Having read and thoroughly enjoyed Fintan Kerr’s Rioja Guide in the Academie du Vin Library’s The Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide series (see review, 31 March 2025), I wanted to explore these handy little guides further. Although four further titles are coming soon, I think the only other one so far released is Bordeaux by Georgie Hindle.

This guide is perhaps a different proposition to that for Rioja. Bordeaux is a vast region, not that Rioja is small, but it produces a very large range of different wines. So many that perhaps Bordeaux is really a group of different wine regions, tied together by similar grape varieties and to a degree a shared history. Most of the wines produced there, in volume terms, are fairly ordinary, everyday bottles, and many trade on the fame of the relatively smaller number of estates that are without question among the most famous wine labels in the world.

The difficulty for anyone writing a guide which is intended for the traveller is to negotiate a path between, one the one hand, a focus on the region’s “finest” wines and properties, which are mega-expensive, exclusive and rarely easily accessible to mere mortals, but doubtless of interest to us all, and on the other hand, covering that which is affordable and accessible, but which will likely be less glamorous and exciting. It’s a question of balance and insight.

Of course, as a travel guide, we also have to read about restaurants, bars and accommodation. This is at least as important as visiting wine châteaux for most visitors. The options are endless in a city like Bordeaux and its surrounding vineyards, so the guide also needs to cover all of this and more. Saint-Emilion has always provided a lure for tourists, but the wider region’s vineyards, except perhaps as one drives much further north of Bordeaux, within the Médoc, are no longer the desert they once were when it comes to wining, dining and then sleeping it off.

Georgie Hindle has been writing about wine for around fourteen years, starting out on Decanter’s online presence, and she is now Bordeaux Correspondent for Decanter Magazine, as well as being editor of Decanter Premium. She lives in Bordeaux, so she is well placed for inside track knowledge (although a team of five others assisted in preparing the listings in the later sections of the book).

As I intimated earlier, the first part of the guide outlines the history, the wine classifications and en primeur system, geography, grapes and reading a label. This takes up around eighty pages, leaving a further 100 pages, near enough, for the core of the book: visiting Bordeaux and its region(s). Here, in this first part, the author faces, well, more than a century of writing on this very subject.

Overall, Georgie does a pretty decent job of giving us a précis of all the relevant information we need under these headings. I’m not going to make any specific criticisms, because it’s a difficult job she had, and I’m sure that whilst more space would have allowed for greater explanation, and indeed nuance in places, no reader of this “guide” would want this part of the book to take up more space than necessary. Indeed, I’m guessing there was a brief to follow because this first section is exactly as long as the corresponding one in the Rioja Guide.

I only make one comment, regarding an omission. Readers may see the (in my opinion) misleading designation “Saint-Emilion Grand Cru” on wine labels. These wines are, of course, not “classified” properties, as are the Grands Crus Classés etc of 1955 (the year Saint-Emilion gained its own 1855 lookalike), but merely get to append the designation “Grand Cru” for being in their specific locations and abiding by certain appellation rules. So, Saint-Emilion Grand Cru is not really a designation of quality as the 1955 Classification of Saint-Emilion pertains to be.

It confused me back in the mid-1980s when I first visited Saint-Emilion in my mid-twenties, and saw all those temptingly affordable pretend Grand Cru wines. I’m sure it confuses newcomers no less today. Unless they abolished it without me noticing. That would be a capital idea. An explanation would perhaps have been useful for consumers, but I’m sure its omission was for a reason.

For sure, what we do get is an up-to-date description of the region’s designations among the various classifications, 1855 onwards. This is most useful with all the changes, resignations, and litigation etc of the past decade or so, thinking specifically of super-litigious Saint-Emilion, and the ever-confusing array of different Cru Bourgeois designations. So contentious have many of these classifications become that it is hard to keep on top of where various châteaux stand outside of the (very nearly, see para below) set-in-stone 1855. If we don’t know which 1855 châteaux are punching well above their weight, the author of this guide will enlighten us.

Mind you, I did laugh on the “How to read a Bordeaux label” pages. It says “…note that Mouton [sic] does not add Grand Cru Classé en 1855 to make clear it’s a First Growth. Anyone picking up a bottle of Mouton should be expected to understand its rank”. I think it omits those words because it wasn’t classified as First Growth at all in 1855, and had to wait until 1973 to join that club, a matter which has not been forgiven by the relevant branch of the Rothschild family, perhaps?

What’s perhaps the most useful part of this small book follows, the actual guide to visiting Bordeaux and the towns and villages within the wider Bordeaux appellations. We get pages devoted to châteaux tours and tastings, châteaux restaurants (perhaps the biggest addition to wine tourism here in the last twenty years), and a meaty selection of restaurants, bistros and bars in Bordeaux and elsewhere. There are also five Bordeaux wine shops listed, very useful because buying wine at the châteaux themselves is only possible in limited cases.

Saint Emilion gets its own coverage, quite rightly. In a busy town so full of tourists, it is useful to get some recommendations from those who live in the region. In fact, as with the Rioja Guide, there are winemaker recommendations for restaurants dispersed through the text. These do tend to be more towards the top end, when it comes to price, but two separate winemakers recommend Le Saint-Julien, in (guess!) Saint-Julien. It would also appear on my list of restaurant recommendations. Good, traditional, regional food and a good wine list, unless you need to go (very) large. Not very expensive either, relatively speaking.

Another recommendation I concur with is the bistro in the village of Bages, Café Lavinal. In fact, a perfect Pauillac morning would be a visit/tasting at Châteaux Lynch-Bages (one of the best visits available in the Haut-Médoc), popping out via the back door onto the square at Bages to visit the Bages Boutique (maybe consider a bottle of the rarely encountered Lynch-Bages Blanc off the shelf) and then over to the café for lunch.

