Grapevine Direct

Bordeaux

A note about ageing the wines : Click here

About the Region

Passionate winemaking of affordable wines does exist in this, the quintessentially upmarket wine region. We have dilligently sought them out....

Click here for more background on the region

Some Key Regional Grape Varieties: Red: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec, Petit Verdot - White : Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc, Muscadelle Click here for more grape varieties Click here for other Regions

The Region

Bordeaux is France’s fifth most populous city, and sits astride the river Garonne 25 km or so above its confluence with the Dordogne just before the town of Blaye on its right bank. Here it forms the Gironde, a massive estuary roughly 80 km long and over 10 km wide at its widest, which itself runs out into the Bay of Biscay and the Atlantic Ocean. This is effectively where the whole of the wet South West drains out, the basin for all its other great rivers and indeed, the city’s very name reflects its watery roots – bord d’eaux meaning ‘the water’s edge’.

Like the Rhône valley and Burgundy, Bordeaux can appear difficult to ‘navigate’ due both to its sheer size and complexity as well as to its elevated status, even mystique. It is, however, a wine region like any another, and as with all wine regions, the best way to begin to understand them is to look at the geography.

The region’s rivers divide it into three main wine producing areas.

The first main district, which lies south and west of the Gironde/Garonne (‘left bank’), can be further split into three principal districts – Médoc (itself divided into Médoc and Haut-Médoc), Graves and Sauternes.

Very approximately, the Médoc (and more specifically still, the Haut-Médoc) is where all the really great and famous Bordeaux reds are concentrated, particularly in the commune (village) appellation of Paulliac, which contains three of the five so-called ‘first growth’ châteaux (Château Lafite, Château Mouton-Rothschild, Château Latour). At its best the soil is typically gravely and very well drained, terroir ideally suited to the aristocratic elegance and power of the Cabernet Sauvignon grape which in this area is typically the senior partner in blends with its softer, rounder blending partner Merlot.

Graves, as the name suggests, also has gravely soil, and is home to prestigious reds and whites – the only Bordeaux district to be known for both.

Sauternes is famous for producing some of the best (and most expensive) sweet white wines in the world from a combination of Sémillon, Sauvignon Blanc and Muscadelle grapes.

The second main district is made up of several areas north and east of the Gironde and Dordogne (‘right bank’), including, famously, Pomerol and Saint-Emilion, as well as the less stellar (but very interesting) Côte de Bourg, Premieres Côtes de Blaye and Fronsac. The ‘right bank’ is often set up against the ‘left bank’ as being the hunting ground for the bargain hunter in Bordeaux trying to escape the price-inflating vortex centring around the Haut-Médoc. This has a good deal of truth to it, though there are plenty of exceptions to prove that rule on either bank. The two banks are often also contrasted as having different terroir with the soggier, clay-based heavier soil and cooler climate of the right bank favouring Merlot over Cabernet Sauvignon, and so giving softer, more Merlot-influenced wines. Again, although this is generally true, it is by no means unfailingly so.

Lastly, the large expanse that lies between the Garonne and the Dordogne is Entre Deux Mers, literally ‘Between Two Seas’, a reference to its being surrounded – on two sides at least – by water. This is a beautiful area of green rolling rural countryside where other forms of agriculture coexist alongside viticulture. This is principally a dry white wine region producing simple, good value wine from Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc grapes.

Bordeaux is spread along the banks o f its rivers and is bordered to the west by the sea, to north by the Cognac region, to the east by the northernmost regions of the South West and to the south by the massive coastal pine forest of Les Landes.

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