The Booklovers' Guide to Wine

by Patrick Alexander

  In Burgundy, only two grape varietals are permitted: Chardonnay for whites and Pinot Noir for reds. In Bordeaux, the six permitted grapes for red wine are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Malbec, Petit Verdot, Cabernet Franc, and Carménère, while white varietals include Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon, and Muscatel. Again, the fact that a single grape varietal is permitted in Burgundy emphasizes the importance placed on the source of that grape, its terroir. That Bordeaux permits a variety of different grapes emphasizes the importance of the château’s cellar master, or Maître de Chai, who blends them to achieve the distinctive estate taste.

  The first vineyards in Bordeaux, which the Romans called Burdigila, were mentioned by Pliny the Elder in AD 71, and Château Ausone, in Saint-Émilion, is named after the famous Roman poet Ausonius who had a villa nearby. The original vineyards were probably planted to supply wine to the Roman legions in Britannia. Following the fall of Rome, the English reverted to beer, and all connection with Burdigala/Bordeaux was lost for many years.

  However, when the French King Louis VII divorced Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1152, she married Henry, Duke of Anjou and Normandy, and included the port of Bordeaux as part of her dowry. Two years later, Henry became King of England, and Bordeaux thus became an English possession. Once again, Bordeaux became the cheapest source of wine for the British Isles, and a special relationship was established which continues into the twenty-first century. Because of preferential import tariffs granted by the English King John in 1203 and the Police des Vins granted by the French crown to benefit the wine growers of Bordeaux, there began an immense export boom of wine to England, with massive fleets of two hundred or more ships, sailing to England twice a year. To avoid loss to pirates, King Edward III insisted that the vast fleet of English ships sail together in the fall, carrying as much of the new harvest as possible, and then a second gigantic fleet should sail again in the spring, transporting the rest, the “reck,” which had, in the meantime, been racked and transferred to clean barrels. In this way, 80 percent of the wine produced in Bordeaux, some thirty million modern-day wine bottles, was shipped to England. Thus Bordeaux established itself as a monopoly for the production, sale, and distribution of wine to Great Britain. For three centuries, Aquitaine remained an English province, and Bordeaux and its wine became inextricably linked with the culture and fortunes of the British.

  The British connection has continued ever since. As part of the Duchy of Aquitaine, Bordeaux was a British possession, and in many ways the Hundred Years’ War was a struggle for control of the vineyards of Bordeaux. As discussed in the history chapter of this book, for a variety of reasons, the British markets had a strong and lasting effect not only on the history and development of Bordeaux, but also on the evolution and taste of its wine—originally called “clairet.”

  The original vineyards were close to the old city in the Pessac Leogran section of Graves, of which the two most-famous vineyards today are Château Haut-Brion and Château Pape Clement. Pape Clement was founded by Raymond Bertrand de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux, in 1297, before he became Pope Clement and moved to Avignon in 1308 to build his new château for the Popes, Châteauneuf-du-Pape. In 2015, the vineyards of Pape Clement celebrated their 709th consecutive harvest! Haut-Brion was founded in 1525, and was listed prominently in the cellar books of England’s King Charles II and mentioned glowingly by Samuel Pepys and John Locke. In 1787, Thomas Jefferson purchased six cases which mysteriously vanished during the chaos of the French Revolution. (For further details, read The Billionaire’s Vinegar by Benjamin Wallace).

  Classification and En Primeur: As is discussed in detail elsewhere, all the major vineyards of the left bank were classified between first and fifth growths in 1855 based on the sale prices of the previous one hundred years and, with one exception, that classification has remained unchanged for 160 years. Ample documentary evidence shows that buyers have been ranking the various Bordeaux producers since 1647 when they first started selling Bordeaux wine en primeur.

