Is the future of Bordeaux wine under fire? Jean-Jacques Bonnie of Château Malartic-Lagravière thinks it’s not so simple

详细摘要

Think of fine wine, think of France. Think of French wine, and Bordeaux inevitably comes to mind. The wine capital of the world, Bordeaux produces ...

KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 15 — Think of fine wine, think of France. Think of French wine, and Bordeaux inevitably comes to mind.

The wine capital of the world, Bordeaux produces over 700 million bottles of wine on average each year, including some of the most expensive in the world: the “first growth”, or premier cru red wines, like Château Lafite Rothschild, retail at around RM5,500 for recent vintages, while older, historic vintages can fetch tens of thousands at fine wine auctions.

But recent headlines paint a very different picture of Bordeaux. Demand has slowed: the Liv-ex Bordeaux 500, an index that tracks the prices of the region’s most prestigious wines, has lost nearly 20 per cent of its value in the last five years.

This year, a climate crisis posed the biggest threat: wildfires that burned through the pine forests of the Gironde this summer came within 20 kilometres of some of Bordeaux’s oldest vineyards.

The main winegrowing areas and the city were spared, but the fires were a reminder of how exposed the region has become.

To understand what is at stake, it helps to understand why Bordeaux became so prized in the first place.

“Obviously, it’s because the wines are good,” says Jean-Jacques Bonnie, 52, who co-manages Vignobles Malartic with his sister Véronique. The family company owns Château Malartic-Lagravière in Pessac-Léognan, just south of the city of Bordeaux.

But Bonnie says history also did much of the work. The port city was under British control for close to three centuries, and its wines were traded across the empire.

“The wines from Bordeaux were being shipped and traded all across the empire, all over the world, which grew Bordeaux’s reputation, in a time when there weren’t as many wine producers in the world as there are today.”

文章开头，摘自Malay Mail。如需阅读全文，请前往媒体网站。