Best of Bordeaux

identified from those times, including what are now Cognac and Angers. Libourne

does not appear on the list. It was on the basis of this meagre evidence that Suf-

frein established Ausonius' villa as being in Saint-Emilion, where Gallo-Roman

artefacts have indeed been found. However, after archaeologists found the foun-

dations of a large Roman villa near Saint-André / Montagne, Suffrein's thesis was

dismissed as pure fabrication. Researchers still argue about which excavations

can be attributed to Ausonius, who owned estates in Bordeaux and Saintes but

spent a large part of his life in Milan and Trier. Whether Suffrein (whose thesis

sought primarily to demonstrate the importance of Libourne as far back as Ro-

man times) was influenced by Jean Cantenat, who renamed his estate with the

unpronounceable name of Rocblancan as “Ausone” in around 1781, or was instead

inspired by the research findings of local historians and amateur archaeologists,

is something we will probably never know. One thing is certain: during this pe-

riod, various other estates in the region (Pétrus, Conseillante and Beauséjour)

also gained finer-sounding (and thus more tempting) names. This small digres-

sion should not be viewed as an accusation of the falsification of history, but is

rather simply designed to illustrate how fact and fiction are often intertwined in

Bordeaux.

Since the most important Atlantic port in southern France came to be in Bor-

deaux, the ocean is still shaping its destiny today, and Bordeaux became the

northernmost part of south-western France to continue successfully growing

fine red wine – for Bordeaux is on the Atlantic, and not on the Mediterranean or

even the Amazon despite many opinions to the contrary! True Bordeaux locals

never go out without a cap and an umbrella, not to mention the local women

who are constantly on the alert and generally under cover, always holding onto

their skirts when walking through the city: if Billy Wilder had filmed ‘Some Like

It Hot' in Bordeaux rather than New York in 1959, Marilyn Monroe's lovely knees

could have been exposed without the need for subway grating. Here the west

wind howls, bringing rain, gales and legendary summer storms, the weather is

sometimes so capricious that the mercury gets the hiccups, and without check-

ing the weather report it is impossible to know whether you should be pulling on

a T-shirt or a woollen jumper, in the height of summer or the depths of winter.

‘A true Bordelais', as I was told with a raised finger by none other than Jacques

Chaban-Delmas, ‘never goes out walking without an umbrella'. I did it anyway

and turned up at an appointment to interview the city's legendary former may-

or soaked to the skin, dripping on the polished and waxed parquet floor of the

city hall like fresh laundry throughout our conversation. On 4 August 2003, the

thermometer here shot up to an exuberant 40.7 degrees Celsius, but on 8 August

16

History Bordeaux melting pot

1924 it remained stuck at just 1.5 degrees. However, even the greatest climatic up-

heavals can be tolerated whenever there are riches to be made. Mankind peered

at Bordeaux's legendary terroirs like Moses peered at God in Mann's trilogy ‘Jo-

seph and His Brothers', and thus helped them into existence. Resourceful minds

adapted the terroir to their needs and people also adapted to suit the terrior (or

less concisely: after Armenians or Greeks or Mesopotamians or whoever accus-

tomed the vine – a climbing plant from shaded forests – to the alkaline clay and

limestone soils and the burning sun and persuaded it to produce grapes which

could be made into wine, the Gallo-Romans who had already begun making wine

on the right bank but also wanted to produce it on this side of the river, adapted

the plants to the acidic soils and cheerfully damp climate on the left bank of the

Garonne). They therefore created terroir in its broadest sense, terroir consisting of

time and space, terroir made from history and nature, terroir, inextricably linked

to humans and their destiny.

The Bordeaux melting pot

More than a single lifetime would be required to investigate the thousand-

year family tree of a thoroughbred Bordelais. The Bituriges, who according to

legend founded Burdigala and introduced Vitis Biturica (the first ancestor of

Cabernet), were not the only contributors to the archetypal Bordeaux blood-

line. Novem Populi was the name of a south-western Roman province where

nine peoples were supposed to have settled. In fact it was not nine but nearly

thirty tribes who accepted Roman rule more or less willingly and with it, almost

inevitably, Roman genes: love is blind, not pure-bred. Over the centuries they

were joined by Visigoths and Saracens, Britons (themselves a mixture of Angles,

Saxons and Normans), followed by the Jews, Navarrese and Lombards, along

with the Dutch, Irish and Scots, not forgetting the Hanseatic and Baltic peoples

as well as South Sea Islanders, North Africans, Senegalese, Italians, Spaniards

and Portuguese: for 2,000 years Bordeaux has been a trade city, as cosmopolitan

as Hong Kong, Rio and New York put together, and has long been a magnet for

anyone in search of wealth and success.

