I’ve been procrastinating. Baking muffins, mowing the lawn, tidying the house and other random things that have crept to the top of my to do list in favour of putting off my blog posts about Bordeaux.
Perhaps you’ll empathise, because we all know that Bordeaux is complicated, right? About as intimidating as it can get on a wine scale: all those scary classifications, immaculate fairytale châteaux, money can’t buy wines and cellar door tastings that you need a royal birth certificate to gain access to. On the surface, for an everyday wine drinker, it’s not exactly a region that screams drink me! more like ‘you wish you could drink me’.
And yet the figures say otherwise. In the UK the average bottle price of a wine from the Médoc region sits reassuringly close to the affordable side of the UK’s average price of a bottle of wine which is £6.63 and £5.29 respectively. Could Bordeaux be suffering from a reverse image crisis? A positive discrimination of sorts? Perhaps these are wines for the people after all.
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I was there last month to find out just that, specifically touring the wineries of the Médoc, which is the majority of the vineyards on the left side of the Gironde River that divides the greater Bordeaux area. It was an eye opening trip, organised by Les Vins du Médoc, the team responsible for promoting the regions wines. In an industry dominated by some of the most powerful wine dynasties in the world a trip like this was the only way the little guys would ever get the same share of voice as the big ones. Which, let’s face it, are the voices you and I want to hear.
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In this three part Bordeaux blog series I’ll reveal the latest trends from the Médoc, the inspiration coming out of the region and discussing whether it is a region ripe for reinvention.
