Saint-Émilion is a wine village that looks like a stage set, with steep, cobbled lanes tumbling down a limestone hillside, golden stone houses, and a bell tower rising above the rooftops. The UNESCO listing covers not just the village but its whole jurisdiction, eight parishes of vineyards around it, recognising a landscape in which vines have been cultivated since Roman times. The village grew around the hermitage of Émilion, a Breton monk who lived in a cave here in the eighth century, and its most remarkable monument is the monolithic church, carved out of the rock beneath the bell tower.
The vineyards surround the village on all sides, with famous châteaux names on every gate. Many estates offer tastings and tours, though the most prestigious ones need booking well in advance. Underneath the village and its surroundings lie miles of quarries from which the stone was extracted, now used as cellars, and some are open to visitors. The cool, damp air smells of wine and stone.
For riders, the lanes through the vineyards are delightful, narrow and winding, rising and falling gently over the low hills of the Libournais. Traffic is light outside harvest time, but in September and October tractors, harvest workers and grape trailers make the lanes slow. The village centre itself is a challenge: cobbles are steep, slippery when wet, and parking is limited, so leave the bike at the edge and walk in.
Libourne, seven kilometres away, is a bastide town on the Dordogne with fuel, markets and plenty of restaurants. Saint-Émilion has cafés and restaurants of its own, along with its famous macarons, made here since the seventeenth century, according to local tradition, by Ursuline nuns. From here, the Dordogne valley leads east toward Bergerac and Périgord, while Bordeaux is just under an hour west. Come early in the morning or late in the afternoon to avoid the tour coaches, when the stone glows warm in the low sunlight.