Bordeaux has never got anywhere in military terms – people dominated here

not by the sword but rather with plough and sickle or abacus and stylus. The Ro-

mans never had a garrison here, remaining in Blavia (Blaye) on the right bank of

the Gironde. Citizens adapted to conquerors in public and were decadent in se-

cret. The dark chapter of the Second World War with its submarine port, depor-

tation station and Maurice Papon, Secretary General of the Gironde from 1942

to 1944 who was convicted of being an accomplice to crimes against humanity

in a sensational trial in 1998, and of the world of wine which disintegrated into

collaborators, emigrants and silent victims and which suffered from a severe

18

shortage of manpower, is an inglorious story that has not yet been fully told:

Bordeaux prefers to leave its evil spirits alone and its bodies deeply buried. How-

ever, its reputation was never truly damaged: even the worst characters were

unable to resist the otherworldly charms of the wine and its native land, like

the allure of a lady of easy virtue. Bordeaux is a city which runs wild in beauti-

ful finery during the day and then at night is redolent of the demimonde like a

perfume that bewitches the senses.

It is ironic that the Bordelais have a woman – Eleanor of Aquitaine – to thank

for making wine into such an all-powerful asset, because for a long time, the

Bordelais would not even allow women into their cellars for fear of them turn-

ing the grape juice sour. But these same Bordelais would happily squander their

money in the city's brothels or the city theatre (which was built in 1738 only

to burn down 17 years later, leading to the construction of the current Grand

Théâtre by the architect Victor Louis, now a major attraction of this city that

was named a World Heritage Site in 2007). And these same Bordelais would

conclude their transactions –generally in private alcoves – so loudly that the few

real culture lovers persuaded the king's intendant to establish France's first pub-

lic park, or Jardin Public, in Bordeaux in 1746, where good male society could

finally swagger in the open air or the shade of the Atlas cedars.

19

Eleanor of Aquitaine was the granddaughter of William the Troubadour Duke

of Aquitaine, the wife of the French King Louis VII before an annulment was

granted. She was also a crusader and the incestuous lover of her uncle Raymond

of Poitiers. In 1151 she married the heir to the English throne Henry IIPlantagen-

et who was ten years her junior, for whom she produced eight children includ-

ing Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland whom Ivanhoe fans will know

from Walter Scott's chivalric novel, before instigating a plot against her husband

and consequently being imprisoned for ten years. There are numerous legends

about this determined lady. Only one of these is relevant to us, and it is demon-

strably true: thanks to her, Bordeaux came under English rule for 300 years, and

thus became the island kingdom's wine cellar, in top vintages brimming over

with the equivalent of Switzerland's current annual production.

Vines were then planted in the ‘palus' – fertile alluvial soils along the Garonne,

which to the west of the city joins up with the Dordogne, into which the Isle

flows at Libourne. This land definitely has no shortage of water. Bordeaux owes

its reputation not the greatest terroirs in the world, but instead to deep soils that

are rather unsuitable for top wines from today's perspective. The region pul-

sates to the rhythm of the tides and is shaped by a rainy Atlantic climate. This

once again demonstrates that terroir has as much to do with commercial policy

and a strategic transport location as it does with geology and climate.

20

History The new French claret

The wines from these soils were a translucent, clear, bright red colour like

virtually all of the ‘red wines' produced in the cultivation area we now call

France up until the mid-19th century. The English called it claret, which in

Britain remains a synonym for Bordeaux to this day. These wines were not even

particularly elegant or refined, as people would sometimes have us believe.

Instead, they had a robust constitution in order to withstand the rigours of

shipping in reasonable condition and so that they only turned sour once poured

into the purchaser's glass. Without a doubt, they would have been sweet and

sparkling as happens to wines today if we leave them to their own devices,

which was the practice at the time. The few historic sources citing wines with

their origins (Andely, Rabelais, Villon) make no mention of Bordeaux until the

late 16th century.

