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Bordeaux: The Future?

The world of wine has its would-be astrologers, led by Robert Parker and his predictions made in 2004, more recently followed by a team assembled by UK merchant Berry Bros & Rudd in 2008. Some of the Berry Brothers' predictions were made with a twinkle in the eye, particularly their opinion that by 2058 sommeliers will be employing honeybees - insects with a finely developed sense of smell - to detect corked bottles before they are served to customers. Many, however, were made with an earnestly straight face, as were those made by Parker; one from his list that certainly made a few headlines was his prediction that wine prices were set to rise dramatically. Anticipating increased interest in wine from countries in Asia, South America, Central and Eastern Europe and of course Russia, Parker announced that within ten years - so by 2014 - prices for first growth clarets would exceed $10000 per case.

A few years on from that prophecy and I am certainly not inclined to argue a different point. During the early years of the 21st Century wine prices have rocketed, and there is little suggestion that this trend will be easily reversed. This is not merely a subjective assessment, I stress, as there are a number of methods of examining changes in wine prices. Perhaps one of the most prominent is the Liv-Ex 100, an index of blue-chip wines the value of which may be used as a gauge for changes within the market as a whole, rather as FTSE indices do for more conventional avenues of investment such as stocks, shares, equities or real estate. The Liv-Ex 100, updated on a monthly basis, uses trading data on a finite list of wines to calculate the index. In order to keep the information current and reliable the wines must be highly rated and frequently traded, so the list is updated from time to time, with mature vintages falling off the list and new ones introduced. For example, January 2008 saw the 1982 vintages of Cheval-Blanc and Gruaud-Larose and eight other wines removed, but ten new ones introduced, including the 2003s from Pichon-Lalande and Pontet-Canet. Red Bordeaux accounts for more than 92% of the wines in the index, with a smattering of white Bordeaux - Yquem obviously - with other regions and countries represented by the likes of Krug, Ornellaia, Chave and Clos de Papes.

An inspection of the index, which was pegged to a value of 100 in June 2004, indicates more clearly the recent changes in prices of this level of wine than any other representation I am aware of. The consumer must now spend rather more than double what outlay would have been required for these wines just a few years ago. Fine news for investors with stocks of these wines, but perhaps not such a welcome story for those that were hoping to buy and drink them, and it must be especially galling for those with a loyal history of buying such wines over several decades. Wealthy apologists will point out that fine wine prices have always risen beyond what would be expected from other measures of inflation, and I concede that this is true. But these most recent rises seem very dramatic in comparison to the rises seen in the 1980s and 1990s. Whether they will be maintained, or whether some global recession will bring them crashing down is - for this non-astrologer - impossible to predict. But with the former perhaps the more likely, fans of blue-chip Bordeaux without infinite funds must look elsewhere for their kicks. Berry Bros. & Rudd suggest China as a possible future source of top quality wine; it is an intriguing concept, but not one that is likely to become reality for some time I think. In the meantime I would like to suggest somewhere a little closer to home.

As I have written in my profile of Chateau Lezongars, although Bordeaux receives more column-inches than any other wine region, it is perhaps also the most misunderstood and the most systematically ignored. Beyond the grand wines of the Liv-Ex 100 there are vines and wines, indeed whole appellations and regions, which seem to have much untapped potential. It is perhaps only natural as our obsession with wine builds that we focus more on the great chateaux of Pauillac or St Julien, Sauternes or Pessac-Léognan, but personally I still have fond memories of bottles from small, backwater estates which I encountered early in my affair with wine. Crisp, flavoursome whites from the Entre-deux-Mers, and rich, well-defined reds from the Côtes de Castillon, even generic Bordeaux from a good vintage such as 1990, these were early favourites. It is ironic that two decades on things are coming full circle, as I look once more at the wines of lesser estates, including a number of over-performing Cru Bourgeois properties in famous communes as well as the Médoc and Haut-Médoc, and also of lesser appellations, in order to keep me in good quality wines for drinking. The former properties are hopefully well covered in the other sections of this guide, but here I focus on the latter. Perhaps these appellations are, for many of us, the future of Bordeaux.

