When, on your way south from Paris, you take the ferry at St. André-de-Cubzac, with the warped and rusted skeleton of the once-celebrated road bridge down in the Dordogne River on your left (by courtesy of the Germans), and the spidery outline of Monsieur Eiffel's great viaduct oceanwards on your right (by courtesy of a German mine which failed to explode), you are already in the Bordeaux country. If it happens to be a late September afternoon, hazy and calm, with a gray sky with a few patches of pale sunshine, you will see the Bordeaux country at its best, wistful and graceful and old-fashioned, like an eighteenth-century print.
With its cobbled quays and its formal gardens, its long, low, windowless buildings (the chais of its great wine merchants), and its old, elaborate houses, spacious, high-ceilinged, and cool behind their gray façades, the city of Bordeaux has something of this same remote eighteenth-century charm. It is slow and easy-going, as befits an inland seaport with a wide, slow-moving river at its doorstep.
Bordeaux's river, the Garonne, joins the Dordogne a few miles north of the city, to form the broad tidal estuary of the Gironde. These navigable rivers and the proximity of the ocean have made Bordeaux's history and molded its whole character.
A hundred and fifty years ago the great Bordeaux clarets were still almost unknown in Paris; but they had already been famous for centuries in England and in Scandinavia and in the cities of the Hanseatic League, and they were even being shipped in considerable quantities to the United States. In the names of a score of châteaux—Talbot, Brown-Cantenac, Boyd-Cantenac, Lynch-Bages, Léoville-Barton, Smith-Haut-Lafite—there are reminders of the fact that Guyenne was once a British province, that the “wine-fleet,” plying between Bordeaux and London, consisted of over a hundred and forty vessels as long ago as 1350, of the fact that a British monarch—Edward II—once ordered a thousand barrels of “good Gascon wine” for his coronation.
In its quiet way, Bordeaux, before the war, was one of the most international of French cities. The sons of its mercantile families (most of which had intermarried) spoke English, and often German and Spanish and one of the Scandinavian languages as well. They had their wine-producing châteaux up in the Médoc, their summer villas at the nearby beach of Arcachon, their town houses in Bordeaux. They knew how to live, and the cuisine in their favorite Bordeaux restaurants was one of the best in France.
Like most regional cuisines, that of Bordeaux is based on the gastronomic resources of its own countryside. Traditionally, this is the province of cèpes, those magnificent and delicate mushrooms, thick as a steak, which we in America rarely see except en conserve. It is the home of steak marchand de vin, which anyone can make who has shallots and parsley and butter and a little sound claret; the home of rougets, those little delectable red mullets, caught in the Gironde off Royan—but for these you will have to go to Bordeaux, to La Mère Catherine, or Dubern, or the Chapon Fin, or the Château Trompette. There are oysters from Arcachon and Marennes, moules from Chatelaillon, fresh sole from the Atlantic, and the famous incomparable mutton from the salt meadows of the Pointe de Grave. For those whose tastes run to rarer dishes there is lamprey, one of the strangest of fishes, traditionally served with red wine, not white; in September there are even ortolans, those tiny succulent birds no larger than a man's thumb, which have been famous among gourmets for two thousand years.
Particularly, and especially, there is wine. Fresh young Graves en carafe, fruity young Médocs and St. Emilions from the lesser vineyards, and the whole impressive, interminable assortment of Grands Crus and great years. The Bordelais never seem to forget that their principal industry is wine; toward the end of September, particularly if the weather continues fine, the forthcoming vintage becomes almost the only topic of conversation. And the vocabulary of these conversations is a very special one indeed.
Will the wine be a vin de primeur, maturing early, like the 1936's and the 1944's, or a vin de garde, slow to come around, like the 1928's and the 1937's? Will it be maigre, like the 1939's, or gras, like the 1943's? Will it be dur and tannique, like the 1926's, or souple like most of the 1942's? Will it be petit or costaud, ordinaire or racé, délicat or puissant? Will the year rank as a grande année or a mauvais mill-ésime, or will it be one of those années jalouses, in which the wines are of uneven and uncertain quality?
