Over the last few years, however, another owner – this time French hotelier and multimillionaire businessman Michel Reybier – has made his own stamp on Chateau Cos d’Estournel, redrawing its architecture in the model of cutting-edge 21^st century design. The centerpiece of a visit today is the new vat room. Covering 2,000m2 of floor space, with 1000m2 of passageways, the entire thing is gravity-fed, with no pumps used anywhere during the creation of the wine. There are 72 stainless steel tanks, each with two chambers to ensure true plot-by-plot vinification. They claim that no vat room in Bordeaux has this capacity. The whole cellar reaches up 30 metres at its highest point, and heads 10 metres underground at its lowest – and director Jean Guillaume Prats (son of former owner Bruno Prats) attests that it has the highest capacity of any cellar in the Medoc.