Chateau Grand Barrail Hotel and Spa Review

Every so often I find somewhere truly special and I have no idea how. I’ve been waiting to write this review of the Chateau Grand Barrail Hotel and Spa in Saint Emilion since our first day there. This is a truly special hotel. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we’ve been to Bordeaux 4 times in the last year. We were really excited to take my mom and my sister to Bordeaux, but we wanted to balance our Bordeaux and Paris itinerary with something a little more relaxing. We love wines from Pomerol and Saint Emilion, and the Chateau Grand Barrail Hotel is perfectly between those two vineyards! Everything about this hotel was so perfect that I feel 100% certain that we’ll be back! If we go back to the Bordeaux area this summer, I’m lobbying for another stay at this amazing chateau hotel near Saint Emilion!

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Booking the Grand Barrail Hotel & Spa

One of the things that can make booking hotels a little extra special is using a travel advisor. As a Small Luxury Hotels travel advisor, I can help you book the Grand Barrail Hotel with additional perks and benefits. Some of the SLH Perks at the Chateau Grand Barrail include the following:

• A hotel property credit ($50-$100) at the spa, restaurant, or bar
• Daily breakfast
• Room upgrade, subject to availability
• Early check-in / late check-out, subject to availability

Feel free to reach out to me via FORA if I can provide you a quote for your trip to Saint Emilion!

Getting to Saint Emilion and the Grand Barrail

The easiest way to get to Bordeaux from Paris by train. It takes just over two hours, and it’s so much easier than driving. (We drove from Mont St Michel to Bordeaux this past summer, and it was a long drive!) If you’re staying in Bordeaux, you don’t need a car. However, to visit the vineyards around Bordeaux, it’s easier to have a car. We picked up a car at the Bordeaux train station for our stay in Saint Emilion and returned in there 30 minutes before our train. It was truly perfect.

The drive from the Bordeaux train station to Chateau Grand Barrail took about 45 minutes. It’s easy drive and the French are very courteous drivers. If you want to read more about driving in France, I love the DK Road Trips in France and Lonely Planet Best Road Trips in France books. I do advise that if you want to visit Bordeaux, stay in Bordeaux. The time it takes getting in and out of the city isn’t necessarily worth the frustration for a day trip (to me). We really enjoyed having the two different experiences between staying in Bordeaux and staying in the vineyards around Bordeaux.

If you are looking for a hotel in Saint Emilion (the village), I can also help you book Hotel de Pavie. Hotel de Pavie is a Relais and Chateaux hotel in the center of Saint Emilion. We chose Chateau Grand Barrail specifically for the spa, and it was the perfect decision for this trip.

Room 230 – Deluxe Room

We booked 3 rooms at the Grand Barrail Hotel and Spa, and they were kind enough to upgrade us all to deluxe rooms on the second floor. Our rooms were housed in the annex and right above the spa, which was perfect. We were truly able to easily enjoy all the R&R that the resort had to offer.

The finishes in the Grand Barrail Hotel are truly luxurious. Our room had a four-poster bed and the linens were truly luxury. The mattress and bed were very comfortable. (I spend A LOT of time researching beds before we’ll stay in a new hotel.) The same was true with the bathroom. My mom’s room had a deep soaking tub, but our room had a fantastic walk-in shower. Bath amenities were Sothy’s, which we enjoyed during our stay at Chateau d’Audrieu near Bayeux last summer. Water pressure was great, and we had plenty of hot water. I could not find fault with this hotel room if I tried.

One of the things that I truly loved about this hotel is that every room was different. Our room was green and my sister’s room was yellow. The accents were beautiful and unique to each room. Our deluxe rooms each had a small sitting area. We each had a balcony, though my mom’s room (228) had the best view of the château! While it was a little too cold and damp to enjoy the balcony while we were there, we did enjoy having the sitting area. My sister, Tom, and I would often retire to one of our rooms to enjoy a glass of wine. (They paired perfectly with the chocolates that the hotel provided! The chocolates were amazing!)

Grand Barrail Spa

As I mentioned, we booked the Grand Barrail specially because of the spa. Similar to one of our favorite hotels in Eguisheim, the spa at the chateau overlooks the vineyard. Even on cloudy days, it was absolutely beautiful! The sauna is very large, and they also have a hamman. You don’t need a reservation or appointment to use the spa area, and the spa staff are extraordinarily kind.

Like the bath amenities, the spa partners with Sothy’s. If I had to give you advice, I would tell you to get a body treatment with the fleur d’orange and bois de cedre. The scent is unbelievable. If you’re looking for a gift for someone, the Sothy’s body oil or cream would make a great one. My sister and I are obsessed with it.

