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7

Foreword

I ran aground in Bordeaux in 1986 as a pia-

nist in a jazz club, and stayed on. I wanted

to keep tinkling the ivories and ended up do-

ing so, just di

ff

erently to how I imagined. Be-

cause life sometimes takes us in unexpected

directions, I became a wine writer and my

new home became my subject matter. Ever

since, I have tasted hundreds of great Bor-

deaux wines every year, with a degree of

shame as wine is not designed to be spat

out. Bordeaux has changed radically over these past 30 years. There is no other

region producing such quantities of such stylish wines. Bordeaux has an unfor-

tunate reputation for producing rare luxury products, but in reality the peak has

become much broader, and even so-called lesser vintages offer wines which are

outstanding in terms of both price and style. There are hundreds of good Bor-

deaux wines, only a few of which are expensive objects of speculation. On my

first en primeur tour, there were barely a dozen tasters trying 120 wines. Today,

several thousand Bordeaux palates (or aspiring palates) taste up to a thousand

wine samples over the course of a week without any guilty conscience what-

soever. There is also a downside to the sheer quantity of interesting Bordeaux.

Whilst people who knew a couple of dozen labels and three top vintages could

once call themselves connoisseurs, now it takes a university degree. This book is

an (insu

ffi

cient) attempt to turn the tide. I have tried – with all the compromises

and inconsistencies such an undertaking entails – to reduce the top Bordeaux

wines everyone should know to 200 brands. This is the best overview I can of-

fer of my world of fine Bordeaux, whilst also including a few other lesser-known

estates as representatives of the many others. All of this is based on my own

experience: I make no claim to objectivity when it comes to wine.

I originally wanted to reduce the historical notes about the estates to a couple

of lines which could be read anywhere. When compiling the first portraits, I was

tearing my hair out wondering whether I was repeating the error of cheerfully

repeating all of the commonly held misconceptions ever published, but my

Bernese stubbornness required a di

ff

erent approach. Checking sources and his-

torical data, studying marriage certificates and trawling through online archives

cost me an extra year of work. However, the subject matter was worth the effort:

true Bordeaux history contains ten times more adventure than what is usually

peddled.

Rolf Bichsel

Bordeaux lives