Appellation: Bordeaux

The reference point for age-worthy red blends, split by the Gironde into a Cabernet-led Left Bank and a Merlot-led Right Bank.

Bordeaux sits on France's Atlantic southwest, where the Garonne and Dordogne rivers meet to form the Gironde estuary. That water divides the region into its two defining halves: the gravel soils of the Left Bank, where Cabernet Sauvignon ripens best and anchors the blends of the Médoc and Graves, and the clay and limestone of the Right Bank, where Merlot leads in Saint-Émilion and Pomerol.

Red Bordeaux is almost always a blend, balancing Cabernet Sauvignon's structure and longevity against Merlot's flesh and roundness, with Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Malbec in supporting roles. The wines are built to age, trading early fruit for cedar, graphite, and tobacco over decades.

The region also makes dry whites from Sémillon and Sauvignon Blanc, and — in Sauternes and Barsac — some of the world's greatest sweet wines, where autumn mists encourage the noble rot that concentrates the grapes into honeyed, long-lived nectar.