Bordeaux: the 'New' Appellations

The Côtes de Bordeaux and the Entre-deux-Mers

The new catch-all name for the Premières Côtes de Blaye, Premières Côtes de Bordeaux, Côtes de Francs and Côtes de Castillon appellations which came into being in 2007, the Côtes de Bordeaux is perhaps the first port of call for new and affordable Bordeaux. These disparate regions, of which two are right-bank regions (Francs, Blaye), the others (Castillon, Cadillac) sitting between the Garonne and Dordogne along with the Entre-deux-Mers, should still be identifiable from the communal names which will continue to be admissable on the label. Castillon is perhaps the best known of these, but hopefully not just because it is the location where the English were finally defeated by the French at the end of the Hundred Years' War; the slopes around the town have been recognised as a source of good value Bordeaux for many years. Today Chateau d'Aiguilhe is perhaps the best known, thanks to the involvement of Stephan von Neipperg and Stéphane Derenoncourt, the latter of these two also residing in the region at Domaine de l'A, of course. There is good work here and also in the Côtes de Blaye from a number of estates where Christian Veyry consults, the end product where he is involved being admirable if in a very soft and modern style.

The Côtes de Bourg was refused entry to the Bordeaux Côtes association following some quibbles over the use of the old appellation on the label, but here too there are some good wines to be found. My experience of the wines of these slopes is rather more limited than with the other côtes, but one wine that does stick in my mind was the 1973 from Chateau La Barde, tasted at 30 years of age. Whilst it was not the most elegant of wines, and in fact it was a touch dried-out and oxidised, it still suggested to me that this region should perhaps not be disregarded as incapable of producing ageworthy wines. Just not 30-year wines, perhaps. The same might not be true of the Premières Côtes de Bordeaux, a rather grand sounding appellation, but the investment and enthusiasm of the vigneron is everything, and there are highpoints even here. Philip Iles of the aforementioned Chateau Lezongars is one such character. And not so far away is another British expat Gavin Quinney, who at Chateau Bauduc makes an excellent white Entre-deux-Mers, with decent reds again under the Premières Côtes de Bordeaux appellation.

Fronsac & Canon-Fronsac

The quality attainable in these two appellations is no secret, and as long ago as the 18th Century the wines of Fronsac were frequently served in the French court. With the arrival of phylloxera and the devastation of France's vineyards, however, Fronsac and the associated enclave Canon-Fronsac went into decline. Subsequently the region has seen hard times, hiding in the shadows of the limelight which today tends to focus on nearby Pomerol and St Emilion instead. Fortunately investment from elsewhere in Bordeaux and also from further afield has helped a number of properties, and some of these I featured in profiles as very early additions to this site. La Vieille Cure and La Rivière are notable for this reason, the first having been reinvigorated by American investors Colin Ferenbach and Peter Sachs who acquired the estate in 1986, the second by a series of Frenchmen, most recently James Edmond Grégoire, a name perhaps more readily associated with Cognac and the manufacture of harvesting machines than this Bordeaux appellation.

St Emilion and the Satellites

Around St Emilion and Pomerol are a number of satellite appellations, and of course at the pompous-sounding yet most certainly generic St Emilion Grand Cru level there are some committed proprietors striving to produce wine worthy of our attention. One example of the latter is home to yet another British expat, Jonathon Maltus, this being Chateau Teyssier, and hopefully I have given these properties due publicity in my guide to St Emilion. Another approach to finding good value drinking around St Emilion may be to explore the satellite appellations of Montagne-, Lussac-, Puisseguin- and St-Georges-St-Emilion, and of course close by there is also Lalande-de-Pomerol. With careful selection these regions may yield good value wines that offer an obvious Bordeaux fix, with Chateau Roudier, one of a portfolio of properties run by Jacques Capdemourlin and family, and also Chateau du Lyonnat, owned by the Milhade family, being two likely examples.

