AOC Médoc region, and its famed Chateau Margaux, appeared later when winemakers from Holland reclaimed rich soil from the River Gironde. Those Dutch love to dredge!
My first Wine Cab visit was to Chateau Cheval Blanc. Here we sipped unctuous midnight nectar in a spaceship style cellar. The building was designed to use gravity and natural light to complete the wine-making process. Essentially, grapes are surveyed from the cellar’s rooftop garden. Then crushed into 52 concrete vats on the ground floor. Before being barrelled into dark cellars below.
Like Margaux or Haut-Brion, Cheval Blanc isn’t a vineyard you pitch up at wearing Decathlon khakis. You have to ‘know shit’, which is where Wine Cab comes in. Most of Beucher’s guests are clued-up winos who like to purchase a case at cellar prices, before lobbing it into the taxi and speeding to the next domaine. (For the record, a store-purchased six bottle case of 2015 Cheval Blanc would set you back around £5,000.)
Even Wine Cab can’t cover the biggest wine-making area in France. Which is why other tours are zoned into areas like St-Emilion, a UNESCO-protected village with so many wine shops it’s near impossible to buy a bottle of Evian. Or Sauternes, the sweet white zone that includes Chateau d'Yquem, a wine so unique that it changes colour from sand through ruby during an ageing process that can last a century.
Hardcore oenophiles can try Beucher’s Marathon tour at €230 per person. Read seven hours of chateaux visits, 18 tastings and a cinematic weave across the Margaux region. Siting tipsy in the back of a London taxi has never been so appealing.