Rolf Bichsel - Best of Bordeaux

spent a large part of his life in Milan and Trier. Whether Suffrein (whose thesis

sought primarily to demonstrate the importance of Libourne as far back as Ro-

man times) was influenced by Jean Cantenat, who renamed his estate with the

unpronounceable name of Rocblancan as “Ausone” in around 1781, or was instead

inspired by the research findings of local historians and amateur archaeologists,

is something we will probably never know. One thing is certain: during this pe-

riod, various other estates in the region (Pétrus, Conseillante and Beauséjour)

also gained finer-sounding (and thus more tempting) names. This small digres-

sion should not be viewed as an accusation of the falsification of history, but is

rather simply designed to illustrate how fact and fiction are often intertwined in

Bordeaux.

Since the most important Atlantic port in southern France came to be in Bor-

deaux, the ocean is still shaping its destiny today, and Bordeaux became the

northernmost part of south-western France to continue successfully growing

fine red wine – for Bordeaux is on the Atlantic, and not on the Mediterranean or

even the Amazon despite many opinions to the contrary! True Bordeaux locals

never go out without a cap and an umbrella, not to mention the local women

who are constantly on the alert and generally under cover, always holding onto

their skirts when walking through the city: if Billy Wilder had filmed ‘Some Like

It Hot' in Bordeaux rather than New York in 1959, Marilyn Monroe's lovely knees

could have been exposed without the need for subway grating. Here the west

wind howls, bringing rain, gales and legendary summer storms, the weather is

sometimes so capricious that the mercury gets the hiccups, and without check-

ing the weather report it is impossible to know whether you should be pulling on

a T-shirt or a woollen jumper, in the height of summer or the depths of winter.

‘A true Bordelais', as I was told with a raised finger by none other than Jacques

Chaban-Delmas, ‘never goes out walking without an umbrella'. I did it anyway

and turned up at an appointment to interview the city's legendary former may-

or soaked to the skin, dripping on the polished and waxed parquet floor of the

city hall like fresh laundry throughout our conversation. On 4 August 2003, the

thermometer here shot up to an exuberant 40.7 degrees Celsius, but on 8 August

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HistoryBordeaux melting pot

1924 it remained stuck at just 1.5 degrees. However, even the greatest climatic up-

heavals can be tolerated whenever there are riches to be made. Mankind peered

at Bordeaux's legendary terroirs like Moses peered at God in Mann's trilogy ‘Jo-

seph and His Brothers', and thus helped them into existence. Resourceful minds

adapted the terroir to their needs and people also adapted to suit the terrior (or

less concisely: after Armenians or Greeks or Mesopotamians or whoever accus-

tomed the vine – a climbing plant from shaded forests – to the alkaline clay and

limestone soils and the burning sun and persuaded it to produce grapes which

could be made into wine, the Gallo-Romans who had already begun making wine

on the right bank but also wanted to produce it on this side of the river, adapted

the plants to the acidic soils and cheerfully damp climate on the left bank of the

Garonne). They therefore created terroir in its broadest sense, terroir consisting of

time and space, terroir made from history and nature, terroir, inextricably linked

to humans and their destiny.

The Bordeaux melting pot

More than a single lifetime would be required to investigate the thousand-

year family tree of a thoroughbred Bordelais. The Bituriges, who according to

legend founded Burdigala and introduced Vitis Biturica (the first ancestor of

Cabernet), were not the only contributors to the archetypal Bordeaux blood-

line. Novem Populi was the name of a south-western Roman province where

nine peoples were supposed to have settled. In fact it was not nine but nearly

thirty tribes who accepted Roman rule more or less willingly and with it, almost

inevitably, Roman genes: love is blind, not pure-bred. Over the centuries they

were joined by Visigoths and Saracens, Britons (themselves a mixture of Angles,

Saxons and Normans), followed by the Jews, Navarrese and Lombards, along

with the Dutch, Irish and Scots, not forgetting the Hanseatic and Baltic peoples

as well as South Sea Islanders, North Africans, Senegalese, Italians, Spaniards

and Portuguese: for 2,000 years Bordeaux has been a trade city, as cosmopolitan

as Hong Kong, Rio and New York put together, and has long been a magnet for

anyone in search of wealth and success.

Bordeaux has never got anywhere in military terms – people dominated here

not by the sword but rather with plough and sickle or abacus and stylus. The Ro-

mans never had a garrison here, remaining in Blavia (Blaye) on the right bank of

the Gironde. Citizens adapted to conquerors in public and were decadent in se-

cret. The dark chapter of the Second World War with its submarine port, depor-

tation station and Maurice Papon, Secretary General of the Gironde from 1942

to 1944 who was convicted of being an accomplice to crimes against humanity

in a sensational trial in 1998, and of the world of wine which disintegrated into

collaborators, emigrants and silent victims and which suffered from a severe

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shortage of manpower, is an inglorious story that has not yet been fully told:

Bordeaux prefers to leave its evil spirits alone and its bodies deeply buried. How-

ever, its reputation was never truly damaged: even the worst characters were

unable to resist the otherworldly charms of the wine and its native land, like

the allure of a lady of easy virtue. Bordeaux is a city which runs wild in beauti-

ful finery during the day and then at night is redolent of the demimonde like a

perfume that bewitches the senses.

It is ironic that the Bordelais have a woman – Eleanor of Aquitaine – to thank

for making wine into such an all-powerful asset, because for a long time, the

Bordelais would not even allow women into their cellars for fear of them turn-

ing the grape juice sour. But these same Bordelais would happily squander their

money in the city's brothels or the city theatre (which was built in 1738 only

to burn down 17 years later, leading to the construction of the current Grand

Théâtre by the architect Victor Louis, now a major attraction of this city that

was named a World Heritage Site in 2007). And these same Bordelais would

conclude their transactions –generally in private alcoves – so loudly that the few

real culture lovers persuaded the king's intendant to establish France's first pub-

lic park, or Jardin Public, in Bordeaux in 1746, where good male society could

finally swagger in the open air or the shade of the Atlas cedars.