Wine has been made on these limestone slopes since Ausonius; the town's Jurade dates to 1199 and the vineyard's medieval fame travelled to England as early as any in Gascony. The modern wine is Merlot's masterpiece — seven parts in ten — with Cabernet Franc, the local "Bouchet", bringing violets and a cool mineral spine.
Saint-Émilion is the friendlier pole of great Bordeaux: velvet where the Médoc is tweed, generous young yet limestone-fresh for decades. Its own classification, revised roughly each decade since 1955, keeps the hierarchy arguing — which is, locals will tell you, half the pleasure.