Bordeaux

• Barsac
• Bordeaux Supérieur
• Margaux
• Graves
  • Pessac-Leognan
• Haut-Medoc
• Listrac
• Pauillac
• Pomerol
• Saint Emilion
• Saint Estephe
• Saint Julian
• Sauternes

“My dear Greco! You surely aren’t serious!” We were dining at Chez Panisse with the Count and Countess Ferrari, whom Anne, my better half, had met at some highbrow fundraiser to save vegan single mother whales. The Ferrari’s had latched on to her, representing themselves as the last in the line of the noble House of Ferrari. I thought I smelled a couple of phonies.

I think the book was one of those Europe-on-five-dollars-a-day books that were so popular when I was a lad of seventeen. Mine was a used copy from a garage sale and my makeshift bookmark, a torn page from my high school yearbook, was stuck in the section on Bordeaux. The torn yearbook page had Musette’s picture on it; the French exchange student from my school two years prior, the most exotic girl I had ever met up to that time, the girl who kept those fancy French cigarettes and a flask of vodka in her purse. And here I was, with her photo in my ratty travel guide standing on the banks of the Gironde River in some little place called Pauillac.

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Bordeaux. The word conjures up everything elegant and rich and confusing and unknown if you’re the normal semi-literate wine snob-in-training, like me. The confusing and unknown aspects are part of the reason why so many Americans don’t enjoy these crown jewels of the wine world and the elegant and rich parts are why so many Americans should enjoy these wines. That being said, Bordeaux wines ARE confusing. I have no idea how to pronounce the names of all those Chateaux in the first place, except in the rather pathetic French accent I stole from Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau character.

No country has a greater love affair with the art of winemaking than France. The passion with which the French enjoy a perfect food and wine pairing is an absolutely unparalleled experience. The average American can’t possibly understand the rooted history of this obsession, or the extent to which the French have gone to preserve their winemaking heritage. These folks are serious about many things, but none play second fiddle to the fermentation of the all-mighty grape. Swoop into any world-famous or mom and pop restaurant in France, and you’ll likely spy the volumes of bottles way before you lay eyes on the food. Chef superstars like Alain Ducasse and Joel Robuchon wouldn’t dream of a prix fixe extravaganza without the ideal wine accompaniments for each and every dish.

The 57 appellations of Bordeaux are not classified in a single official ranking. But the Médoc, Sauternes and Barsac, Graves, and Saint-Emilion districts do have their own official internal classification systems. Pomerol, one of Bordeaux's greatest assets, was not included in the 1855 Classification, and remains unclassified to this day. However, Château Pétrus is often included with the First Growths (Premiers Crus) of the 1855 Classification. The Classification of 1855 Much like our World's Fair today, Napoléon III's 1855 Expositon Universelle de Paris was a chance for France to display its very best for the world to see. The Gironde Chamber of Commerce requested that a classification system be devised to accompany their display of the fine wines of Bordeaux. The Bordeaux Wine Brokers' Union went to work on the project and came up with what we now refer to as the Classification of 1855.

Bordeaux is arguably the greatest wine region in the world. Great cellars around the world are filled with wines from the different chateaus of the region. America’s first wine connoisseur, Thomas Jefferson, not only drank wines from here, but made it a point to visit the region and see for himself what made these wines so great.