Best hotels in Bordeaux

An hour north of Bordeaux, the Médoc is almost all vines and flat as a pancake all the way to the Gironde estuary. And in the middle of the grape-drenched landscape is La Maison d'Estournel. An 18th-century manor that once belonged to Louis-Gaspard d'Estournel, the wine baron behind the Cos d'Estournel vineyard next door, it now welcomes wine-lovers to stay. With only 14 rooms, it's intimate and personal and the interiors are classic enough to make you feel like royalty, but with just the right amount of contemporary. The kitchen was left in the capable hands of Jérôme Banctel, the triple-Michelin-starred chef who also runs the stoves at La Réserve Paris.

Facing the opera house on one side of Bordeaux's grand central square is an 18th-century townhouse turned five-star hotel that goes by the name of Le Grand Hotel. All 130 rooms and suites are drenched in rich mauve, burnt orange and gilt that wouldn't look out of place in Marrakech, but actually, you're in the heart of the city. On the ground floor, there's a two-Michelin-starred kitchen and on the fifth, a Guerlain spa with a full roster of spectacular treatments. You're a few minutes on foot from Place Gambetta, the shops of Cours de l'Intendance, and the tram. But at this address, you may just never want to leave...

Ensconced by grand cru vines, barrel cellars and château gates, Les Sources de Caudalie is elegant French countryside living, personified. Built by the family behind Caudalie skincare, it's Bordeaux's only Palace-rated hotel and one of France's Three-Michelin-Key properties. The draw runs deeper than good wine, however, and the highlight is a spa fed by a hot spring, 540 metres underground with a list of treatments centred around the grapes next door. When you're finished being pampered, there are two-Michelin-starred restaurant to enjoy, and the vines of Smith Haut Lafitte just beyond the tree line. Come for the spa and stay for everything else.