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Everything you always wanted to know about
Bordeaux but were afraid to ask.
With 200 portraits of brands
every wine enthusiast should know.
Rolf Bichsel
Best of
BORDEAUX
200 legendary châteaux and their wines
Knowledge | History | Travel
‘Best of Bordeaux'
A publication by VINUM, Europe's wine magazine
©
November 2016, first edition, Intervinum AG, ZUrich
ISBN Print: 978-3-033-05899-6
ISBN E-Book: 978-3-033-05916-0
AUTHOR
Rolf Bichsel
EDITOR
Roland Köhler
PUBLISHER
Intervinum AG, Zurich
Publishing manager: Nicola Montemarano
Assistant/coordinator: Barbara Schroeder
Marketing: Dana Muñoz
Sales: Peter Heer, Catherine Sereno
Assistant/administration: Manuela Deganello
DESIGN, IMAGES AND PRODUCTION
Cover image and graphics concept: Marco Bräm
Translation: Hancock-Hutton, Bordeaux
Photos: Vinmedia, Bordeaux
Production: Hans Graf
This document is protected by copyright.
All copyright and publishing rights for this publication, in whole or in part, are reserved.
Any use or exploitation of this in whole or in part, in particular translation, reprinting, duplication, microfilming,
storage and use on optical or electronic data carriers, requires written permission from the publishers. Use of this
document shall in principle generate a payment liability. Violations are subject to the sanctions of copyright law.
The content of this issue has been carefully checked. However, the authors, editors and publishers accept no
responsibility for its accuracy.
Legal notice
New NOMOS watches for premieres, podiums, and parties:
such as Tangente neomatik nachtblau, depicted here. Find this
and other timepieces with the NOMOS swing system and the
automatic movement of the next generation now at selected
retailers. More at nomos-store.com, nomos-glashuette.com.
!Bon appétit+ with Bordeaux.
Bordeaux wines are a delight. Discover fine wines from our extensive range of Bordeaux
and en primeur wines, suitable for red meat or hearty dishes. You can find additional wine
recommendations at mondovino.ch. Coop does not sell wine to young people under age
18. Available at large Coop supermarkets and at coopathome.ch and mondovino.ch
Our wine experts recommend:
Pessac-Léognan Grand Vin
Château Haut-Bergey
2011, 75 cl
33.95
(10 cl = 4.53)
Les Tourelles de Longueville
2e Vin du Château Pichon
Baron 2012, 75cl
39.50
(10 cl = 5.27)
Saint-Emilion Grand Cru
Château La Tour Figeac
2012, 75 cl
38.95
(10 cl = 5.19)
7
Foreword
I ran aground in Bordeaux in 1986 as a pia-
nist in a jazz club, and stayed on. I wanted
to keep tinkling the ivories and ended up do-
ing so, just di
ff
erently to how I imagined. Be-
cause life sometimes takes us in unexpected
directions, I became a wine writer and my
new home became my subject matter. Ever
since, I have tasted hundreds of great Bor-
deaux wines every year, with a degree of
shame as wine is not designed to be spat
out. Bordeaux has changed radically over these past 30 years. There is no other
region producing such quantities of such stylish wines. Bordeaux has an unfor-
tunate reputation for producing rare luxury products, but in reality the peak has
become much broader, and even so-called lesser vintages offer wines which are
outstanding in terms of both price and style. There are hundreds of good Bor-
deaux wines, only a few of which are expensive objects of speculation. On my
first en primeur tour, there were barely a dozen tasters trying 120 wines. Today,
several thousand Bordeaux palates (or aspiring palates) taste up to a thousand
wine samples over the course of a week without any guilty conscience what-
soever. There is also a downside to the sheer quantity of interesting Bordeaux.
Whilst people who knew a couple of dozen labels and three top vintages could
once call themselves connoisseurs, now it takes a university degree. This book is
an (insu
ffi
cient) attempt to turn the tide. I have tried – with all the compromises
and inconsistencies such an undertaking entails – to reduce the top Bordeaux
wines everyone should know to 200 brands. This is the best overview I can of-
fer of my world of fine Bordeaux, whilst also including a few other lesser-known
estates as representatives of the many others. All of this is based on my own
experience: I make no claim to objectivity when it comes to wine.