Sweet Wines

Finally, for sweet wines, it is worth looking outside the famous appellations of Sauternes and Barsac from time to time, although rarely have I yet found anything to challenge the better wines from these more famous appellations. The aforementioned Premières Côtes de Bordeaux appellation applies to sweet wines as well as red, but it is three tiny appellations that lie at the southern end of the Premières Côtes, namely Cadillac, Loupiac and Ste-Croix-du-Mont, that offer the most promise, and this is perhaps hardly surprising as the vineyards lie directly opposite Sauternes and Barsac on the right bank of the Garonne. Even closer to Barsac is Cérons, an enclave of the Graves appellation just to the north of its more famous cousins and here there are certainly some good wines to be found. Undoubtedly the appellation leader here is the Chateau de Cérons, residence of the Perromat family, which produces a sweet wine once described by Clive Coates as "the greatest Bordeaux sweet wine outside the Sauternes district".

Rose Tinted Spectacles

In this concluding article I have alluded to only two possible futures. In the first, prices continue to rise, and the majority of drinkers - including myself - gradually become accustomed, having been priced out of the market, to drinking something other than the classic wines of Bordeaux, whether it be from the appellations briefly alluded to above, or from further afield. It does perhaps require a rose-tinted view on life to accept that Citran can replace Chevalier, or that Lezongars might replace Latour, but perhaps only for those of us who have become accustomed to these wines and then subsequently found ourselves unable to stretch to the asking prices of today. For those exploring wine for the first time, however, I wonder if overly-expensive Bordeaux will become increasingly irrelevant in the face of increased quality available from South America, South Africa, Languedoc and Roussillon, New Zealand and Australia.

An alternative future is one in which prices fall once more, back to the levels we enjoyed during the 1990s. If this were to happen soon the wines would sell through quickly thanks to high demand, and our love affair with Bordeaux would continue. But what if prices only fall ten or twenty years from now, after the first future sketched out above has already been played out? Many consumers will have moved on, and Bordeaux will find it has priced itself out of a market, while previously loyal customers happily sit back and relax with the high-end Chileans and South Africans to which they have become accustomed. Or, for the Francophiles, perhaps something from the Loire, the Rhône or Roussillon? Yes, this is another future viewed through rose-tinted spectacles, but I did point out at the beginning that I am no astrologer. Nevertheless, just because wealthy wine drinkers worldwide seem to be having a huge love affair with Bordeaux right now does not guarantee this will always be the case, and for that reason alone there is certainly a risk with the way Bordeaux pricing is progressing, a risk that the number of willing, interested and sufficiently moneyed consumers will, over decades, slowly dwindle until the market is no longer supported.

It is not impossible. A century ago the vineyards of the Mosel and Rhine produced some of the world's most expensive and highly sought after wines, but times and fashions change, and war, politics and perhaps most poignantly a poor business ethos all pushed the image of German wine to the brink, and demand for their wines fell to an incredible low. Admittedly, the problem here was a downward spiral in the quality of much of the wine, the result of an emphasis on volume of sales of cheap, sugary plonk rather than fostering consumer loyalty through selling great wine. Bordeaux doesn't have this particular problem, but it does have other problems. The style of wine produced by Bordeaux has already changed significantly over the last few decades, as I discussed in my article entitled osmosis and extraction, and some drinkers have already switched off to modern Bordeaux for this reason. How will the region cope in coming years, particularly in the face of increasingly swift climate change? Will the Bordelais be forced into planting novel varieties to cope with these changes, as suggested by Mouton-Rothschild director Hervé Berland in late 2007? Will well drained terroirs, unable to cope with the dry and warm summers, be replaced by the lesser appellations outlined above, or will they all be usurped by regions north of Bordeaux?

Or is it more likely that Bordelais will have continued success with their current model, continuing infinitely onwards, producing richer and richer wines, pushing the prices higher and higher, jumping up with every half-decent vintage that comes along? How long can this sort of business model be sustained? Only time, I suppose, will tell.

• The End: Back to the introduction to my Bordeaux Wine Guide