Bordeaux is France's largest fine wine region, built on an oceanic climate and gravel- and limestone-rich soils near the Gironde estuary that favor blended wines over single-variety bottlings. It produces mostly red wine (roughly six bottles of red for every white) and its top châteaux, especially from the Left Bank and Right Bank, are among the most collected and expensive wines in the world.
Grapes grown here
Sub-regions
Graves
Named for its gravelly soil, Graves is the only Bordeaux subregion known for all three of the region's wine styles: dry reds, dry whites, and sweet wines, and is considered the historic birthplace of claret. Its reds lean on Cabernet Sauvignon while its whites blend Sauvignon Blanc and Sémillon.
Médoc
The Médoc is Bordeaux's Left Bank peninsula, where a mild, damp oceanic climate is offset by gravel-heavy soils that drain well and retain heat, ripening red grapes despite the risk of rot. It produces almost exclusively red wine and, through its communal appellations like Margaux, Pauillac, Saint-Julien and Saint-Estèphe, supplied the vast majority of the estates in the famous 1855 Classification.
Pomerol
Bordeaux's smallest major appellation, at roughly 800 hectares of small family-owned vineyards, Pomerol has no official classification system yet produces some of the world's most sought-after and expensive wines, led by Château Pétrus. Its lush, velvety reds are built overwhelmingly on Merlot.
Saint-Émilion
A Right Bank appellation where Merlot and Cabernet Franc, not Cabernet Sauvignon, dominate the vineyards, producing plush, fruit-forward reds. Saint-Émilion runs its own quality classification, first drawn up in 1955 and periodically revised, separate from the 1855 Left Bank system.
Sauternes
Sauternes is a sweet wine appellation within Graves where autumn mists off the Ciron and Garonne rivers encourage noble rot (Botrytis cinerea), shriveling the grapes and concentrating their sugars into rich, honeyed dessert wines balanced by bright acidity. The best examples are famous for aging for decades, even a century or more.