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.
Grapes grown here
Sub-regions
Margaux
The southernmost of the Médoc's communal appellations, Margaux sits on the thinnest, most gravel-rich soils in the region, giving its reds a perfumed, elegant, blackcurrant-scented style. It holds more classified growths (21) than any other Bordeaux commune, including the First Growth Château Margaux.
Pauillac
Often called the quintessential Bordeaux commune, Pauillac is home to three of the region's five First Growths — Lafite Rothschild, Latour, and Mouton Rothschild — plus numerous other classified estates. Its wines are powerful, structured, and cassis-scented, built on gravelly soils for long aging.
Saint-Estèphe
The northernmost of the Médoc's communal appellations, Saint-Estèphe has more clay in its soils than its neighbors, yielding firmly tannic, slow-maturing reds that need extra time to soften but reward long cellaring. Five 1855-classified growths lie within its boundaries.
Saint-Julien
Saint-Julien is one of the Médoc's six communal appellations, prized for polished, harmonious reds that sit stylistically between the softer wines of neighboring Margaux and the more powerful wines of Pauillac. It has no First Growths but is unusually dense with Second Growth and other classified estates from the 1855 Classification.