The determining factor, of course, is the weather, and by the first of September most of the cards, so to speak, are dealt. But a single rainy week can turn the most promising year into disaster, and occasionally, as in 1924 and again in 1946, a month of miraculously warm and sunny days just before the vintage will transform what looks like a bad year into a grande année.
During the whole month of September, everywhere in the Bordeaux country, a fall housecleaning is under way—a prodigious brushing and scrubbing, sweeping and scouring—as the fermenting rooms and presses are made ready for the grape harvest. The owners, many of whom have been away for the summer, move back to their châteaux to keep an eye on things, and if the prospects are good, a kind of gay excitement seems to pervade the whole countryside.
There is a good deal of friendly rivalry between the producers as vintage time comes on; in general, “he who picks last, picks best,” but there is the constant and increasing hazard of autumn rains, and it takes a good deal of nerve to risk one's entire crop for the thin margin of added quality which a few days of September sunshine can give. It was with a definite note of triumph that the owner of a small Médoc château announced to me last fall that “Lafite is already picking, but I have not picked a grape and the weather is still fine.”
The Médoc at vintage time, in a good year, is a sight worth seeing. The villages are deserted, and everyone from seven to seventy is in the vines—the women picking into flat wicker baskets and generally singing as they work, the young men emptying the baskets into the bottes on their backs and carrying them to the nearby roads, where the old men are waiting with two-wheeled carts and the slow, shuffling oxen that draw them. Around every château there is a sort of invisible aromatic halo, made up of the scent of fresh-crushed grapes and the sweet unmistakable odor of fermenting wine.
Really to understand the Médoc, or the Bordeaux country as a whole, you have to know something of the strict, almost feudal system which has made, out of a generally unfertile province, the most celebrated wine-producing district of the world.
The Bordeaux country, which is about one-twentieth the size of New York State, and about one-seventieth the size of California, produces more than twice as much table wine as the whole United States. About four-fifths of this total is red, and the majority of it is nothing more than sound, pleasant table wine, which always has been and always will be consumed in France. Made from the Cabernet grape, plus a certain admixture of Merlot, Malbec, Petit Verdot, and Carmenère, it is blended, intended to be drunk young, and sold generally as “Bordeaux Rouge,” for this name is the lowest common denominator of all red Bordeaux wines. Literally it means a red wine, any red wine, from the Bordeaux country, and clarets from the better districts are never so labeled—they are entitled to other, more specific, and more honorable names. The less famous and less important such names include Côtes, Côtes de Blaye, Côtes de Bourg, Néac, and Fronsac; the more famous are the Médoc, Graves, St. Emilion, and Pomerol.
All of the great red wines of Bordeaux—those responsible for claret's international and enduring fame—come from these last four districts and, with a few exceptions, from certain especially favored townships, perhaps a dozen in all. The regional characteristics of each one of the four major districts are fairly pronounced, and the wines of each can generally be recognized without too much difficulty. Superficially and quickly, they can be defined as follows:
Médoc—north and west of Bordeaux. The classic fatherland of great claret and a whole wine country in itself. See farther on.
Graves—west and south of Bordeaux. Produces more red wine than white, although better known for its white. Its best reds (which include Haut-Brion) are excellent, a little softer and less definite in character than the Médocs. Someone once said that the Médocs are like gloss prints of a photograph, the Graves like prints on soft paper.
St. Emilion—east of Bordeaux, on the north bank of the Dordogne River. Its wines have been called “the Burgundies of Bordeaux.” To an uninitiated taste they will seem “sweeter” than the Médocs or Graves (actually, no red Bordeaux wine is in the slightest sweet); they are ready sooner, somewhat shorterlived, a bit higher in alcohol; they generally have less tannin, are softer, more obvious, less distinguished.
Pomerol—adjoins St. Emilion, and there are wines on both sides of the arbitrary border that no one could tell apart. The average quality of Pomerol is perhaps a little higher, since the officially delimited district is smaller, but there are a few St. Emilions (Ausone and Cheval Blanc, for example) better than the best Pomerols.
