Greetings from bordeaux

I started raving about her - Bordeaux - in 1965 when I first came here aged 19,  and I haven’t shut up since. First vineyard I ever stepped in? I’m writing from it, now. Having hunted wines all around the world all my life and sold billions of bottles,  Bordeaux is still my wine home. I always come back to her. Of course, as in all intense relationships, we fight.

Bordeaux can be infuriating. Those prices… £1000 bottles (with £980 of that pure profit). I’m impressed by such hustle, and I’ll certainly drink it if offered. Pay for it? Not bloody likely.  Quite unnecessary.  Bordeaux has this obsession with numbers and point-scoring. As early as 1855 Bordeaux came up with 1st, 2nd, 3rd (etc.) classifications. 

A hundred years later Robert Parker spiralled that up to 100.  Bordeaux is obsessed with always wanting to be more expensive than the neighbouring wines. They’ll sell you cheaper wine but only anonymously. That ‘show-off’ side to Bordeaux; “My wine’s bigger than yours” is the bit I am not in love with.

But for all her flaws, Bordeaux still knows how to make me fall in love all over again every time.

The situation is that whilst such lovelier-than-ever wines ripe and ready wines can today be found all over the region … all are struggling.

A 50 year boom is over. Vineyards are being abandoned. We’ve even ripped out a few plots ourselves at La Clarière. Why? Mostly it’s today’s hard times. But also I think Bordeaux’s posh’n pricey image just doesn’t fit anymore, in these times of straightened circumstances for everyone bar a few billionaires. That image needs to change … and I’m doing my best.  It’s not the wine’s fault – I repeat; it’s never been better. Truly. 

Global warming means we don’t get mean, green vintages - ‘bad’ vintages - anymore. And vines are treated like royalty now – no chemicals, no rough stuff. Herbal treatments like spraying with  ‘horsetail tea’ to keep mildew away (that’s a wild plant, not real horse… though we’ve gone back to using them too… they’re better than tractors for the vineyard soil.) And the wines? Less and less is made like the “old” brown wines we used to do for war generation people who also liked their beef dead twice over. Today’s drinkers want fruit, freshness, no rough edges – and so do I. Last night with French and British friends we enjoyed our own 2023 La Clarière claret … bottled in February… for a ‘apero’.

Something impossible a few years ago. It was gorgeous. Big but soft and succulent. But that’s what we and other estates we know are making and offering today; a Bordeaux claret you don’t have to keep for ten years before the tannins have  softened up enough to enjoy. We don’t make tannic wines anymore. You can still keep them for ten years - or more - but you don’t have to.

My Bordeaux aren’t the show ponies. They’re the other 90% – the real stuff. The stuff that today, thanks to the spread of wine making know-how people can’t tell apart from Prima Donna bottles. Even experts can’t tell … (as long as they can’t see the labels!).

So if you want to enjoy the magic of claret; Britain’s most popular wine for a thousand years there’s never been a better time to buy. Buy right now, this very month. Do not delay. And don’t pay the high prices… pay ours.

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