Saint Emilion or Sarlat la Caneda?

What time of year, and will you have a car? Is everyone a wine-drinker?

Sarlat-la-Canéda!

Yes, we will have a car. Aiming to travel in early October. 2 adults and 2 children.

Sarlat-la-Canéda has an old town with lots of shops and street performers, which I think will be enjoyable for the children. Our grandchildren (9 and 12 at the time) loved it.
Saint Emilion is undoubtedly the preferred choice for wine lovers, but outside of wine-related activities (vineyards, wine tastings,, etc) it has far less to see than Sarlat in my opinion.

Sarlat has large food markets on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. I went on a rainy Wednesday, so there weren't a lot of shoppers, but there were many, many vendors; the Saturday market is even larger and includes non-food goods. The non-food booths tend to be open in the afternoon as well as the morning. Check parking arrangements carefully if you're there on one of the market days.

Although I also enjoyed St-Emilion, the historic area is quite steep, and the cobblestones on one street in particular could be trecherous in the rain. St-Emilion is more intensely wine-focused than Sarlat, I think.

Been to both as well…Sarlat is the better choice. Saint Emilion was really cute but Sarlat was a nice place to spend a couple of nights.

And acraven is not exaggerating the steepness in Saint Emilion. There is one cobblestone street that is so unbelievably steep. It has handrails that travel intermittently along the length of the road - inexplicable unless their purpose is to allow you to fall and use the handrail to pull yourself back up so that you can inch forward and fall again:)

Our Road Scholar group had to go down that street in an October rainstorm - and we joked/had nightmares about it for a few days.