The Médoc, which produces not far from half of the world's supply of really distinguished red wine, is a little triangle of gently rolling country, bounded on the west by the dunes and pine woods that fringe the Atlantic beaches, and on the east by the estuary of the Gironde. There are a few sleepy, gray villages (most of them world-famous) set down among the vines, and, scattered over the landscape, each with its little parc or formal garden, its clump of trees, and its extensive vineyard, there are several hundred large country houses, which the French call châteaux.
Wines from the less celebrated of these châteaux are usually purchased by Bordeaux wine merchants, blended, and sold either as Médoc, or under the name of the village from which they come, such as Margaux, St. Julien, or St. Estèphe. The better châteaux, on the other hand, usually practice what is known as “château-bottling”—the wine, unblended, is bottled at the château under the owner's supervision. A few particularly careful growers refuse to château-bottle their wines in poor years, but unfortunately such scrupulousness is the exception rather than the rule, and the mise du château, although a guarantee of authenticity, is not the assurance of quality that it could and should be.
Here are the main wine-producing villages of the Médoc, south to north:
Lndon, Macau, and Arsac—three comparatively unimportant townships which produce light, delicate wines. You will rarely see these names.
Margaux—one of the greatest of all. Clarets celebrated for their delicacy and finesse. The nearby hamlets of Cantenac and Soussans are also good.
Moulis and Listrac—sound, lesser wines, generally inexpensive.
St. Julien—another “great.” Wonderfully balanced wines, generally fuller than those of Margaux, but less big than those of
Panillac—in the opinion of most connoisseurs, the greatest of the great.
St. Estèphe—produces the biggest and fullest clarets, sometimes lacking in sublety and finesse.
A claret which goes to the market under any one of these names (or as Médoc, St. Emilion, Pomerol, or merely Bordeaux Rouge) is a “regional wine,” or blend. Its quality depends entirely upon the honesty and competence of the merchant who selects and blends and ships it—the better the shipper, quite obviously, the better the wine. It is important, however, to understand that a Bordeaux wine is invariably sold under the most specific of the well-known geographical names to which it is entitled. A Château Margaux, for example, is a Margaux, a Médoc, and a Bordeaux Rouge—it is sold as Château Margaux. But a wine from an obscure château in the township of Margaux will be blended with other similar wines and sold as Margaux. A wine from the lesser Médoc townships will be sold as Médoc. A wine from an undistinguished district in the Bordeaux country will be sold as Bordeaux Rouge.
No amateur wine drinker, however enthusiastic, can be expected to know and remember all of the better Bordeaux vineyards—there are at least a hundred in the Médoc alone, nearly half that number in St. Emilion, and twenty or more in Pomerol and in Graves. The need for a classification of some sort was evident, even a century ago. Luckily, one now exists.
The Classification of 1855
A commission of wine dealers, courtiers, and experts, appointed in Bordeaux in 1855, was given the almost impossible and certainly thankless task of classifying, in terms of comparative quality, the more celebrated vineyards of the Médoc and the Sauternes country. No member of the commission, so far as I know, met a violent death after the classifications were published—which is a little surprising, in view of the way most growers feel about their wines. On the other hand, the commissioners never volunteered to complete their work by grading the vineyards of St. Emilion and Graves, and it has never been possible, since then, to assemble a committee possessing the necessary temerity, probity, and knowledge to revise this list, although (what with wars and phylloxera and the passing years) it obviously needs revising.
The members of the 1855 commission—specialists devoted to one wine, and having a lifetime's knowledge and experience of its variations—were vastly more competent in their field than any present-day American could hope to be. My own notes hereinafter should therefore be considered in the nature of addenda to an ancient and well-established Almanach de Gotha; and it is not by chance that the plus and minus signs which I have placed in front of certain august and famous and imperishable names are printed in light-faced type.
Nevertheless, wines after which I have placed a plus sign (+) are now generally sold, and I believe justifiably, above the other wines of their class; those with a minus (-), generally below. There are obviously, out of so many, a number of wines that I have not tasted often enough to judge competently, and about these I have either stated my ignorance, or implied it with the absence of comment. I have also indicated the commune, or township, from which each wine comes, and the approximate annual production of each château, in terms of cases.