If the wine world has a Mecca, hub,or center of the universe, few wouldargue it’s Bordeaux, France.

Bordeaux wine producers havemade the great Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot blends that have set the standardfor decades.

There is a reason when you pick up a blend from any other wine producing region and you see marketing that includes phrases like ‘Bordeaux blend’ or “Bordeaux like.’

A combination of resting on its laurels,not to mention a certain amount of snob-bish attitude, Bordeaux may be the least developed wine tourism region in the world.

Slowly, Bordeaux is beginning to change. Producers have seen the wild success of areas like Napa Valley and beyond and now want a piece of the wine tourism dollar.

“Bordeaux tourism has come on enor-mously in the last 10 years,” said Mary Dardenne, operator of Decanter Tours. “Historically, in order to visit a Chateauyou have to be the wine press, a buyer,or Thomas Jefferson.”

Today more of the properties are wel-

coming visitors, but Bordeaux remains a long way from the limousine and tour buses of other areas. “Most of the visits have to be reserved well in advance,”Dardenne said. “If you want to go to one of the first-growth, classified properties in Medoc, three to six months in advance is obligatory.”

Martin Fuego, marketer for Chateau Lestrille in the Saint-Emilion region, saidtourism is finally catching on. “We’re a bit behind other countries but we’re try-ing to catch up. A lot of work has been done the last few years.”t

Fuego’s wife is the fifth generation

winemaker at the family winery in tiny St. Germain du Puch village. Together they’re tackling the Euro-carrying tour-ist. “We have created a boutique to offer something other than just wine to get people to participate and discover a bit of the secret behind winemaking.

“We have seen here that people will come back more often, local people, peo-ple from across Bordeaux, and people from travel agencies.”

Reservations are neededThe Chateau Lestrille boutique sits on

the main road through town and offers wine novelties, oils, and other foodsbesides a wine tasting experience.

Dardenne and Fuego agreed that investment in tourism is seen across thewine region. “More and more estateshave built restaurants, something yousee in Napa Valley,” Fuego said. “It’s very common that you eat in a restaurant inNew World wine regions. Here in Bor-deaux that hasn’t existed. We find it strange this hasn’t been done here. We’re behind but we have ideas of creatingsomething similar.”

Waking up to Bordeaux

Howard Hewitt

Wine producers seeing wild success in Napa Valley and beyond

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Dardenne led a tour of wine journal-ists to Chateau Franc Mayne in Saint Emilion where we tasted wines, touredthe winery and then toured a small portion of a four-acre, underground limestone mine. The underground cav-erns are used for aging the Chateau’s wines but also have being transformedinto a tourist experience.

During the June trip they had not yet opened a multimedia presentation on the history of winemaking, the Cha-teau and Saint-Emilion, but shared the idea with visiting journalists. It was a fascinating way to learn the wine-mak-ing history instead of walking through a cave with a tour guide.

If planning a trip to Bordeaux the first rule of thumb is you just can’t show up. Bordeaux doesn’t work with-out reservations.

“First and foremost, you can go tothe Bordeaux tourist office or Saint Emilion tourist office,” Dardenne said.“They have very good packaged pro-grams where you can visit several properties in a day with different types of themes.”

And of course there are individualtour guides like Dardenne who canpersonalize the experience to your tastes. A simple Internet search will now yield several results.

“I work with almost everyone in Bor-deaux and you have all types of experi-ences,” Dardenne said. “You have peo-ple like the owners of Franc Mayne who have really embraced the process.You have others who have opened up and are looking to expand their tour-ism. Then you have other people who are in the business of making and sell-ing wine — fair enough. Those peoplearen’t here to do tourism; they’re here to make good quality wine.”

But Bordeaux has one overwhelm-ing advantage as its producers open upthe wineries to tourists. “Of course, Bordeaux is a name,” Fuego said. “Weare lucky that Bordeaux is a name that is known. If you think of Bordeaux,you think of wine not the city. We have that potential and we have to use it. Upuntil maybe 2000 this was an area which sold its wine without much diffi-culty and without having to do any-thing to attract people. That’s not the case anymore. We have much morecompetition and now we have to wakeup.” ■

Howard W. Hewitt of Crawfordsvillewrites about wine for Madison maga-zine, Indiana newspapers, a national online wine magazine and a personal blog. Contact him at hewitthoward@gmail.com.

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