Bordeaux Tourist Guide

The very name conjures up visions of murky cellars, ancient oaken casks and shimmering dark red nectar in old dusty bottles.  For some of us maybe it’s a flashback of James Bond sipping a glass of an oh-so-sophisticated (and wildly expensive) Chateau Lafite-Rothschild as he coolly eradicates the villains. Though a lot of changes have taken place over the years, Bordeaux wines are still as good and perhaps even better than their well-deserved reputation.

Since around 50AD, when the Romans began planting grapes for wine to serve their armies in the field, the region of France known as Bordeaux has been producing some of the finest wines in the world.  For many years none of it was exported, but when Henry Plantagenet married Eleanor of Aquitaine in the 12^th century and Bordeaux became an English territory, the British discovered Bordeaux wine and embraced it with enthusiasm (they called it ‘claret’, and still do).

After the Hundred Years War in the 1400’s, France took back control of the territory, and by 1725 grape production had increased so much that the wine began to be labelled by the specific region and area it came from.  When in the 1780’s an infestation of Phylloxera killed off most of the vines in the Bordeaux area, native vines were grafted to disease-resistant American rootstock, and to this day all the surviving vines are a product of that grafting.

As the fame of Bordeaux wine grew to worldwide proportions, vintners in other areas began using the Bordeaux appellation, so the legitimate growers formed an association called INAO (Institut National des Appellations de’Origine) to prevent this form of wine plagiarism. The labelling of wine from the nine regions of the Bordeaux area is currently very tightly controlled and overseen by several organizations to insure accuracy and maintain the superb quality of the product.

In the Bordeaux region today, almost 300,000 acres are devoted to the production of different varieties including Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Sauvignon Blanc grapes.  Bordeaux wines are predominantly red, though the white wines are just as famous in their own right.  All of those millions and millions of grape vines are individually pruned by hand, and in some of the most prestigious chateaux the grapes are still picked by hand.

Though some aspects of modern technology have encroached on the chateaux of Bordeaux, the very finest (and most expensive) of the wines made here reflect the many centuries of hands-on experience in wine-making embodied in the name Bordeaux.

There is no need to travel to France to enjoy Bordeaux wines.  The wines are widely available in UK wine merchants and supermarkets, stocking a wide range of French wine to suit all budgets from every day Blanc de Blancs to the finest St. Emilion Grand Cru vintages.