Stepping off the street and into Club des Châteaux in Saldanha, you’ll find lilac walls, French blue accents, mismatched baroque chairs, and sturdy marble-topped café tables. A corridor between the bar and a bookcase filled with wine bottles leads to a stone-walled tavern dotted with iron lanterns, whose cozy glow reflects off rows upon rows of inverted bottles, wooden barrels, and wooden tasting tables. A sign reads “Sundays: six oysters for six euros.” I was sold, and I had only just walked in.
The club is a straight-to-consumer distribution point for 13 wineries, twelve of which are French and one of which is Portuguese. You’ll find all the famous regions like Alsace, Bordeaux, Burgundy, Champagne, Douro, and more represented here among the shelves, all brought in directly from the producers, thanks to partnerships established by Xavier Boyreau and his team.
Atlas sat down for a chat with the owner of Lisbon’s only châteaux, which has been around since the summer of 2020.
Xavier greeted me with his charming French accent and invited me to a table. I hadn’t bothered looking at the wine list when I sat down, as it was clear I was in good hands. He explained that there at the Châteaux, you’ll find more than just wine — there’s a family story to go with each, and boards of local Portuguese and French cheeses to sweeten the deal.
Xavier learned much about what he knows about wine during years of hands-on work at small production vineyards in Bordeaux, now run by his brother and cousin, that have changed hands within the family for the last 10 generations. From there, Xavier gained insider knowledge of other similarly-sized vineyards across France, and he struck up the key partnerships that made the club possible.
All of the wines carried here are from family-owned operations with a similar history to Xavier’s Chateau Piron label. They range from eight to 80 hectares in size, and have between three and 10 generations or more of history— and three of them are medieval castles surrounded by vines.
Pointing out a bottle of Château d’Arlay from Cote du Jura, Xavier said, “This vineyard has been family-owned for over 1,000 years and it still makes wine the old way — by throwing all the varieties of grapes together without separating them. It gives it a very interesting flavor that is difficult to come by nowadays.”
There are about 50 to 60 different wines for sale on the bookshelf across from the bar, all labeled by region, and all directly from the producers. Tastings are available at any time, there are some solidly Portuguese and wonderfully French bites on the menu, and the club hosts regular thematic tastings that it publicizes in its newsletter.
Xavier said, “While the Club de Châteaux hopes to teach people about wine, it’s most important to me that we can just offer our guests a nice moment. We won’t force you to learn anything, but would love to have a conversation. Countries can be very nationalistic with their wine selections and what imports and exports travel over the borders, so unless you travel to France often, it’s hard to understand our wine culture. I hope to change that, at least a little bit, with this place.”
Bringing French wines to Portugal was the first step, and the next was to bring them to the table. Xavier sat me down for a tasting so that I could understand the world of small production French wine a bit better. Six different wines were placed in front of me with a tabua of cheeses to the side.
The six sips that followed ranged from a wood barrel white Bordeaux to the Château d’Arlay red and a Malbec from just outside Toulouse. We finished with a sweet late-harvest white from Saint Croix du Mont paired with a bit of Roquefort cheese. Dry, rich, raw, refined, and delicate, each one had its own personality. Suffice it to say we learned a lot, and walked away with a couple of bottles to pair with dinner.