The New French Claret

The concept of a Grand Vin, differing from standard wine like a prince from

a pauper, came to the owner of a plot called Ho Brian (Haut-Brion) to the south

of Bordeaux between 1550 and 1650, a flash of inspiration which should earn

him a heartfelt tribute from any halfway grateful Bordeaux fan. Of course, the

various Jeans and Arnauds de Pontac (in Bordeaux as elsewhere, first names

are re-used throughout multiple generations, making genealogical research a

particularly exacting activity), were thinking not of winemaking posterity, but

rather of their own pockets and economic survival. During this same period of

history, Columbus ran aground in the Bahamas in 1492, Magellan circumnavi-

gated the globe for the first time in 1519, and in 1582 German doctor and natural

historian Leonhart Rauwolf wrote a 500-page volume recounting his Oriental

travels, which included a passage on Turkish drinking habits (page 105): ‘among

the rest they have a very good drink they call Chaube that is almost as black as

ink and very good in illness, especially of the stomach.' In 1550 the first coffee

house opened in Istanbul, Venice began brewing mocha in around 1600, and

bags full of ‘Chaube' beans were first listed on the London and Marseille port

registers in around 1650. The assiduous Rauwolf revealed that the Turks viewed

coffee as a replacement for wine, the consumption of which was a punishable

offence across the entire Ottoman Empire (with the exception of short periods

of drinking freedom).

If the Bordelais in general (who had been making a living from winemaking

for more than 300 years) and the de Pontacs in particular (who were heavily reli-

ant on it because they gave with one hand and took away with the other) wanted

to defy the nascent competition, they had to come up with something whether

they liked it or not. Their local wines, which were only successful because A) the

water was so dangerous to drink that it had to be disinfected with this wine and

Be our guest and enjoy your stay to the fullest. Our maitre de cuisine

and his team will please you with seasonal high-quality ‘Slow Food' cui-

sine and many products from our own organic garden. We offer creative

vegetarian, best meat and varied vegan dishes. Another great attraction is

our historic English park with its organic gardens where you may discover

a large variety of herbs and ‘Pro Specie Rara' fruits and vegetables.

Located within the castle is a historic bath tub, dating from 1928, where

you can relax. The Lake of Constance and the Alpstein mountains are also

great local options for a day or half-day outing.

CH-9404 Rorschacherberg

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wartegg.ch

The organic Château

at Lake of Constance

22

B) all other wines from surrounding areas and the remaining southwest were

refused access to the port until after Christmas, could not bear comparison with

other generally more powerful and transportable drinks such as coffee, tea and

chocolate. This also applied to brandy and there was strong competition from

Portugal – military and economic partners of England since the 1386 Treaty of

Windsor – and Spain whose ‘sack' from Jerez was sold by the Vintner's Company

in London from 1565. Did Shakespeare have Falstaff drink Bordeaux? Absolutely

not! The womaniser declaimed in the 1597 play Henry IV, part 2: ‘A good sherris-

sack (...) ascends into the brain (...) and warms the blood'. No mention of claret!

A successful product cannot just be plucked out of thin air: you first have to

analyse the production conditions, the market and sales opportunities. If the

conditions do not match the consumers' needs, you invest in clever marketing.

You identify consumer motivators – people who define the spirit of the age – and

allow them to test the product, invite them to a good meal or a relaxing few days

on a yacht. That is exactly what the de Pontacs and their neighbours skilfully

did – they analysed the natural conditions and made the best of them. Because

they had gravel mounds rather than the fertile sediment along the banks of the

Garonne, they simply gathered up the latter from every mud deposit they could

find in order to improve their gravel soils (anyone who believes that vines will

grow in stone alone will end up bitterly disappointed) and then planted their

23

rows of vines into this mixture. The vines seemed to take to it well, but would

the results meet the expectations?

