Vineyard at Château Palmer, Margaux, Bordeaux

The Greater Bordeaux Area

Bordeaux is quite possibly the world’s most famous wine region, and with good reason. As mentioned before, some of the world’s best wines hail from this little corner in southwestern France. It could be said, however, that some pretty mediocre wines can be found here also. Bordeaux is the second largest wine region in France, and one of the most diverse with over 300,000 acres of vineyard area producing nearly 1/3 of the country’s AOC* production and approximately 2.3% of the total world wine production. In 2007, the area produced 5.7 million hectoliters, roughly 150 million gallons of wine.

Within this vast ocean of wine, however, there are small islands of quality. The best wines of the area come from the communes of St-Estèphe, Pauillac, Saint-Julien, Margaux, Pessac-Léognan, Sauternes, Pomerol, and Saint-Emilion. The vineyards of these communes produce less than 5% of the area’s total production, and of that an even smaller percentage is the very best. The best of the best of the best, are those included in the 1855 Classification with a few outliers.

* AOC stands for Appellation d’Origine Contrôlée, the French system of appellations and is considered the wine world's prototype. It designates a certain area for vine growing and sets rules about the grapes to grow and general style of the wine made. It is similar but stricter than the U.S. AVA (American Viticultural Area) system, such as Sonoma County, Napa Valley, or Oakville. Bordeaux contains some 57 separate AOCs.
 

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