As France’s most famous wine region faces challenging times, its chateaux are behaving like true leaders, reports Julien Yung Mameaux. Bordeaux wine prices are adjusting – for the better. Culminating on decades of nearly immaculate reputation, two vintages broke records when wine critic Robert Parker Jr. gave perfect 100-points ratings to fifteen chateaux in 2009 and ten in 2010; prices jumped by 20 per cent and 12 per cent respectively. But as the world caught the Bordeaux fever, a tough era was ushered with the 2011 and 2012 vintages, performing below expectations. With stock piling up and a demanding client ... Read More »

There are some encounters that leave you indifferent, and others that bring you something very singular. Among those ones (which The Experience Company provides) is the following visit, one of the simplest yet most refined and memorable moments. In the South part of the beautiful and rich Bordeaux area is the sub-region of Graves, which name comes from the small gravels and stones that make a big part of the land there. For the wine traveller this place may seem a bit less familiar than the chateaux in the Northern part of the Left Bank – yet it will certainly ... Read More »

Leave your brain aside, follow your instinct. Here a subject that is often omitted when dwelling on wines and spirits: animals. While men and women certainly have their part to play, the fauna may well be a serious contender to who’s got the greatest influence on a wine. Let’s face it: animals are much more around vineyards than we are. While you are quietly asleep or simply in the city, nocturnal and diurnal creatures are either stamping on the soils around the vines or even nesting on the leaves nearby the grapes. Such is the work of Mother Nature and ... Read More »