Many have asked: “What is Civilisation?” “What is the Good Life?” One area that has made a reasonable stab at answering these questions is the Bordeaux region of South-Western France, And they’ve been doing it for a very long time. Wine seems to have come to the area in around 43 AD, since when they’ve been knocking out the good stuff ever since, despite the irruptions of marauding Goths, Vandals, Saxons, English, the phyllorexa virus, Germans and recently, global warming. The union with England under Henry and his Queen Eleanor in 1154 was actually a boost, for it formed a kind of early single market, which the later Hundred Years War wrecked. But Bordeaux saw ’em all off in the long run, and now boasts some of the finest vintages in the world.
You could spend a week driving round the various regions scattered along the Gironde. The very names-Medoc, Graves, Entre-Deux-Mers and others are evocative of warm sunshine and Atlantic breezes. Our second link, Vins de Bordeaux, has everything the armchair explorer needs to start an expedition. There’s great notes on varieties, tours, grapes and we loved the interactive map of the terroir.
So why not sit back, pour a glass of fine claret and look forward to a good weekend? You’ve earned it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bordeaux_wine
[2] https://www.bordeaux.com/gb/
#france #bordeaux #wine #friday night
Learning, Science and Society 