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Bonjour," says English-speaking Jerome Juhe, part of the winemaking team at Chateau La Lagune. Handsome and compact with dark hair and electrifying enthusiasm for his company's wine, he guides me through the remarkably modern and clean winemaking facilities, of which he is clearly proud. Looking at this spacious, almost futuristic winery, I find incredible juxtaposition between what I see and the romance of its history, which was created in the 17th century by the aristocratic Seguineau family. Researching the Chateau's early years brings images familiar to anyone who might have seen the film Dangerous Liaisons or any film set in the sophisticated, aristocratic world of France during the 17th and 18th centuries. By all accounts, the first generation of the Seguineau family made a success of the Chateau, but it was ultimately acquired by Jouffrey Piston who is credited with building the winery up to the point it was included as a Troisieme Cru in the 1855 Bordeaux classification. Cycles of good and bad times occurred for the next century. By the time George Brunet, an agricultural engineer, bought the Chateau in 1958, it had fallen on rough times. Brunet replanted the vineyard and set the tone for the success it is enjoying today under the Frey family. On the tour, Jerome Juhe shows me not one sorting table, but three, so that only the ripest, most perfect grapes make the cut. The first sorting table vibrates, with the perforated belt eliminating all small residual plant matter and so forth. The grape bunches next move to a second four-meter table where six people remove grapes that are less than perfect. After de-stemming, six more workers make a final meticulous selection. Even before the grapes roll onto the sorting table, Jerome tells me, workers have been carefully trained to cut only the most perfect grapes. Many of the pickers (around 140) have been faithful to La Lagune for generations, and arrive at harvest as family units. The job is difficult. The picking team cuts grapes by hand, placing them in small, perforated crates so as not to bruise them. At times, they may need to go through the vineyard in several waves to pick grapes at optimum ripeness. "They are paid well," says Jerome, adding that the workers enjoy the traditional feast that most vineyard workers enjoy during the harvest. At mid-day, workers feast on a variety of hearty meals that may include plum pork sausages, lamb, and stews, sometimes washed down with hearty red wine. Treating workers well, I discover, helps the quality of the grapes. Repeat pickers know the vineyard and know to choose the ripest grapes. By serving lunch, Chateaux lets the workers know they care. This also gives the pickers a sense of solidarity. Once the grapes are selected and de-stemmed, they are lightly crushed and ready to go into the vats by gravity flow, without using pumps. Two stainless steel arms with a four percent gradient slowly feed the 72 temperature-controlled stainless steel vats, arranged in an arc. The large number of vats, of varying sizes, means that separate lots from different plots can be fermented separately, facilitating the fine-tuning of the final blend. Jerome is well pleased to show off the new vat room (operational since 2004) with a surface area of over 2,000 meters. Quite a site, these gleaming silver vats — so pristine one can almost see their own reflection — and the tan hardwood floors. Architect Patrick Baggio won the competition to design this state-of-the-art room, with its timbered ceiling with exposed poplar beams. It's difficult to describe the sensation of standing in this room at Chateau LaLune. You can understand why virtually all wine rooms, regardless of their modernity or condition, feel good. It is the room where magic is made. Alchemy. The allure of turning grapes into wine. The beauty of this room, with all its high-tech touches, combined with the faint but still-there aroma of musk, raises your endorphins and just makes you feel good - and thirsty for a bottle of their award-winning wine. Fermentation, Jerome now explains, is slow and gentle. The aim is to make the most of the grapes to maintain finesse, elegance, and balance. Extraction is maximized by pumping over a short period twice a day. This is the process of moving the heavy solids from the bottom of the vat to the top, thus breaking the thick cap that forms. In some years, pre-fermentation maceration is carried out. Yeast is indigenous. Alcoholic fermentation lasts four to six days, pumping over both with and without oxygen. Post-fermentation vatting takes place at 30 degrees for six days, and then the juice is pressed and run off in separate lots. From 2003 to today, Chateau La Lagune started using 55 percent new barrels from the best oak-producing regions to barrel-age their wines, which gives the wines structure as well as complexity and toasty, vanilla overtones. Now the Chateau uses medium-toasted barrels (degrees of toasting, or charring, the interior of the wine barrel is an important factor for winemakers who want to achieve a certain style), but may evolve toward medium plus in the future. The remaining 45 percent of the wine is aged in barrels that have been used for one previous vintage. Barrel aging lasts 15-18 months, with the glass bungs on top for the first six months and topping up several times a week; then the barrels are turned with the bung on the side. The wine is racked every three months, and fined with egg whites before bottling. I'm a bit incredulous when we peer into the bottling room. It is such a small and simple operation. Several young women run the labeling machine. At the end, a man gently puts the wine into cedar-scented wood boxes with the Chateau La Lagune insignia. Without much of a stretch, one can well imagine a similar type of operation before the machine age. The tasting room is gorgeous and modern, yet with ancient touches. The walls are limestone brick, and art is somewhat Mediterranean in theme. The two bottles of wine sitting on the table grab my attention at once. We taste a 2004 and 2005, both excellent but quite young with at least ten years of bottle aging in their future. Yet already, the wine has good red fruit and hints of violet, lavender, lilac, plum, smoke, and vanilla that will develop into a fine wine for a celebratory occasion that has yet to occur

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