The historic centre of Bordeaux has this year become a Unesco world heritage site (see the Unesco site for more details) and Bernard Magrez, owner of 35 vineyards around the world, mainly in Bordeaux and the Languedoc but also in South America and California, is going up-market in his bid to encourage visitors to his four top properties in Bordeaux – Chx Pape Clément (Graves), Fombrauge (St-Emilion), la Tour Carnet (Haut Médoc) and Pérenne (Premières Côtes de Blaye).
Magrez’s proposition includes a tour of these properties in the leather-bound luxury of a Rolls Royce, the chance to rest your weary bones overnight in the châteaux (I can only imagine how tiring it must be to travel in the wake of a flying angel), and his 180 m2 glass construction housing an art gallery and theatre at Pape-Clément, where a restaurant is also under construction.
Fortunately, Magrez does not seem to be spending his entire fortune on peripherals, if Jancis’s evaluation of some of his wines are anything to go by. See Bernard Magrez bordeaux back to 1998.