Paris to Saint Emilion

The train? Unless you want to rent a car.

I should have mentioned - they already have a car.

There are trains beyond Libourne to St Emilion, but they aren't especially frequent. When you book your rail ticket, look initially for journeys all the way to St Emilion and see if they are convenient.

(St Emilion station is a longish uphill walk to the town itself, but if your friends are collecting you by car that probably won't matter.)

The best option is as said above to just buy a ticket to Saint Emillion and take the train from Paris to Libourne that coordinates with a train from Libourne to Saint Emillion. Second best is a taxi -- I have no idea how much it would cost. Third option is the 302 TransGironde bus. It's only about a 15 minute drive from Saint Emillion to Libourne. Can't your friends with the rented car come and pick you up from the train station or will you have to do the whole planes, trains and automobiles routine all the way from LA to their door?

Of course, your friends may be persuaded to pick you up at Libourne.

"Can't your friends with the rented car come and pick you up from the train station or will you have to do the whole planes, trains and automobiles routine all the way from LA to their door?"

LOL. My friends will be spending the prior week in Paris/Normandy before driving to Bordeaux via Loire Valley. Since their arrival in time St. Emilion is not known, I was looking at options to get from Libourne to St. Emilion. Hopefully they will have arrived in the area in time to pick me up at the Libourne train station when my train arrives at ~7pm.

Which brings up another item. The CDG train to Libourne train leaves at 2:09pm. I have a choice of flight arrival times from LAX to CDG of 6:35am or 11:20am. Is the 11:20 arrival at CDG to close to the train departure of 2:09pm, considering I have to clear entry and get baggage?

Three hours is enough time to enter Europe and transfer to a train at CDG if everything goes relatively according to plan. But if you have any significant flight delay, then you might miss the train, and most pre-paid tickets can't be used on later trains.

Ok, just for closure on this, I'm now ticketed via capitainetrain.com for CDG to Libourne, and will hope the flight gods smile on my scheduled arrival time at CDG.

Thanks to everyone for the info and advice.

Have a great trip.