I received a great email from Morgan yesterday with this article attached and had to share it. Morgan is currently over in France right now working harvest at Chateau Lynch Bages in Bordeaux.

It’s a long article, so I’ve split it up in to a couple posts. I’ll publish the second part over at Wine Sediments later this week. Enjoy.

BY MORGAN TWAIN-PETERSON

Perhaps the first thing that strikes you about the Medoc, and Bordeaux generally, is how flat it is. Though gradual slopes and hills are found in the smaller right-bank appellations, most notably St. Emilion and Pomerol, the vast majority of the region is quite flat. Considering the cult of hillside that exists in most of the world’s great wine regions it seems counter-intuitive that some of worlds most expensive and best wines come from these soils. The region is also enormous. After driving through the grand crus of Burgundy, the crus of Beaujolais, and Cote-Rotie and Condrieu, regions where if you blink too fast you have passed the small plot of sacred soil for which you search, the sheer vastness of Bordeaux is somewhat overwhelming. The city of Bordeaux itself is enormous, one of the largest in France. Without traffic it takes easily an hour and a half to travel from Pauillac on the left bank of the Gironde to St. Emilion and Pomerol. Sauternes and Barsac, to the south are equally distant. In contrast to Burgundy, where the great vineyards are crowded onto the broad faces of a few select slopes blessed with escarpments of marlstone and limestone scree, all within a couple of miles from each other, it is seemingly a marvel that Bordeaux’s great Chateau possess such similar character despite being so geographically distant from each other. Though the difference between a Cabernet dominated wine from Pessac-Leognan and a Merlot dominated cuvee of Pomerol are clear, they both still possess a quality of elegance and power that make them clearly Bordeaux.

Though I choose to focus here on the great Chateau of Bordeaux, it is important to remember what a huge amount of wine comes from the region. The massive Entre-Deux-Mers and its surrounding regions produce millions of cases of basic Bordeaux AOC wines of red, white, and rose coloring (though red outnumbers white 6 to 1) The total production was 6.5 million hectoliters of wine (65 million liters) as recently as 1998 (the number is essentially the same today). A 12 bottle case of wine is 9 liters. It is a sh*@load of wine. As such, its economic impact on the wine industry and France’s general economy is important.

Historically, Bordeaux is quite different from other regions of France. In no French wine region is the influence of outside countries more keenly felt. The historical contributions of the English and the Dutch cannot be discounted when one drives through contemporary Bordeaux. In the Medoc, the strip of land that lies between the Gironde River and the Atlantic Ocean, the influence of outside control are felt most keenly. When France was still divided into separate kingdoms throughout the 15th and 16th century, much of its business was based on exports to the British Empire. The relationship between the rulers of Bordeaux and England were rocky however, as prone to the vicissitudes of monarchical diplomacy and warmongering as any during the pre-Westphalian period. The wines most sought after by the British were those actually grown much farther inland from todays current viticultural area. The “black wine� of Cahors, far inland on the banks of the river Lot, was considered of highest quality, while the Medoc could not even support vine growth.

This changed however in the 18th century when the hearts of the British and Bordelaise hardened against each other. The British began sourcing their wines from Spain, and the merchants of Bordeaux turned to the Dutch to help them maintain their economic viability. The new love felt by the Dutch and their dykes led to the massive project of draining the marshland between the Gironde River and the Atlantic Ocean. This is the Medoc as we know it now. As the British-France relationship became better British merchants came back to Bordeaux. The entire area of Lynch in Pauillac is named for the powerful Irish wine-merchant Robert Lynch, and the name still adorns the label of some of the great wines of the commune. I am staying at the best of them, Chateau Lynch-Bages, but there is also Lynch-Moussas.

The draining of the Medoc resulted in land that resembles a riverbed. The soil is quite flat, with only slight slopes. The gentle mounds of sandy alluvial gravel deposited by ancient glaciers that created the Pyrenees and Massif Central of France are just about perfect for the production of great wine production. It is here that the paradox of poor soils making good wines reaches one of its pinnacles. The rocky and sandy soil found along the western edge of the Medoc, most of it within view of the river itself, are relatively deep (up to 10 meters in some places) and drain of moisture quickly. Vines are forced to dig their roots deep into the soil to find enough moisture and nutrients to survive. The result is lower crops with greater concentration of flavor. This is not to say that all soil is created equal in the Haut-Medoc, home to the famous communes of St. Estephe, Pauillac, St. Julien, and Margaux. The appearance of the topsoil changes within a few feet in some places. And it is this difference which separates the highest quality chateau, those which these are charging up to $500 a bottle for their wine, from those that can be appreciated by a wider segment of society.

(classic river gravel and sand, at Ch. Lynch Bages)

It is also the reason why wines are relatively easy to identify. Each commune has set characteristics. The northernmost St. Estephe, situated closer to the mouth of Gironde and recipient of less gravel during the good old glacier age, has a slightly higher percentage of clay in its soil, has slightly steepr and longer slopes, and slightly lower temperatures. The heavier soils make for slower ripening and the resulting wines tend to possess pretty perfume but have courser tannin than their southern brethren.

(soil at Chateau Montrose in Saint-Estephe, note greater clay content)

Pauillac, a few kilometers south, is home to a diverse set of absolutely fantastic wines. Lafite-Rothschild and Mouton-Rothschild, though located next to each other, have completely different character—again a result of aspect and soil type—while the third great wine of Pauillac, Latour, possesses an entirely different flavor profile again. Mouton is the sexpot of the bunch, plush and smooth. Latour, is the opposite. It is a savage, biting, dirty-mouthed lover that takes years to soften out. The last bottle I had was a 1989 on my birthday and it was still a youthfully brash wine, though fully in possession of the currant, cedar and mineral typical of Pauillac. It is Latour that probably best exemplifies the “iron fist in a velvet glove� metaphor used to describe great Pauillac claret.

After the three first growths, Pauillac boasts a double handful of great estates. The classification system of 1855, which placed the best estates in five classes, was kind to Pauillac. It was also kinder to some chateau than others. Outside of the three first growths, it is probably most important to know which chateaus were classed rather than how they were classed over a century and a half ago. Two second-growths, Chateau Pichon Longueville Comtess de Lalande and Chateau Pichon Longueville au Baron de Pichon-Longueville best exemplify how the original rating system has been prone to inaccuracy. For years, Pichon Lalande outperformed Pichon Baron (the estates face each other across the D2 road) fetching higher prices and generally enjoying a reputation of superior consistency and quality. After the insurance company AXA took over Pichon Baron in the early 1990’s and implemented a massive redevelopment of the estate under the leadership of Chateau Lynch-Bages’ Jean-Michel Caze, the wines are now in parity with each other and each deserves its second growth status. Another wine now considered a “super-second� growth is Lynch-Bages itself, which was originally classified as a fifth growth, and is probably the most beautifully perfumed wine of Pauillac. I attest to this after racking barrels of the 2005 today and being absolutely bamboozled by the aromatics of this years wine, from what is looking to be an exceptional year in Bordeaux.

Seriously, I was eshmazzled, undone, I wanted to sink my face into the racking pan and confront my mortality. In a qualitatively different direction, Pontet-Canet, which lies next to Mouton and the great Ch. D’Armailhac, has seemingly consistently under-achieved for all of its years. The moral being that the 1855 classification should probably be used only as a general signpost of quality; too much depends on the philosophy of the owner, soils, and the vicissitiudes of individual taste to use it as an absolute guide.

Part 2 will be posted over at Wine Sediments later this week.