The Credentials:
A member of Relais & Chateaux Hotels, Le Saint-James is just 10km from Bordeaux. A contemporary hotel, it was designed in 1989 by architect Jean Nouvel, and inspired by the tobacco drying barns in the Lot region.
Formerly a restaurant, the 18th-century farmhouse at its centre was transformed and enlarged with four contemporary pavilions connected to the original building to create the hotel’s guest rooms. Nouvel sought to preserve their rusty, chipped, patinated appearance, leaving everything as authentic as possible. His other artistic choices included having the pavilions open out onto the natural surroundings to generate the sensation of lunching, dining, sleeping and relaxing in the very heart of the vineyards.
An architectural feat as atypical as it is eye-catching, the hotel is listed as part of France’s 20th-century architectural heritage. Distinguishing features include the long winding corridors, guest rooms and main building filled with beautifully curated contemporary art.
Dine:
Alongside the aesthetics, the hotel is internationally renowned for its restaurant. Originally from Cenon, chef Nicolas Magie concocts culinary wonders inspired by the Aquitaine region. Having worked in restaurants as prestigious as the Biarritz Miramar or Le Crillon alongside Chef Christian Constant, he serves inventive, creative cuisine that astounds but never strays too far from the great French classics.
Designed by Jean Nouvel to resemble a terraced garden in the valley overlooking Bordeaux, the dining room is really special. A large square of full-length windows and starched white linen sets the perfect backdrop for solid French traditions and innovative, perfectly executed cuisine. In a party of 10, every dish was incredible.
Breakfast is taken in the same sunlit dining room. With great service, a vast array of a-la-carte options, along with buffet dishes far beyond the all-too-common lukewarm, soggy scrambled egg, breakfast is not a meal to be missed.
There is also a more casual bistrot, Le Café de L‘Esperance, within staggering distance for a low-key, delicious but hearty dinner.
Sleep:
The rooms are unique and in a roundabout way have something of Le Corbusier’s Pompidou Centre at their soul. Wholly individual, and with a juxtaposition of ’80s avant-garde Parisian Basquiat combined with deserted vineyard surroundings, I’m hard-pressed to find anywhere comparable.
The beds were tall, vast, and with everything from the matress, blackout blinds, bedlinen and pillows conspiring to create the perfect night’s sleep I escaped for a nap at any opportunity.
Who Goes There?
Oenophiles, gourmands, art lovers, and jaded travellers in search of somewhere beautiful, different, and isolated but still close to Bordeaux.
Out and About:
Situated in Bouliac, a village with views so stunning it’s known as ‘the balcony of Bordeaux’, the hotel is close enough to the coast to enjoy boat trips through oyster farms, picnics on sandbars and unforgettable views of fishing shacks and the ocean beyond.
For foodies (and those too lazy to venture beyond the hotel’s gilded walls) there’s an onsite cookery school to teach even the most cack-handed guest to wow at dinner parties. If for nothing else, the meal you create makes one of the most satisfying, delicious lunches possible to enjoy with friends or family in the amazing surroundings.
The Worst Thing:
Some rooms are not hyper-luxurious in a conventional sense, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. The only thing that could have marred my experience was a gargantuan spider poised and waiting for me when I came back to my room one night. But after calling reception in terror, a strapping young man came and expertly removed him. All in all, a win.
The Best Thing:
The food, the beds, the staff, the aesthetics of the restaurant, the bar-cum-lounge-cum-terrace, and the long, expertly curated art-lined corridors.
