As we've been saying the past several days, there's no place like Bordeaux. Hundreds of charming villages, especially in the woodsy countryside between the Garonne and the Dordogne rivers (known as the Entre-Deux-Mers), literally thousands of elegant estates. The wine producers here--independent growers and giant cooperatives alike whose wines carry the AOC of Bordeaux or Bordeaux Supérieur--banded together in the mid-seventies to form a vintners association to promote their wines and to ensure a uniform quality; their visitor center, on the busy road between Bordeaux and St. Émilion, has the ambitious name Planète Bordeaux.
These are the "average" guys, the solid base of the pyramid. If you ask most American wine drinkers about Bordeaux, they'll describe one of the famous names, like Château Margaux, the Audrey Hepburn of wines: classy, sophisticated, and, at $2,000 a bottle, out of reach. But the majority of Bordeaux wines are far more accessible, $20 and under on the shelf in most states, and still quite elegant. (Anne Hathaway, perhaps? Same initials, right?) And it's the elegance, after all, that makes the difference.
Bordeaux doesn't taste like wine from California or Italy; it's far more subtle, even cerebral; you approach a glass of Bordeaux with your mind on high alert, with all your senses tingling, like Cinderella at the Ball. (A bottle of Burgundy, on the other hand, is more like "Pretty Woman," a sure thing.) There's a Prince Charming in the crowd, and, at the banquet, into the glass you take along to watch the sunset together at the river's edge, the wine they're pouring is Bordeaux.
Top, Château Pierrail (photo upper right by Jacques Demonchaux, courtesy Renie Steves); Château Parenchère; above: rosé at Château de Bel
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