Table Of ContentWhat Price Bordeaux?
Copyright © 2009 by Benjamin Lewin
All rights reserved. Published in the United States
by Vendange Press.
Lewin, Benjamin
What Price Bordeaux / by
Benjamin Lewin
ISBN 978-0-9837292-2-8
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
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without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher
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Contents
1 Terroir and Typicité
2 A Sense of Place
3 The Importance of Being Classified
4 Wine in the Time of Classification
5 The Land and the Brand
6 Crisis and Prosperity
7 Winners and Losers
8 The Price of Reputation
9 The Rise of the Right Bank
10 The New Bordeaux
11 Grand Vins and Second Wines
12 Plus Ça Change
13 Rational Classification
Bibliography
Notes
Preface
We were on one of our research visits to Bordeaux. The plane from London taxied
slowly into the terminal. We disembarked and walked in a line of passengers to
immigration. The immigration booths were locked up and abandoned; there was no way
through into the deserted airport. My wife turned to me and said, “Now you’ve gone and
done it.” She had been saying for ages that my incessant requests to the French authorities
as I tried to establish the real facts behind the Bordeaux wine industry would get me
banned from France. Bordeaux is one of the greatest places on earth for producing fine
wine; but it has a mystique based on centuries of obscurity about details, and the light of
transparency is rarely welcome. The security alert that had closed the airport was a good
metaphor.
All had seemed friendly when I started the project, but things changed quickly at any
attempt to delve below the superficial. When the Conseil des Grands Crus Classés heard I
was writing a book, they immediately offered assistance in finding documents or
photographs. But when I raised the sensitive question of whether information could be
found on the land holdings of the great châteaux when they were classified in 1855, the
answer started with “Malheureusement.” Another professional organization, the CIVB,
were at first happy to provide general information about the economics of Bordeaux
production, but clammed up when we got down to fine details about sales in individual
sectors. (They would not even tell me the average price of a bottle of red Bordeaux in
2007!)
It has been an interesting expedition trawling among the records to establish what
really goes on in Bordeaux. Putting it all together, I have wary respect for the success of
the Bordelais in building a powerful wine industry whose top wines have unrivalled
quality and fetch unprecedented prices, but despair at their inability to recognize long-term
over short-term interests and to deal with the endemic problems of generic wines;
admiration for the top wines but dismay at the inability to stop the more obvious abuses;
and concern as to whether traditional Bordeaux will survive the flying winemakers and
future global warming.
Bordeaux is a place like no other. The range of quality runs from plonk to the finest on
earth; the classification system is uniquely based on price but differs from place to place;
wine production is tightly regulated as elsewhere in France, but when it comes to naming
a wine you could drive a trailer load of jeroboams through the loopholes. In this book I
have tried to establish the underlying realities of Bordeaux. What really goes on in the
glittering palaces of the Grand Cru Classés and the extensive caves of the negociants? And
of course the basic running theme is what this means for the consumer, and how is it
possible to determine before purchase what lies inside that expensive bottle of Bordeaux?
Picking up the wine list in a shop or restaurant, under the heading “Bordeaux” you
may well be faced with a price range from less than $10 to more than $1000. Superficially
there is little to distinguish these wines: all are described as Château Quelquechose. All
the bottles bear a label stating “Appellation Contrôlée,” accompanied by the name of a
wine-growing region. Regional descriptions vary from “Bordeaux” for the cheapest to
“Pomerol” for the most expensive, yet in each region there is a wide range of prices, so the
description does not necessarily carry any obvious implication. A handful of wines may be
picked out as having a classification such as “Grand Cru Classé,” but this means different
things in different parts of Bordeaux. None of the labels identify grape varieties, yet some
wines will be made predominantly from the austere Cabernet Sauvignon and others from
the lush Merlot. Without any systematic description, how are these wines to be
distinguished? What does regional description mean in Bordeaux? Does classification
have any significance? What is the relationship between quality and price? Here I analyze
these questions, from the rich wine-growing history of Bordeaux to the problems of today.
Bordeaux is full of paradoxes. The entire system of wine production in France is based
on the notion of the supremacy of terroir, the distinctive and unchangeable quality of each
individual vineyard plot. Yet man created the terrain of the Médoc, the most famous part
of the wine region, when Dutch engineers drained the marshes in the 17th century,
affecting drainage all around. The international reputation of Bordeaux was established by
the classification of its top properties in 1855; yet the landholdings of these Grand Cru
Classés have changed extensively since then without their classification being in the least
affected. The top wines of Bordeaux are in such worldwide demand that the best vintages
can scarcely be had for love nor money; yet generic wines are being sent for distillation
because they cannot be given away at any price. Faced with the challenge from the New
World, some châteaux have turned to a more “international” style of wine production,
standing on its head the original attempt of New World producers to make wines that
would compete with Bordeaux; now Bordeaux is making wines more like those of Napa
Valley in California.
After losing a battle with France, Mary Tudor, Queen of England, said that after her
death, Calais would be found engraved on her heart. Many have similar feelings about
Bordeaux: we respect it for establishing a paradigm that at its best is rarely, if ever,
equaled—but at the same time we are filled with rueful exasperation at the ways of the
Bordelais and concerned at possible loss of its traditional character. There are all too many
laments about the globalization of wine, not merely in Bordeaux for that matter, and the
arguments are often full of fury but short on facts. Here my approach is more quantitative
than has been common for a subject that is usually viewed somewhat subjectively. I have
done my best to dig out the facts that underlie what actually goes into the bottle, which are
not always easy to establish. From this starting point, it becomes possible to base the
debate on reality and, perhaps, to see where Bordeaux is going.
Thanks are due to many châteaux proprietors for information gained in the form of
fascinating exchanges by correspondence or by visits to the châteaux, and also to those
negociants and courtiers who allowed me access to their records of prices on the Place de
Bordeaux. Given the inflammatory nature of the process of classification in Bordeaux, the
conclusions suggested by these prices are likely to be controversial, and I believe that
people would prefer not to be thanked by name, but my heartfelt thanks anyway. I am also
indebted to archivists in Bordeaux and elsewhere who dug out files on the 1855
classification and other matters that had been carefully buried in obscurity. Additional
thanks are due to Bill Blatch, Jean-Michel Comme, and Peter Sichel for their helpful
comments on all or part of the manuscript. And the work would never have been finished
without the efforts of Ann, my wife and indefatigable tasting companion.
Benjamin Lewin MW
