Wine

Regions

Old World

France

Bordeaux

BOURG AND BLAYE

Bourg and Blaye

Ninety-five per cent of the wine produced here is good-value red. Tiny Bourg makes more wine than its five-times-larger neighbor, Blaye, and most of the vines grown in Blaye come from a cluster of chateaux close to the borders of Bourg. As one would expect of an area that has supported a settlement for 400,000 years, Bourg has a close-knit community. Comparatively recently, the Romans used neighboring Blaye as a castrum a fortified area in the defense system that shielded Bordeaux. According to some sources, the vine was cultivated in Bourg and Blaye as soon as the Romans arrived. Vineyards were certainly flourishing here long before those of the Medoc just the other side of the Gironde.

Bourg is a compact, heavily cultivated area with pretty hillside vineyards at every turn. The vine is less important in Blaye, which has other interests, including a caviar industry based at its ancient fishing port where sturgeon is still a major catch. The vineyards of Blaye are mostly clustered in the countryside immediately bordering Bourg, and, despite the similarity of the countryside, traditionally produce the slightly inferior wine. The D18 appears to be a barrier beyond which the less intensely cultivated hinterland takes On a totally different topography where the more expansive scenery is dotted with lonely forests.

To the Romans, these south facing vineyards overlooking the Gironde seemed the ideal place to plant vines. Because they failed, understandably, to realize the possibilities that the Medoc concealed beyond its virtually impenetrable marshes, it does not necessarily follow that they were wrong about Bourg and Blaye. Indeed, the quality achieved today in these vineyards would have surpassed the most optimistic hopes of those past masters of the vine. Since their time, new and different concepts of classic wine have relegated this district to a viticultural backwater, but its potential remains the same. In twenty years time, when we have at last discovered Fronsac and elevated Canon-Fronsac to a level equivalent to that of Pomerol. These proprietors have great potential of these wines if a lure for higher prices, entices these growers to restrict yields, improve vinification techniques and indulge in a percentage of new oak.