Several years ago we were contacted by Corinne Mentzelopoulos about fixing some things for their site, which was built by one of those agencies that had 12 cities on their business card, but then went under without warning. The site was very much in advance in the technology it used, but had some failings they wanted to fix, so we met several times to address the issues.

Again, I use the word privilege to describe working with Corinne and Paul Pontalier. Over long term projects, which this one turned out to be, you end up get closer to knowing the humans behind the wine and the property. It's a delight to talk about all kinds of things with these folks, and they're a lot more relaxed than when you see them at major events like primeurs tastings.The first meeting began with a tasting with Paul. It was like something out of a movie. Although we're not professionals in that aspect of the wine business, people Like Paul Pontalier or Jean-Bernard Delmas, who tasted with us at Haut-Brion on our first visit there in the late 90's, are patient and they observe how you look at and treat the wine. There's no need to pretend to know anything more about it. It's always wonderful to taste wine with the person responsible for making it, whether that's a small garage outfit or a Bordeaux First Growth. They're always happy, and I assume proud to show you, as a guest, how great the wine is in its class. Over the course of our work at Margaux, we got a deeper insight into the way Corinne and Paul work. They were generous in every way, but cautious about revealing the Château to the general public.

I told Paul a story that happened to me years back, where a wine maker had made some Petit Verdot, just because it's so hard to do. We tasted it at a dinner in Fresno, and it was... "rough". I couldn't presume to speak to Paul about wine, so I used "rough", the first descriptive word to come to my mind. We somehow repeated this word "rough", placed in the middle of a French sentence (c'était un peu rough...)  to each other over a few times over the next few months and it became a kind of joke between us.

While we were looking for a subcontractor to deal with the .NET aspects of that site, we met several potential partners in Paris. Their sales people had cold-called Château Margaux several times a year, trying to work with them, not imagining that it's extremely rare that a Bordeaux 1st growth will pay attention to a cold call. Not only have they been around for centuries, but a friend in the business here in town joked recently that it takes them about 25-50 years to make up their minds about some decisions. The hardest part of projects like this is explaining the idea that visitors like to explore a site, not be driven on a guided tour, which is what happens with many Flash sites. In the end, Château Margaux decided to follow our final bit of advice and convert the Flash site to HTML. No more menu bar that floats up, if and only if you guess you have to mouse over a word. I see a new feature now, one that allows you to trace the bottle to determine authenticity.

I've always been told that Bordeaux is a very closed and jealously guarded world, so each time we are invited into the back rooms, graciously served a meal or a glass of amazing wine and in some cases told "vous êtes chez vous", becoming part of the "family", I treasure the experience and realize how lucky I've been to meet so many interesting people in Bordeaux, just as I had in Los Angeles in what seems like a century ago.