I originally wanted to reduce the historical notes about the estates to a couple
of lines which could be read anywhere. When compiling the first portraits, I was
tearing my hair out wondering whether I was repeating the error of cheerfully
repeating all of the commonly held misconceptions ever published, but my
Bernese stubbornness required a di
ff
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
8
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
9
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 Z 67
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
l
10
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
11
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
oaks are able to survive in clay and gravel soils – contained what was an ideal
Lafite Rothschild
12
History Fact and fiction
winemaking terroir for the Romans, rather than the sandy and gravelly river
sediment on the left bank of the Garonne to the north and west of the city where
the Romans probably grew their vines, or the scree to the south which Bordeaux
locals planted from the 16th century. And least of all on the gravel hilltops of
the Médoc, which only became accessible all year round once Dutch engineers
had drained the surrounding marshes using a sophisticated system of channels
and sluices. But even so, Saint-Emilion and Pomerol, whose winemaking his-
tory apparently has Roman roots (the name is a reference to fruit cultivation,
with ‘poma' meaning apple but also fruit in general, so why not grapes?), stood
at the gates of the city of Libourne, which failed to rival Bordeaux despite its
small port. Rural Libourne thus produced wine primarily for personal use until
the mid-18th century.
In fact, the ditches and furrows which the Romans supposedly carved out of
the limestone rock to facilitate the rooting of their vines (as mentioned in nu-
merous scholarly books) have been shown by recent research to date from the
18th century. Furthermore, scholars have long been arguing about the location
of the remains of the grandiose Villa Lucaniacus belonging to Roman statesman
and poet Ausonius. But they are hardly likely to be slumbering in Saint-Emilion
and are thus of no use as proof of the wonderful wines which the town is sup-
posed to have already been producing at the time.
Arnaud II. de Pontac
13
Fact and fiction
Ausonius went down in Bordeaux history because he scratched ‘Oh father-
land, famous for its vines' into a clay tablet, inscribed it on parchment or some
other material, and also noted in passing that he owned around 25 hectares of
vineyards alongside a few hundred hectares of agricultural land. This does not
mean very much, however, as no true Roman estate would have done otherwise,
as wine was a way of raking in extra wealth, prompting Diodorus Siculus to com-
ment in the first century BC: ‘The avaricious temperament of many Roman trad-
ers exploits the Gallic passion for wine. On the boats which follow the waterways
or by wagons which roll across the plain, they transport wine, from which they
make fantastic profits, going as far as trading one amphora for one slave, in such
manner that the buyer brings his servant to pay for the drink.'
The Roman scholar, politician and poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius was born
in Bordeaux in around 310 (other sources refer to Vasate or Bazas) and died after
a long career in 395 on his family's estate in la Réole in southern Gironde. There is
virtually nothing to associate him with Saint-Emilion. The legend that he owned
a winery there emerged in the 17th or 18th century, and I cannot help thinking
that there are prevailing mercantile and chauvinist interests in this interpretation
of history. Here are the facts: Ausonius's writings mention a villa called Lucani-
acus which ‘could rival a palace in Rome' and could apparently be reached from
Ausonius
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Ausonius and the Romans History
Condat with a team of mules. In 1806, local historian Suffrein published a history
of Libourne, which he took to be the former Condat. In Gallic the name means
a place located at a confluence: today around 100 different ‘condats' have been
identified from those times, including what are now Cognac and Angers. Libourne
does not appear on the list. It was on the basis of this meagre evidence that Suf-
frein established Ausonius' villa as being in Saint-Emilion, where Gallo-Roman
artefacts have indeed been found. However, after archaeologists found the foun-
dations of a large Roman villa near Saint-André / Montagne, Suffrein's thesis was
dismissed as pure fabrication. Researchers still argue about which excavations
can be attributed to Ausonius, who owned estates in Bordeaux and Saintes but
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