  En primeur means buying the wine before it is ready to drink. The wines are tasted and sold in barrels just a few months after harvest and long before they are bottled. The running of a Château and the storing of thousands of bottles of wine for maybe twenty years before they are ready to drink obviously requires a serious capital investment. Being paid in advance for future delivery of the wine is thus an important part of the Château owner’s financial cash flow. At the same time, for the négociants and institutions (from Oxford University colleges, to the Ritz and other grand hotels), which purchase the wine en primeur; the discounted price is considered a worthwhile investment. Although there is also the risk of loss, depending on the skill and experience of the person tasting from the barrel and forecasting its taste twenty years in the future, the rewards can be considerable. For example, the 1982 vintage of Château Latour was sold at £250 a case en primeur in 1983, while valued twenty-four years later in 2007 at £9,000—which represents an annual rate of return of 16 percent compounded annually. Not too shabby!

  As an indication of the incredible financial resources of Château Latour, and its owner François-Henri Pinault, since 2012 Château Latour no longer sells its wines en primeur. The Château will store and hold its future vintages at its own expense until they are ready for selling by the case.

  Left Bank: These days the major Bordeaux wines come from the left bank of the Gironde estuary, north of the city in the area called the Medoc and drained by the Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Medoc’s location on the thin strip of gravel-filled land between the Atlantic Ocean and the wide estuary of the Gironde River combines with hot sunny days and cool but moderate nights to create the perfect environment for growing vines. The gravelly soil is perfect for drainage, and forces the roots of the vine to fight deep into the mineral-rich soil for water. The gravel beds get deeper moving south through the four main communes of the Medoc, from the crus Bourgeois of St.-Éstephe AOC, through the powerfully “masculine” premier crus of Paulliac AOC (Ch. Latour, Ch. Lafite and Ch. Mouton Rothschild), the secondary growths of St. Julian AOC (Ch. Léoville-Las Cases and Léoville-Barton), and finally to the most elegantly “feminine” wines of all from Margeaux AOC (Ch. Margeaux, Ch. Palmer), where the underlying gravel is deepest; it includes more vineyards from the 1855 classification than any of the other communes.

  Right Bank: On the right bank, where the River Dordogne joins the Gironde Estuary at the town of Libourne, the soil contains more clay than gravel and, being slightly further from the ocean, the climate is harsher. Cabernet Sauvignon struggles here, so the wines are primarily Merlot with a high percentage of Cabernet Franc. The two most famous communes on the right bank are Pomerol and St.-Émilion, neither of which were included in the 1855 classification, and they were long regarded as secondary to the great wines of the Medoc. However, with the growing popularity of Merlot, which ages much faster than Cabernet Sauvignon, right bank wines such as Ch. Petrus (Pomerol) and Ch. Cheval Blanc (St.-Émilion) have become some of the most expensive wines on the international market.

  Oddly enough it is here, in Pomerol and St.-Émilion, that the Garagistes movement was born. Jean-Luc Thunevin with his Mauvais Garçon (Bad Boy) wines in St.-Émilion, and Jacques Thienpont with his Le Pin wines in Pomerol, both used their parents’ garages to experiment with their own unconventional wine production. Both achieved great critical and financial success, and since then young garagistes have been moving to less regulated parts of the country, especially Languedoc, to experiment with new winemaking techniques. But it’s here, in the highly regulated right bank of Bordeaux, that the movement was started.

  Graves: The original vineyards of Bordeaux have been assimilated by the spreading city of Bordeaux, but some of the most famous remain, such as Ch. Haut-Brion and Ch. Pape Clément in the Pessac-Léognan AOC of the northern Graves region to the south of the city.

