Jean-Michel Cazes is an ambassador of wine well-known all over the world. Deeply involved in the professional life of the region since the 1970s, he personifies both the revival of his domaine of Lynch-Bages and associated properties and the promotion of the wines of Bordeaux. While the taste of wine is at the heart of his enthusiasm, it is his desire to make it part of the art of living and to share a continuing heritage that, in 1990, led him to create the Relais & Châteaux Cordeillan-Bages.
Since 2003, the Cazes family has revived Bages, a village devoted to wine and the pleasures of the palate, in the heart of the vineyards of Pauillac. The hamlet has become an attraction not only for the tourists coming to visit the Médoc, but also for the local people of the vineyard. Wine and the art of living is also the recurrent interest of Kinou Cazes-Hachemian. She, with her father, is the driving force of Bages.
Living near New York City with her husband and children, she selects objects connected with wine and gastronomy from all over the world, as well as the creations of designers and the works of art that are to be found everywhere in the Lynch- Bages wineries and the réception rooms of Cordeillan, as well as in the boutiques in the village. Appreciative of all the pleasures of lifts as well as of the table, a great traveler with an insatiable curiosity, a skilled and generous cook, it is she who had the idca of producing a book associating the history of Lynch-Bages with the cuisine that the Cazes family offers all its guests, in the Cordeillan-Bages restaurant as well as at family gatherings.
Jean-Luc Rocha is the chef of Cordeillan-Baltes with its two Michelin stars and he is the holder of the prestigious craftsmen's award Meilleur Ouvrier de France 2007. He has taken up the challenge of interpreting the recipes of the Cazes family so as to present them in this book together with his own creations. just as his experiences with Patrick Henrioux at La Pyramide in Vienne, with Thierry Marx at Cordeillan-Bages, have stimulated his cuisine, the idea of expressing the art of living through veine, from the glass to the plate, could only inspire him.
These pages are a tribute to his cuisine that is delicious balanced, sincere, rigorous, and inventive. Philip Martineau, specialist food and wine photographer, has been responsible for expressing in his images the art of living at Lynch-Bages, the recipes of jean-Luc Rocha, and the famous terroir of the Médoc that is synonymous with excellent wine. He has recently illustrated Cocktails by Le Forum (Le Chêne, 2012), Flottes, Recettes et Secrets de Famille (Le Chêne, 2011), Les Plus Grands Vins de l'Europe (Flammaarion 2009), and Des Boissons et des Hommes (Le Cherche-Midi 2008).
