Best of Bordeaux. Rolf Bichsel

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СКАЧАТЬ = 900

       litres = 1,200 modern bottles) of wine, or 924,518 hl, around the equivalent of

       Switzerland's entire current annual production or around 120 million bottles!

       1550 Jean de Pontac builds a ‘Maison Noble' amid his vines to the south of the

       city of Bordeaux, which becomes a centre and symbol of winemaking, and

       thus invents the wine chateau.

       1660 François-Auguste de Pontac opens a tavern in London. It serves a wine

       called Ho Bryan, which unlike the light red ‘clarets' is dark in colour and has

       a ‘most particular taste', as Samuel Pepys wrote three years previously in his

       famous diary. New French Claret is now in fashion.

       1724 Boucher, the King's governor, bemoans the Bordeaux aristocracy's plant-

      ing fever, and in 1725 forbids the planting of any new vineyards – a ban which

       stands for thirty years but is e

       ff

       ectively ignored.

       1755 Three-quarters of the income from Bordeaux's 70 top families comes

       from the sale of their own wine.

       1787 Future American President Thomas Jefferson travels to Bordeaux and

       records his impressions in a diary. Some of the estates he names and admires

       include Lafite, Margaux, Latour, Haut-Brion and Yquem.

       1855 Based on previous rankings and on the prices fetched by wines, the

       Bordeaux chamber of commerce establishes the first o

       ffi

       cial, state-sanctioned

       An overview

       of Bordeaux history

       53

       Overview History

       classification of Bordeaux wines to coincide with the Universal Exposition in

       Paris. It divides 88 estates from Haut-Médoc and Sauternes plus Haut-Brion

       from Graves into categories, ranging from 1ème to 5ème Cru Classé.

       1860 The agronomist Jules Guyot introduces the pruning method that is

       named after him, requiring vines to be grown on wires. This modern vine tech-

      nique is hereafter used throughout the Gironde. Alexis Millardet and Ulysse

       Gayon invent ‘Bouillie Bordelaise' (three parts copper sulphate to one part

       caustic lime) as a way of combating downy and powdery mildew, which had

       been damaging crops for a decade.

       1863 Phylloxera comes to Bordeaux and gradually attacks all of the vineyards

       across Europe. Only the richest estates have the means to combat the pest

       successfully.

       1922 Twenty-year-old Philippe de Rothschild takes the reins of Mouton and

       revolutionises the Bordeaux wine world. He initiates bottling at the producing

       estate (‘mise en bouteille au château'), and (re-)introduces so-called second

       wines and artist-designed labels.

       1946 This year marks the birth of modern oenology: laboratory chemist Emile

       Peynaud submits his thesis and becomes a professor at the Faculty of Oenol-

      ogy. He revolutionises both the art of winemaking and the language of wine.

       1956 The beginning of modern winemaking on the right bank: frost destroys a

       significant proportion of the vines in this area. The vineyards are restructured

       and Merlot thus becomes the main variety in this part of the Bordeaux wine-

       growing region.

       1973 Minister of Agriculture Jacques Chirac signs the only change to the 1855

       classification: Mouton-Rothschild becomes a Premier Cru Classé.

       1983 American wine critic Robert Parker declares 1982 to be the vintage of the

       century, and thus triggers a wine boom surpassing any other. The prices of

       Grands Crus quadruple: whilst the merchants are initially the first to pro

       fi

       t, es-

      tates make record profits in vintages such as 1989, 1995, 2000, 2005 and 2009.

       1991 Former bank clerk, innkeeper and wine merchant Jean-Luc Thunevin

       acquires a small, unfavourably located plot in Saint-Emilion, creates a brand

       called Château Valandraud, and thus invents ‘garage wine', triggering a verita-

      ble wine revolution in the area and influencing developments over the next

       few years.

       54

       Appellations Médoc

       Bordeaux geography

       Bordeaux covers around 120,000 hectares of vines in the

       département of Gironde. The Garonne and the Dordogne rivers

       split the region into the left bank of the Garonne (Médoc,

       Graves, Sauternes) and the right bank of the Dordogne (Saint-

       Emilion, Pomerol and Fronsac).

       Médoc / Haut Médoc

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