After many years of testing and selection, the resulting wine was red in colour

but sadly also rather tart and angular, and not at all sweet or easy to drink. It also

had a rather unique aroma – in the truest sense of the word. The Londoner, Sec-

retary to the Admiralty and Member of Parliament Samuel Pepys did not write

in his oft-cited diary in 1663 that he had drunk a wine that tasted better than

any other, but rather that he ‘drank a sort of French wine, called Ho Bryan, that

hath a good and most particular taste that I never met with', and which – reading

between the lines – left him surprised and very undecided, perhaps thinking

‘this tastes a little strange, but if others like it then I will probably enjoy it as

well'. However, the fields and farmland which the de Pontacs gained as a dowry

were very unforgiving, so the family developed new cultivation techniques and

selected and planted suitable vines, all with the bailiffs at the door. They simply

made a virtue out of necessity and turned a disadvantage into an advantage.

Opaque colour and tannic flavour? Something for men of the world to savour

and keeps much better than the pink sauces of their competition, particularly

once wine was sold in glass bottles, the production of which gradually improved

from the 16th century onwards (King Charles II of England's cellar book from

1660 records the purchase of 169 bottles of Hobrion at the price of 21 shillings

Château Calon Ségur

24

History New luxury

4 pence per full bottle), stopped with a cork (the use of which also gradually

came into fashion), left to mature for a while and served in delicate Venetian

crystal glasses rather than the drinking horns, pewter mugs or leather cups of

the common people. If left to mature for a while, this new wine gradually de-

veloped astounding smoothness, a well-balanced taste and a stunning bouquet

the like of which no one had ever experienced before. And to ensure that the

wine would not be confused with others and would become its own brand, it

was named after its producer and place of origin and ultimately transformed

into a luxury product with the clever suggestion that it might be of noble origin

and have bathed in the twilight of a cellar in a chateau owned by some ancient

aristocracy. But more on that later.

After the end of the English Civil War (1642–1650) London became the intel-

lectual and cultural capital of Europe, knocking Paris off the podium. Not even

the plague to which a fifth of the city's population fell victim in 1665 or the Great

Fire of September 1666 (which actually claimed very few lives but caused mas-

sive destruction) could not compromise this development: London had made it

to the top and was there to stay. Shortly after the Great Fire, the Pontacs opened

a tavern in the capital called the Pontac's Head which quickly became the best

eatery in the city. It served up French specialities and its own wine, and soon

anyone who was anyone was seen there. Although Jonathan Swift complained

that the wine was much too expensive at seven shillings a flagon, other intel-

lectuals such as the philosopher John Locke became veritable ambassadors for

the brand. Locke paid a visit to Haut-Brion in 1677, carefully examined its terroir,

studied cultivation techniques and set about solving the mystery as to why the

Pontacs' wine tasted so delicious that ‘the rich English would order it for any

price'. He also noted: ‘The wine of Pontac, so revered in England, is made on a

little rise of ground, lieing open most to the west. It is noe thing but pure white

sand, mixed with a little gravel. One would imagin it scarce fit to beare anything.'

And suddenly everyone wanted some, and the de Pontacs were able to sell Ho

Brian at ten or twenty times the price of standard claret, pay off their creditors

and a

ff

ord younger courtesans.

However, the competition never sleeps. What was just right for the de Pontacs

was sacred to the de Ségurs, de Rauzans or de Lestonnacs, and the Bordeaux

bourgeois (who were all also ship-owners and merchants, and often lawyers or

notaries and bankers and always city parliamentarians) thus triggered what you

might call a veritable cultivation war in Bordeaux. And when the gravel mounds

to the southwest, west and northwest of the city (what is now Pessac-Léognan)

were requisitioned and seemed particularly suitable for producing this new

style of French wine which the Brits called ‘new French claret', Bordeaux's

moneyed aristocracy simply purchased the endless hunting grounds of the Mé-

doc, now dried out by the Dutch. These were characterised by the numerous

Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey

Sauternes

1945

Château Lafaurie-Peyraguey, Sauternes, 1945

Tasting note by René Gabriel:

Medium dark bright gold, freshly picked apricots,

caramel, orange peel, Butterscotch.

Exhibition: 10 to 24 May 2017, studio visits on request.

Pierre Aerni, Burgstrasse 4, CH-8604 Volketswil, e-mail: [e-mail]

www.sauternes-art.ch

sauternes-art.ch

Tasting Notes Metamorphoses

27

Early years History

flat gravel knolls transported from the Pyrenees by the Garonne in prehistoric