Dining at Chateau Grand Barrail

As soon as I booked the Grand Barrail, they reached out about securing a reservation in the restaurant. The hotel restaurant is quite famous and it does fill up. In fact, if you look at reviews for the hotel, you will often see that people most complain about not being able to get a reservation as a hotel guest. If you are hoping to dine at the hotel, make a reservation. Even though we visited Saint Emilion in off-season, the hotel restaurant stayed busy.

While we didn’t have dinner at the hotel on this trip, we did have our breakfast every morning in the Mauresque dining room. It’s hard to imagine anywhere more beautiful to have breakfast. The buffet is set up in the Grand Salon and it offered a wide variety of cold and warm options. I found the fruit and pastries to be most enjoyable. My sister and I were both excited to see the buffet offered canales, a traditional pastry from Bordeaux.

We also had a couple of glasses of wine at the hotel bar when we arrived. They have a fantastic wine list with one of our favorite Pommerol wines, Chateau Mazeyres, and another wine that we discovered during our stay, Château Fonroque. The bar is ridiculously cozy and impeccably designed.

Where to Eat near Grand Barrail Hotel and Spa

Due to work and the desire to truly relax, we opted for easier meals while we were staying in Saint Emilion. Our first dinner was at La Pizzeria du Vieux Lavoir, which is a very friendly restaurant near the old wash house in the old city of Saint Emilion. Like most restaurants in Saint Emilion, they had a fantastic wine list and made wonderful recommendations. The salad was a work of art and the pizza was delicious. And, Tom and my sister were obsessed with the roasted camembert cheese that was served in puff pastry with truffle ham.

Another evening, we drove to Libourne and had a quick meal at Sabora Burgers. This burger restaurant was off the red carpet of Libourne leading off the main market square and it was insanely French with a chic, modern vibe. Burgers were made to order with fresh ingredient. Libourne was very cute and had a small Christmas market in the town center. I loved how festive it was! The Bordeaux Christmas markets don’t open until closer to the start of advent season, so I was really surprised to see the marche de Noel open in Libourne! (We all know I love a great chandelier Christmas light!)

Our November France Itinerary

Sometimes I think it’s helpful to see how people divide their time when they are putting together itinerary. For our November trip, we flew in and out of CDG. We took the train straight to Bordeaux upon arrival in Paris. It ended up being an 11 night trip for us, though you could cut down the time in Paris or Bordeaux to make this a shorter trip. I would do at least two nights at the Chateau Grand Barrail though. It’s one of those places where I definitely wished we had more time because it was so fantastic.

• 4 nights in Bordeaux at Hotel FirstName
• 2 nights near Saint Emilion at Chateau Grand Barrail Hotel and Spa
• 5 nights in Paris at the Park Hyatt Paris (my sister only stayed for 3, so you could cut it back!)

Visiting Wineries near Saint Emilion

As I mentioned, I was really excited when I found out that the Grand Barrail Hotel was near Pomerol and Saint Emilion. We have a couple of wineries that we love that are less than a 30 minutes drive and some of the mare less than 15 minutes from the hotel!

Wine tasting in France (and especially Bordeaux!) is a lot of different than wine tasting in Italy. Many won’t offer any visits to the public, so it’s important to reach out in advance and try to schedule appointments. Since we almost always do a wine and cheese tasting in Paris, we reached out to one of our favorite sommeliers for recommendations on wineries near Bordeaux to visit.

We visited Château Mazeyres in Pomerol, which is one of the hotel’s exclusive partners. (We were very excited to see it on the wine menu when arrived.) It’s a small biodynamic producer that is an absolutely fascinating visit. We also visited Château Tour Grand Faurie in Saint Emilion. This was actually the top recommendation from the Maison des Vins de Saint Emilion, the official wine shop of Saint Emilion. We were very excited about that because the family that provided our tasting was so kind. It’s a small operation with fantastic wines. Lastly, we dropped in at Clos du Roy in Fronsac. It’s a wine that we’ve had at one of our favorite restaurants in Paris. They were very kind to accommodate our visit, sell us wine, and ship some to our hotel!

While Saint Emilion felt daunting during the summer with the day trippers, no restaurant reservations, and no game plan, it was positively lovely in November. It was very quiet, and we were able to find some interesting wines to bring home. If you can’t get a visit to a winery scheduled, I would definitely suggest visiting Maison des Vins, which is right next to the Saint-Émilion Collegial church. Don’t forget to see the cloisters, too. They are beautiful.