5 Things We Learned About the History of La Place de Bordeaux
Smugglers, tax dodgers and aristocrats who survived the French Revolution. Who knew the grand, chateaux-studded region of Bordeaux was so exciting?
In Episode 6 of Inside La Place de Bordeaux, Felicity Carter and Pauline Vicard dove deep into the history of La Place de Bordeaux, looking to understand how the system developed into the powerhouse it is today.
What they discovered was a tumultuous history shaped by pragmatic decisions. Here are five of the things they uncovered.
1.Bordeaux’s wine history is entwined with its port
The story of fine wine isn’t simply one of terroir — it’s also the story of logistics. Wine regions that could put their products in front of metropolitan customers flourished, while others relied on their local audience.
According to Rod Phillips, Bordeaux’s port allowed it to become an export powerhouse.
Based in Ottawa, Canada, Rod Phillips is a wine writer, wine historian, and wine judge. He’s also a professor of history at Carleton University and is the author of a number of books, including French Wine: A History.
“The whole system, which culminates in La Place de Bordeaux, is utterly different from anywhere else in France,” he says. “What you have at the beginning is the emergence of Bordeaux as a major trading port for wine. Not initially for Bordeaux wines, but for wines from other parts of the Southwest, from the Marmandais, for example.”
That all changed the moment the Bordelais realised there was an export opportunity to be had.
“Now you find that during the Middle Ages, the city of Bordeaux then began to encourage the cultivation of vines and production of wine in the immediate area,” he says. “And then they put in place restrictive laws to try to prevent a competition with the producers outside Bordeaux.”
By the 13th century, Bordeaux was exporting large quantities of wine to England, “whereas in the rest of France, most of the wine that was produced was being consumed in France itself,” he says. “So it’s this export element that’s really important.”
And those other regions, blocked from the port? They declined.
2.Wine styles changed according to market demands
Initially, the wines went to Bristol, London, Scotland and Ireland, with some forwarded on to the Baltic regions.
As to what they were buying, Phillips said it was light red wine — winemakers would even add white wine if the vintage produced red wines that were too dark.
By the 17th century, the Dutch were a force to be reckoned with; while they had been trading with the Bordelaise since the Middle Ages, their growing wealth and power meant they had more money to spend on wine. And their preference was for heavier reds and sweet whites. They may have been among the earliest customers of Sauternes.
From the earliest days, the Bordelais were conscious of what consumers wanted.
3.The tripartite system is more recent than people believe
Today, La Place de Bordeaux has three main players: the courtiers, the negociants and the chateaux.
Phillips says it’s not clear when La Place began to crystallise as a formal system.
“To my mind, the picture is not as clear as it’s sometimes represented,” he says. “’I’ve seen references to it being 800 years old, and I think that’s just wrong.”
Phillips gives the example of de Pontac, who opened a tavern in London in 1665. “He didn’t use, as far as I know, a courtier. He simply had a single supply chain, which went from his winery straight to retail in London.”
So how many producers “actually used intermediaries is not altogether clear.”
He believes La Place as we know it today came into being some time in the 18th century. It definitely existed in its current form by the 19th century.
4. There were many classification
Today, the 1855 Classification is recognised as one of the most significant wine institutions in the world. It’s an easy-to-remember ranking of Bordeaux’s top wines and, not surprisingly, most people think it was created as a quality hierarchy.
In fact, it was based on price — and was only one of many classifications.
“The earliest classification of Bordeaux that I know of is the mid 17th century, around 1647,” says Phillip. “The really interesting thing about the history of these classifications is that people assume that they’re based on quality — that there was somehow a grand tasting of the finished wines over many years, and that people came up with these classifications — but they were always based on price. Up until the 19th century, you can see that the ranking of the name of the chateau or the name of the producer is always accompanied by a price.”
These prices were largely consistent, regardless of the merchant. Initially the classifications reflected regions or districts, but over time began to refer to specific estates; Phillips says Haut-Brion, Lafite, Latour and Margaux are names that continuously attracted the highest prices.
In 1855, Napoleon III commissioned the Paris Exhibition, called the Exposition Universelle des produits de l’Agriculture, de l’Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris 1855. He intended it to be a showcase of the best of France, so Bordeaux’s merchants were tasked with identifying the best wines to send.
“Here we have a number of courtiers who are responsible for doing this,” says Phillip. “They went back and they looked at previous classifications, and clearly what they could see is there’s consistency right from through the first half of the 19th century. There was no reason for them to change it.” That means the 1855 Classifications reflected the classifications that were already in use.
The reason we refer to the 1855 Classification today is that it was printed in the exhibition catalogue and disseminated widely, thereby fixing it as the classification of record.
5. The importance of site was understood
Many of the decisions taken in Bordeaux were commercial ones, from blocking other wine regions, to creating price pyramids.
But Charles Leary, wine writer and historian, says it’s clear that landowners understood that particular vineyard sites were suited for particular styles of wine. “The du Pontac family even used different kinds of line training systems, depending on where the vines were in the Haut-Brion vineyard, to produce a desired effect.”
He adds that historians have also shown that vignerons were very careful to top up barrels and reduce oxidation in the cellar, so clearly had both viticultural and oenological prowess to draw on. Leary adds, however, that they also understood their market and what was desirable. “They knew how to produce wine in a particular way.”
Charles Leary has written a groundbreaking article on the origins of the En Primeur system, available in the July 2024 edition of Decanter magazine. It’s a must-read for everybody who’s interested in Bordeaux.