  While the northern part of the Graves produces both excelle
nt red and excellent white wines, the southern part is famous exclusively for its whites. The subregions of Sauternes and Barsac have long been renowned for their powerful, sweet white wines made from botrytized Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc grapes. The intense sweetness is the result of the grapes being affected by Botrytis cinerea, a fungus commonly known as noble rot. In the autumn, the Ciron River produces an evening mist that descends upon the area and persists until after dawn. These conditions are conducive to the growth of the fungus, which desiccates the grape and concentrates the internal sugars. Harvesters pick individual grapes at dawn, when there is enough light to see but before the sun begins to warm the vines. This labor-intensive process is one of the reasons that the Sauternes and Barsac wines are so expensive. In July 2012, for example, an 1811 bottle of Château d’Yquem sold for £75,000 ($115,000). This is one of the reasons that Sauternes and Barsac wines are often sold in 375 ml half-bottles.

  Dordogne and Sud-Ouest: The Police des Vins of the Middle Ages was a monopoly favoring the wines of Bordeaux and excluding the wines from the interior of South West France, all of which depended upon the port of Bordeaux for export. Consequently, the wines from along the Dordogne river and further south, from the river valleys of the Lot and the Garonne, have languished through the centuries and remained unknown outside their local markets. Even the wines of Pomerol and St.-Émilion across the river from Bordeaux were excluded from the 1855 classification of Bordeaux wines.

  Finally, after centuries of being ignored, these wines are now receiving the international recognition they deserve. In the past couple of decades, Pomerol and St.-Émilion have become some of the most sought after wines in the world, competing with the best-known châteaux in the Medoc. The Merlot and Cabernet blended wines from the town of Bergerac on the Dordogne, such as Pécharmant, are being seen as a rich but economical alternative to high-priced Medocs, while the nearby sweet, botrytized wines from Château Monbazillac are building a reputation as a deliciously affordable alternative to expensive but comparable Sauternes such as Château d’Yquem. It is my fondest hope that Robert Parker never discovers the pleasures of Monbazilac or Pecharment.

  Disclaimer: I have owned a house in the small Dordogne village of Molieres, near Bergerac, since 1971; I was married there and both my children were born there, so possibly I may be a little bit biased! We had a barrel of Monbazillac served at our wedding, and more than forty-two years later I am still savoring the memory of its sweet, delicious taste.

  Further south, the wines of Agen and Cahors are becoming increasingly well-known, partly because of the success of the Malbec grape in Argentine. The wines of Cahors are made almost exclusively (70 percent minimum) with the Malbec grape varietal.

  Burgundy: Burgundy (Bourgogne) is the area in central France which roughly follows the river Saone south from Dijon to Lyon, but also includes the Chablis region to the north. Burgundy has always been the rich “heart” of France. With its fertile farmlands, large white snails, Charolaise beef, Bresse chicken, and legendary wines, the Dukes of Burgundy were some of the most wealthy and powerful rulers throughout the Middle Ages; often more powerful than the Kings of France or England. The Romans probably planted the first vineyards in Burgundy, and even the Emperor Constantine was closely involved in their development. After the fall of the Roman Empire, many of the vineyards were maintained and developed by the spreading Christian monasteries, first the Benedictines and then the Cistercians. Wine production was important for the monks in order to celebrate the Eucharist. Monasteries were the centers of learning and civilization throughout the Dark Ages, and the monks kept meticulous records of rainfall and temperatures, soil condition, grape varieties, and viticulture techniques. Consequently, the vineyards of Burgundy have some of the most detailed documentation of any land on the planet.

  The terrain of Burgundy is gently undulating with many hills, ridges, and valleys covered with rocks. In order to work the soil, the rocks have had to be moved out of the way, and since Roman times, have been used to build stone walls between the cultivated plots. In addition to clearing the ground of rocks and defining separate growing areas, the walls have also provided protection from the Mistral winds which pour down the Saone/Rhône valley from the north. After the French Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, the monasteries were abolished and the lands given to the peasants. Because the average plot is small, it was simple to redistribute the vineyards of Burgundy among many different families, with very few of the large estates that we find in Bordeaux. For example, La Romanée is only 2.1 acres in size, and actually qualifies as both the smallest Grand Cru in Burgundy (smaller even than Romanée-Conti), and is also the smallest appellation in France!

