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Eleanor of Aquitaine was the granddaughter of William the Troubadour Duke

of Aquitaine, the wife of the French King Louis VII before an annulment was

granted. She was also a crusader and the incestuous lover of her uncle Raymond

of Poitiers. In 1151 she married the heir to the English throne Henry IIPlantagen-

et who was ten years her junior, for whom she produced eight children includ-

ing Richard the Lionheart and John Lackland whom Ivanhoe fans will know

from Walter Scott's chivalric novel, before instigating a plot against her husband

and consequently being imprisoned for ten years. There are numerous legends

about this determined lady. Only one of these is relevant to us, and it is demon-

strably true: thanks to her, Bordeaux came under English rule for 300 years, and

thus became the island kingdom's wine cellar, in top vintages brimming over

with the equivalent of Switzerland's current annual production.

Vines were then planted in the ‘palus' – fertile alluvial soils along the Garonne,

which to the west of the city joins up with the Dordogne, into which the Isle

flows at Libourne. This land definitely has no shortage of water. Bordeaux owes

its reputation not the greatest terroirs in the world, but instead to deep soils that

are rather unsuitable for top wines from today's perspective. The region pul-

sates to the rhythm of the tides and is shaped by a rainy Atlantic climate. This

once again demonstrates that terroir has as much to do with commercial policy

and a strategic transport location as it does with geology and climate.