Bordeaux

Two rivers and an estuary

The easiest way into a map of Bordeaux is to follow the water. The Garonne, which runs through the city, meets the Dordogne at the Bec d'Ambès, and from there the Gironde estuary carries on to the Atlantic. Those three waterways divide up both the vineyard and the way Bordeaux talks about it. The Left Bank means the vineyards west of the Garonne and then of the estuary: the Médoc, the Graves and the Sauternais. The Right Bank means those on the right bank of the Dordogne and of the estuary: the Libournais around the town of Libourne, then Bourg and Blaye, looking across at the Médoc. Between the two rivers lies the Entre-deux-Mers — literally "between two seas".

The climate is temperate and oceanic. The estuary evens out temperature swings for the vineyards along its shores, and further south the Landes forest shelters the Ciron, a small river that turns out to matter a great deal for sweet wine.

Left Bank: gravel and Cabernet Sauvignon

"Graves" is first of all a kind of soil: pebbles and gravel laid down by the rivers, poor and free-draining, that store up the day's heat. The Graves district, which follows the Garonne from the edge of Bordeaux down to Langon, is named after it. Further north, the Médoc peninsula, squeezed between estuary and ocean, has mounds of gravel where Cabernet Sauvignon, a late-ripening variety, finds the warmth and drainage it needs. That is why it leads the red blends of the Left Bank, backed by Merlot and, in smaller amounts, Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot.

The Médoc works on two levels. The Médoc appellation, whose reds come mainly from the north of the peninsula, and the Haut-Médoc in the south cover broad areas; inside the Haut-Médoc, six communal appellations carry the name of a commune or a small group of communes: Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac, Saint-Julien, Margaux, Listrac-Médoc and Moulis-en-Médoc. In the Graves, the northern part closest to the city became a separate appellation, Pessac-Léognan, in 1987, making reds and dry whites; the Graves appellation, whose area still includes those communes, extends beyond Langon.

Right Bank: clay, limestone and Merlot

Cross the Dordogne and the landscape shifts. The relief is more broken and the soils are clay-limestone, with patches of gravel and sand. These cooler soils suit Merlot, which ripens earlier than Cabernet Sauvignon; it leads the blends here, with Cabernet Franc as its main partner.

The Libournais brings together a cluster of neighbouring appellations: Saint-Émilion, whose limestone plateau and slopes look down over the Dordogne valley and whose landscape has been a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1999; its four "satellite" appellations (Montagne, Lussac, Puisseguin and Saint-Georges); Pomerol and Lalande-de-Pomerol; Fronsac and Canon-Fronsac. In Pomerol, on deposits of gravel, clay and sand, Merlot is very clearly the dominant grape. Downstream, on the right bank of the estuary, the hills of Bourg and Blaye face the Médoc.

Entre-deux-Mers, between Garonne and Dordogne

The broad plateau between the two rivers has soils that mix clay, limestone and gravel. It grows both red and white grapes, and the Entre-deux-Mers appellation is best known for its dry whites. Along its southern edge, across the Garonne from the Sauternais, appellations such as Cadillac, Loupiac and Sainte-Croix-du-Mont make sweet wines shaped by noble rot.

The grapes: a culture of blending

A Bordeaux wine is almost always a blend of several varieties, and it is the way they complement each other, rather than any one of them alone, that gives Bordeaux its style. For reds, Merlot is by far the most planted grape, ahead of Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc; Petit Verdot, Malbec (also called Côt) and Carménère round out the range in small quantities. For whites, Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon dominate, with Muscadelle alongside and, more rarely, Sauvignon Gris, Colombard or Ugni Blanc.

The split between the two banks is not a rule but a tendency that follows the soil: Cabernet Sauvignon on the warm, free-draining gravel of the Left Bank, Merlot on the clay and limestone of the Right.

Dry and sweet

Bordeaux makes white wines in two opposite styles. Dry whites, most often blended from Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon, come from across the region, from the Entre-deux-Mers to the Graves and Pessac-Léognan. Sweet wines need a very particular setting. At Sauternes, the cold Ciron flows into the warmer Garonne, and in autumn the morning mists encourage Botrytis cinerea — noble rot — which concentrates the grapes. Picking is done by hand in successive passes through the vineyard. The Sauternes area covers five communes, including Barsac, which also has an appellation of its own: its growers may use either name.

Appellations within appellations

The Bordeaux hierarchy runs from the broadest to the most precise, on three levels. The regional appellations — Bordeaux, Bordeaux Supérieur, Crémant de Bordeaux — cover the whole vineyard: the Bordeaux appellation's geographical area spans 494 of the Gironde's 535 communes, leaving out the forested south-west of the département. The sub-regional appellations cover a district: Médoc, Haut-Médoc, Graves, Entre-deux-Mers. The communal appellations name a commune or a small group of communes: Pauillac, Margaux, Saint-Émilion, Pomerol and Sauternes, among others.

Classifications: a matter of estates

In Bordeaux, unlike Burgundy, it is estates that get classified, not plots of land, and each district has its own classification — or none at all.

1855: Médoc and Sauternes-Barsac. For the Paris Universal Exhibition, the Bordeaux brokers wrote down a hierarchy based on selling prices recorded in their registers over a long period, with no tasting involved. The reds were ranked on five levels, from first to fifth growth; the list today counts sixty growths from the Médoc and a single one from the Graves. The sweet wines of Sauternes and Barsac were ranked on three levels, including a "superior first growth" rank created for one château alone. The red classification has seen just one change of rank, in 1973; the sweet-wine list has never been altered.

Graves. The classified growths of the Graves were set by the INAO in 1953, on the advice of a panel of professionals; the list has been revised only once, in 1959. A growth may be classified for its reds, for its dry whites, or for both. All the classified growths lie within the Pessac-Léognan area.

Saint-Émilion. Unlike the 1855 and Graves lists, this one is built to be revised, roughly every ten years, on application by the estates and assessment by a commission appointed by the INAO. It has three levels: Premiers Grands Crus Classés A, Premiers Grands Crus Classés B and Grands Crus Classés. The 2006 edition was struck down by the administrative courts; the current edition was homologated by the order of 15 December 2022.

Pomerol. There is no official classification of Pomerol wines.