  So because the vineyards, divided into small individual plots, have been cultivated continuously for almost two thousand years, and because they have been studied in such detail, first by the Romans and later by the monks, and farmed since the Revolution often by the same peasant families, each individual vineyard has acquired its own special mystique. By its elevation, its angle to the sun, and the composition of its soil, each separate vineyard is subtly different from its close neighbors and produces a wine which is unique to that specific plot of land. The French call this terroir, and nowhere is the concept of terroir stronger than in Burgundy.

  Already, by the fourteenth century, the Dukes of Burgundy had recognized the importance of their fine wines, both for the reputation and the economic wealth of the Duchy. Recognizing that quality of the wine was based on the superior Pinot Noir grape and feeling threatened by the popularity of the more prolific but inferior Gamay grape, Duke Phillip the Bold in 1395 banned Gamay grapes from his Dukedom and made the cultivation of any grape other than Pinot Noir a serious offense. One of his successors, Phillip the Good, reinforced the law, declaring, “The Dukes of Burgundy are known as the lords of the best wines in Christendom. We will maintain our reputation.” This is why, even today in the twenty-first century, all red wines from Burgundy are made with Pinot Noir grapes. White wines in Burgundy are likewise all made from the Chardonnay grape. Labels of Burgundy wines do not show the varietal, there is no need. If it’s a red wine, it must be Pinot Noir; if white, it must be Chardonnay.

  Classification of Beaune: Following the classification of Bordeaux wines in 1855, the Beaune Committee of Agriculture created the classification of Beaune in 1861, which was a way to label and differentiate all the different Burgundy vineyards in terms of quality. This 1861 classification was the first official attempt to divide all the major Burgundy vineyards into three classes, but in fact it was just repeating and formalizing what was already long known and accepted. Since the time of the Roman Emperor Constantine, certain plots of land had always been venerated for the quality of the wine they produced. The same names of small stony fields resonate down through the centuries: Chambertain, Musigny, Vougeot, Romaneé, La Táche, Meursault, and Montrachet. All these names were included among the premier cru ratings of 1861, which in turn were based on what such nineteenth century researchers as Laval, Morelot, and Cavoleau had discovered from the records and catalogs of the Cistercian and Benedictine monks before them.

  In 1935, the French government’s Institut National des Appellations d’Origine (INAO) formalized the AOC system, which is still in force today throughout the country. In Burgundy, the ordering closely mirrored the classification of 1861. The INAO introduced four classes of wine for Burgundy: the Regional, the Village, Premier Cru, and rarest of all, Grand Cru. The easiest way to demonstrate the system is to pick an arbitrary Burgundy village and show how the different levels of classification apply. Chassagne Montrachet is a small village in the Côte de Beaune region of Burgundy, which is noted for its Chardonnay white wines.

  Bourgogne AOC (Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée) is the generic classification and refers to any wine grown and produced anywhere in Burgundy.

  Côte de Beaune Villages AOC is a regional classification and refers to
any wine grown and produced in the Beaune region of Burgundy. This covers about sixteen miles between Aloxe-Corton in the north to the river Dheune in the south.

  Chassagne Montrachet AOC is a village classification, and refers to any wine grown in one of about one hundred vineyards within the parish boundary of the village of Chassagne Montrachet. The AOC classification will also be stricter than the Côte de Beaune Village’s classification, and might also include minimum alcohol level or residual sugar and would specify that the grapes must be Chardonnay.

  Chassagne Montrachet Premier Cru AOC refers to a wine grown in one of the fifty-one vineyards in the village that have earned Premier Cru status. The label will show the name of the specific vineyard in addition to the name of the village. Wine from Morgeot vineyard will therefore be labeled “Chassagne Montrachet, Morgeot, Premier Cru Contrôlée.” Again, the rules will be stricter than for the regular village vineyards, and will include a limit on the quantity of grapes harvested per hectare or the number of cases of wine produced each year.