June 2023

 Bordeaux’s varied terroir offers a variety of soils and climatic conditions, providing more or less favorable conditions for different grape varieties.Grape Varieties Wine production in France is strictly regulated, and in Bordeaux only certain grape grape varieties are permitted. There are three main grape varieties for red wines, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc, plus ‘auxiliaries’, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carmenère. The auxiliary, or complementary, grape varieties are sometimes used in smaller quantities to add certain characteristics or flavors, to provide balance in the ‘assemblage’ process, i.e. when the wine is being blended. For white wines, the main grape varieties are Sémillion, Sauvignon Blanc, and Muscadelle, with auxiliaries Colombard,

Bordeaux’s annual wine festival is back! From Thursday, June 22, to Sunday, June 25, Bordeaux Fête le Vin will be taking place in venues across the city. Taste the WinesThe main attraction for wine lovers is, of course, the quayside ‘wine village,’ where a re-creation of the Wine Route takes visitors on a tour through the appellations. Visit more than 80 wine producers and wine merchants who are hosting tastings in the pavilions. Entrance to the village is free, and wine tasting passes can be bought if you’d like to sample some of the many reds, rosés, clairets, whites and crémants on offer. The wine village is easily accessible

The land in the Bordeaux wine region is very varied, offering a large variety of soils and different climatic conditions favorable to different grape varieties. Generally speaking, the terroirs can be broken down into Left Bank, Right Bank, and also Entre-Deux-Mers.The River Garonne runs through the city of Bordeaux, and the Left Bank indicates the appellations to the left of the river, and the Right Bank those appellations on the right of the Dordogne river. Entre-Deux-Mers (‘between-two-seas’) is the area to the east of Bordeaux city, in between the tidal tributary Rivers Garonne and Dordogne, which forms an upside-down Y-shape, before the rivers converge and become the River

The best Bordeaux wines have a complexity to them, they’re multi-layered, influenced by the “terroir”, weather, time of harvesting, carefully blended grape varietals, vats and barrels used, the fermentation and maturation processes, and so on. Bordeaux’s wine classification systems are similarly complex, at first glance, not least because there isn’t one simple overriding system, there are several. So, to help you understand what they all mean, we’ve written an introduction for you.Bordeaux wine classifications 101The most well-known classification systems are the 1855 Classification and the classifications of: Saint-Émilion; Sauternes and Barsac; and Pessac-Léognan. Some classifications are revised relatively regularly, some rarely, so they’re more of a snapshot in