Rolf Bichsel - Best of Bordeaux

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erent approach. Checking sources and his-

torical data, studying marriage certificates and trawling through online archives

cost me an extra year of work. However, the subject matter was worth the effort:

true Bordeaux history contains ten times more adventure than what is usually

peddled.

Rolf Bichsel

Bordeaux lives

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Contents

200 years of wine adventure

The Bordeaux story 10

Fact and fiction 12

Ausonius and the Romans 14

Bordeaux melting pot 18

The New French Claret 20

New luxury 24

Early years 26

Trade triangle 29

Fairy-tale chateaus 32

Class society 33

1855 classification 34

Global trade 38

Brand and style 41

The theatre of aging 42

Profit calculations 44

The Bordeaux-makers 45

Division of labour 48

Oenologists 51

History overview 53

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Geography and appellations

Médoc and Haut-Médoc 54

Pessac-Léognan, Sauternes, Graves 56

Saint-Emilion, Pomerol 57

Map of listed estates

Right bank 58

South Bordeaux 60

Médoc and Haut-Médoc 62

Guidance 64

200 legendary châteaux and their wines from A to Z67 Best of BORDEAUX 200 legendary châteaux and their wines from A to Z

Travel and discover

269

City of Bordeaux 270

Right bank 272

South, Médoc and Atlantic 273

Selected addresses for visitors to Bordeaux 274

Bordeaux service

Cuisine 280

Glass and decanter 282

Storage and aging 285

Vintage overview 288

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Introduction

200 years of

wine adventure

Bordeaux is one of the oldest winemaking regions in the world.

However, what we know as ‘grand vin' (‘great wine') first emer-

ged during the 17th and 18th centuries. This development invol-

ved immigrants from a variety of countries – Bordeaux wine is a

universal product to the core.

The Bordeaux story

Success did not come about by accident, and great wines are born of great

terroirs: ‘mother vine' (as the cliché has it) is happiest growing in sand, gravel

and clay, sinking her roots deep into the womb of grandmother earth and bus-

ily siphoning mineral crystals, vitamins and aromas into her grapes that grow

and thrive before becoming Lafite Rothschild. Ten little Romans are said to

have discovered the excellent terroirs of the Gironde, laid down their spears and

cultivated the ancient Cabernet Sauvignon. Dionysus served as their wine con-

sultant and was outwitted by Bacchus who introduced barrel aging, and if they

had not died laughing they would still be blithely fertilising wine history with

absurd rubbish. If terroir were reduced to such ridiculous tales, then two thirds

of Bordeaux would onlybe only be good for growing radishes.

The truth is much more prosaic. As the Gauls – or more precisely, the Gallo-

Romans – liked to put a few drinks away (their only other pleasures were bread

and games) and wine was too expensive to import, they began planting their

own vines in around the second half of the first century. To do so, they first

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needed a grape variety that could withstand the capricious Atlantic climate:

Biturica, mentioned by Pliny the Elder and the agronomist Columella, and pos-

sibly a cross of varieties introduced from Spain and the Balkans. They planted

this wherever space could be found, gobbling up the terroir. And when they har-

vested more wine than they could drink, they sent the surplus to the newly con-

quered northern provinces of Brittany and Britain which had no lack of thirsty

throats but had had no success in growing vines despite numerous attempts to

select more resistant varieties. This required ships and a port, and Burdigala was

thus founded (thank you Jupiter), at least if historians are to be believed, as their

friends the archaeologists have not yet managed to find the Roman docks which

they presume to have existed in the most enterprising locations of the city.

One thing is certain: Bordeaux became the largest, most important wine city

in the world, as the half-moon-shaped meander of the Garonne – into which

numerous streams flow and where the original inhabitants of Bordeaux estab-

lished a settlement – was not only easy to defend, it also proved to be a perfect

natural port thanks to all the inflows from rivers such as the Lot, Tarn, Aveyron,

Baïse and Gers which chose the Garonne as their outlet. Then, and now, it acts as

an interchange and is the inevitable final stage of a journey from the hinterland

(nearly a quarter of modern France) along the almost 100 kilometre Gironde

estuary to the Atlantic, and offers links to the world's interconnected oceans.

In Bordeaux, the tides are still so strong that the river goes into reverse every

eight hours – acting as the perfect outboard motor for Roman galleys. By the first

century AD, Burdigala was already an emporium and a trade port, as recorded

by the historian Strabo.

Without its port, Bordeaux would now be part of a region called Libourne

rather than the other way around, for the right bank of the Dordogne in Saint-

Emilion – where Atlantic influences are more tempered and olive trees and cork