It might surprise many that it is now possible to stay in guest accommodation in a number of châteaux. Pichon-Baron is not one of those, unless by invitation, but having been privileged to stay in that architectural wonder myself (with a bedroom directly above the famous staircase to the front door), I can say that such an experience is one not to be missed if you can stretch to such accommodation, which will never be inexpensive.

I will also draw attention to Pessac-Léognan and the wider Graves, rightly described on many occasions in this guide in a way that shows what an attractive sub-region it is. Definitely a part of Bordeaux that can get overlooked, but not only is the scenery pleasant, so are the wines, which tend to offer some of the best value in Bordeaux, even arguably it the property includes Haut-Brion in its name, good value existing at all levels of quality.

The problem with Bordeaux, as I stated in my intro, is that the focus is so often on the extraordinarily expensive, not just for wines but also for accommodation and dining. To a degree this guide does have its focus on glamour, but between the Michelin stars you will discover some of the most interesting places to eat and drink. We are also given five wine shop recommendations, among the many which pack this city. They provide an opportunity for tourists who can’t, or don’t have time to, visit the vineyards to buy a bottle or two.

I would say that perhaps if one thing is underplayed, though it isn’t ignored, it is the significant move finally being made in the direction of organic, biodynamic, and “natural” winemaking in wider Bordeaux.

Many UK wine merchants are now working with estates which are looking at sustainable and regenerative, low-intervention viticulture, some even at the highest level of the heirarchy, though many more at properties we might call “petits châteaux”, along with a number of small artisan producers. This movement is increasingly reflected in the city itself. The bar/shop “Au Bon Jaja” (usually known as just “Jaja”) gets a couple of mentions, and they tend to specialise in low intervention wines.

The wine shop Feral Art & Vin in the old part of the city does not get a mention in the relevant section of this guide, though it does boast a number of winemakers (some from the top châteaux) and top chefs as customers for its range of only natural wines, sourced from Bordeaux, wider France and some parts of Europe. Its opening hours are currently limited (check online), but I can’t recommend Feral more highly if natural wine is your thing. It’s pretty unique in Bordeaux. Feral is at 22 rue Buhan, close to the Grosse Cloche.

I think its time to summarise. Georgie Hindle does a good job of summarising the wines, terroir and appellations of Bordeaux in a book and format that is not the place for a lengthy exposition. In fact, she quotes Jane Anson a number of times. Jane is a Contributing Editor to Decanter, and like Georgie, lives in Bordeaux. Her Inside Bordeaux, published by Berry Brothers & Rudd in 2020, is a good recent book on Bordeaux if you need more depth on the wine.

The Guide itself, to both the city and the vineyards, is the really useful part of the book. It is geared to wine lovers and written by someone with both knowledge and passion for the wines and the places. Although much of this part of the book describes, albeit alluringly, places I would not be able to stay at and dine at myself (on account of cost), there is enough here that is relevant to me to make it definitely worth tucking my copy in my rucksack. Especially because it is small, light and inexpensive.

Reading it at home, it definitely made me want to visit Bordeaux again, ironic because we were planning to visit this year, but now we shall be visiting Switzerland instead. Whether the forthcoming Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide to Switzerland will be published before I go, I’m not sure. It also made me want to drink more Bordeaux, though my stocks of mature, classified, Grands Vins has dwindled over the past few years and they are not likely to be replaced at current market prices.

But as this guide explains, there are good, affordable, wines there, sitting somewhere between the famous names and the sea of wine filling the shelves of supermarkets, wine that perhaps trades on the name “Bordeaux” whilst being made by methods a long way from those made by the meticulous top châteaux.

Bordeaux, in the wider sense, does have something for everyone, for both the super-rich collector types and for ordinary wine lovers. I assume my readers fall mostly into that latter category. Bordeaux for the likes of you and me does seem to be making a comeback, and this is often on the back of a realisation by the once very private, stand-offish, occasionally snooty, proprietors that in the modern wine world, wine tourism is part and parcel of the sales pitch. Wine tourism is a feel-good form of marketing that gets a wine region noticed and talked about.

In reality, with a revitalised city at its heart, and finally plenty of options for experiencing not just the wines in-situ, but also the wider concept of “Bordeaux” (I have still never visited the Cité du Vin wine museum though), perhaps for the world’s most famous wine region, now may be just the right time to visit. This guide is not perfect. I think the main reason is the impossibility of writing something both concise and at the same time comprehensive on such a vast and varied wine region, with a multitude of wines and terroirs, which are so famous worldwide that the exclusivity exhibited there is bound to dominate.

But Georgie Hindle has, with the help of her contributors, written a really useful guide to enjoying anything from a long weekend to a more extended visit. For myself, I would not fly to Bordeaux without it. You only need to discover a couple of bars and restaurants, a good wine shop and a couple of châteaux that will give you a tour and tasting and this inexpensive book will have paid for itself.

I think many of us who, for a while, disputed the relevance to us of what seemed like a region of expensive and exclusive wines and wine experiences, might be persuaded by this little book that things are changing. The runes have been read by many estates wishing to widen their customer base and to follow the lead of Napa and many other wine tourism destinations.

Bordeaux, by Georgie Hindle, is published by the Academie du Vin Library as part of the new Smart Traveller’s Wine Guide series. It can be purchased via their web site, http://www.academieduvinlibrary.com , for £12.99, or ordered from good independent book shops. As Lettie Teague of The Wall Street Journal says, it is “packed tight with practical advice and informed opinion”. Definitely worth getting a copy, even if you are not planning an imminent visit.