Wednesday. Woke up feeling dopey. Can’t imagine why: I must be working too hard. The Frey family, lithe and athletic, were at breakfast, and must have been puzzled to see their guest looking so bleary-eyed. Drove through traffic jams to Pomerol to taste some 2008s from the Moueix stable, and a vertical tasting of Chateau Hosanna.

Those invited then drove on to Chateau Bélair in St Emilion, which Moueix had acquired last year and renamed Bélair-Monange to distinguish the property from the over one hundred other Belairs in Bordeaux. Renovation of the property was well under way, and Christian and Cherise Moueix had decided to host a lunch at Bélair during Vinexpo.

In warm sunshine, but with a gentle breeze to refresh us, we sipped Roederer before taking our places within the open marquee. The menu was in the hands of the legendary Michel Guérard, who was present to eat his own food. The idea was to provide a ‘light’ lunch for the jaded guests, but how Guérard managed to combine a genuine lightness of touch and texture with the use of about a kilo of butter per course was a mystery.

A raging toothache meant I had to chomp with care but it didn’t stop me talking to my neighbours, especially Marie-France Manoncourt from Figeac, who was bemused, after over half a century of marriage, to be addressed by another guest as ‘Mademoiselle’. ‘I can’t remember the last time that happened,’ she whispered to me.

Also present were the wife and daughter of the previous owner, Pascal Delbeck, and I was surely not alone in sensing his gentle spirit still about the place. For his family returning to Bélair must have been a bittersweet experience, but they must know the property is in the best of hands.

I had intended to go to a Pomerol tasting at Vinexpo after lunch, but unhappy teeth and a touch of fatigue persuaded me to return to La Lagune for a fortifying nap.

Drove down to Chateau Haut-Bailly near Léognan for their usual Vinexpo dinner. The property likes to show its latest ten vintages, and follows the tasting with a good dinner. Véronique Sanders, who manages the property, likes to mix up her guests, blending négociants, importers, journalists, sommeliers, and others. I ran into Bill Harlan of Harlan Estate in Napa and he introduced me to the owner of Screaming Eagle, who was standing next to him. You never know who you see at a Vinexpo party.

Harlan was also at my table, as was Robert Wilmers, the American owner of Haut-Bailly, and journalists Jeannie Cho Lee MW from Hong Kong and Michel Bettane. On either side of me sat last year’s best sommelier of the world, Andreas Larsson from Sweden, and Shyda Gilmer, the Chief Operating Officer of Sherry-Lehmann in New York. Shyda was candid about the adjustments his famous company needed to make to weather the economic crisis. With Andreas, whom I have known for some years, I just gossiped.

Véronique had chosen to pour just three wines with dinner: 1998, 1988, and 1978. They were all delicious, showing the restraint, elegance, and perfect balance for which Haut-Bailly is justly renowned. The wines may seem understated when young, but how well they cruise through the decades. They brought together a hundred or so very different people, from diverse backgrounds, nationalities, and ages, but all united by a love of good wine.

The harmonious atmosphere was marred when, during Andreas’s eloquent commentary on the wines, a journalist intervened with some remarks on the 1978 vintage, only to be loudly rebuked by Michel Bettane, who said he had got it all wrong.

Guy Woodward, the editor of Decanter, made a prompt departure at midnight to join another party on a boat in Bordeaux. The stamina of youth! I was back at La Lagune by 1 a.m., but found the main door locked and all the lights out. I scurried through a side wing that led to the kitchen, rigid with anxiety in case I set off alarms (it has happened before, at other châteaux), but I managed to stumble to my room in the dark without waking everybody for miles around.

Vinexpo 2009 on decanter.com