bordeaux wine tour

Yesterday was our much-anticipaed wine tour. Axel, a German immigrant who speaks impeccable english (sounds like a brit) picked us up in a shiny gray VW van. He moved to bordeaux 7 years ago to be part of the wine industry. he participated in the harvest three years. Harvesting is a big work party. Because there are so many regulations here, they do most of the work by hand, and each vineyard needs about 200 seasonal workers to bring in the harvest. here is why...

Napolean hosted a world's fair in France, and he wanted a classification system for the best wines. At the time, only bordeaux region was making great wine. So he gathered some wine pros to grade the chateaux on quality, history, and heritage. they came up with 5 levels, grand cru premier being the best. Only four got grand cru premiere level, and about 14 chateaux in every other level. so if you see grand cru class premier on a bordeaux bottle, you know it was the best (in Napolean's time).

In order to keep that classifications, the chateaux must do everything exactly as they did in Napoleans time, which means hand pruning and harvesting, but the prestige is worth it to them

We visited Mouton Rothschild, originally a grand deaux (2nd level) who convinced the AOC to bump them up to grand cru. This is the ONLY addition or change ever made to the classification system, and their motto is "once we were second, first we are, Mouton does not change." and they are serious about not changing! its interesting to be in a place that puts so much emphasis on history and high class...everything. a bottle here is around 600euros.

Intestingly, the chateax we visited all gave us young wines - wines from the 2006 harvest which are still aging in the barrels. This is called a barrel tasting. The wines are very potent and you can distinguish the flavors but no balance to the wine. lots of tanins still, which dry out your mouth. These wines will age in barrels for two years, and then they say you should wait 5-20 years to drink them (depending on the peak).

Just because a wine doesn't have a grand cru label doesnt mean its bad. Our guide took us to a shop that ships to the US, and helped us pick out some wines - some to drink now, and some to "lay down" as they say.