* * *

I am a France travel and tour expert, not a wine specialist. Nevertheless, it’s important for me to have a good handle on the wines of the wine regions that I write or lecture or advise travelers about—not to mention that when I dine with visitors, they often hand me the wine list. If French wine were a language, I’d say that I was conversant but not fluent. Over the years I’ve learned how to conjugate the wines of Champagne, Burgundy, the Loire Valley, Burgundy, Beaujolais and the Rhone, and I’ve had the honor of being invited to sit as an “experienced amateur” on wine juries for Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Beaujolais. Yet, as many travelers say with respect to their grasp of a foreign language, I understand it better than I can speak. I am not a wine connoisseur, and that’s fine with me.

Still, it’s come to disturb me that my handle on the Bordeaux winegrowing region has lagged. I could explain my Bordeaux deficiency by saying that when I was first getting interested in French wines (in wines of any kind, actually) in the 1990s, the variety within the Bordeaux region confused me. Their love-‘em-hate-‘em, inaccessible-unreliable reputation that I heard about convinced me to look elsewhere and closer to home (Paris) for my wine education. Furthermore, as a novice travel writer then with a contract to write a guidebook to France, a tour of the sooty city of Bordeaux gave me little reason to return on what was then a relatively long train ride from Paris.

As the years went by, I spent more time visiting (then writing and lecturing and advising about) the Loire Valley, Champagne, Normandy, Burgundy, the Rhone Valley and Provence and thus encountering the wines (or in the case of Normandy the ciders and Calvados) produced there. Bordeaux got left by the wayside. I rarely even considered the Bordeaux options on a wine list. I didn’t feel that I needed Bordeaux.

But the more I was able to talk the talk when meeting wine professionals in those other regions and the more I was called upon to advise travelers about visiting wine regions in France, the more I realized that I’d been avoiding Bordeaux. As conversant as I’d become in the language of French wine regions, I’d failed to acquire one of the major tenses. Bordeaux had become my subjunctive. I couldn’t properly speak French wine or even non-wine touring in the Bordeaux region without having a better grasp of it.

Bordeaux, the city

Bordeaux, the city itself, wasn’t completely absent from my travel grammar. I’d visited several times since I first wrote about the city in the early 1990s. It would be another 15 years from that initial visit before enough of the dark veil of soot that covered La Belle Endormie (The Sleeping Beauty), as the city is known, had been lifted—enough to enjoy the stroll along the dignified golden-stone architecture of the orderly streets of the vast historic center, to admire the stunning crescent sweep of the Port of the Moon, to take note of the life in the wine bars, cafés and restaurants … and to want to return.

Thanks to the devotion to urban renewal by the powers that be, Bordeaux earned UNESCO recognition as a World Heritage Site in 2007 for constituting “an exceptional testimony to the exchange of human values over more than two thousand years” and representing “an outstanding urban and architectural ensemble.” With each visit, I found the city center more revitalized. Maintaining its momentum, the city opened the Cité du Vin, the center for wine and wine culture, which I visited soon after it opened in 2016. Meanwhile, the trains heading southwest from Paris have sped up; Bordeaux is now just over two hours away on the quickest route, putting it in nearly day-trip reach of the capital.

Bordeaux, the wines

Bordeaux wasn’t completely absent from my wine grammar either. I once took (and wrote about) a joyful walk in the vineyards of Rauzan in Bordeaux’s Entre-Deux-Mers winegrowing zone. I’ve also checked out the charms of Saint-Emilion, with a few tastings while there. And I’ve kept abreast of the growth of wine touring in the region (biking, cruise excursions, luxury hotels). But getting a handle on travel and wine in the Bordeaux winegrowing region as a whole in order to “speak” it the way I do so many other regions requires much more. Especially, it requires some focus.

Initial steps

Earlier this year I began paying more attention. I’ve seized several occasions to swirl, sip or otherwise talk wine with regional professionals in Paris. I met some friendly Blaye producers at the release party for the 2026 Pudlowski bistro guide; I chatted with Bordeaux region tourist officials at press events; I attended the prestigious Medoc and Sauternes tasting at the 1855 Classification in Paris; I spoke with several Saint Emilion producers at Wine Paris; I’ve stayed on the Bordeaux page of a wine list long enough to order a white Graves one evening and a red Graves another—how daring! And I took a long look at the map of the Bordeaux winegrowing region, where I saw how a traveler—how I—might to radiate from the city of Bordeaux to the five major subregions of the greater Bordeaux winegrowing region, seeking different kinds of wine and non-wine experiences in each direction.

With these notable if haphazard steps, I came to the conclusion that gaining an education about Bordeaux—the city, the region and the wines—would be an enjoyable personal project and a worthy professional one.

It isn’t that I’m going all in and devoting myself to Bordeaux full-time. I’m too much of a France generalist for that. But over the coming year or so, I’ll be publishing a series of articles about different ways and places to get a Bordeaux education—the city, the region, the wines. Snippets already appear on France Revisited’s Facebook page, and on my personal Linkedin and Instagram pages.

In a recent article in The New York Times, the paper’s chief wine critic Eric Asimov wrote “nobody in Bordeaux is drinking Bordeaux.” He’s the wine expert, and already speaks Bordeaux fluently, so I trust him on talking about wine. But as a travel expert, I know that travelers from other regions and countries (and from Paris) do drink the wines of Bordeaux when in Bordeaux. I suspect that you will as well. Because however conversant you may now be in French wine, the city and the region are the best places get a Bordeaux wine education.

That’s where I’m headed. Please join me in this upcoming series as I go about obtaining a Bordeaux education.

© 2026, Gary Lee Kraut

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A small wine doesn’t mean a small time. Wine drinker knows that. Wine travelers knows that better.

So it is in the vineyards of the ordinary—I use that term fondly—Bordeaux produced in the region’s Entre-Deux-Mers zone, lying between the Dordogne and Garonne Rivers. Far removed from the evocative, well-dressed chateaux and labels of Margaux, Latour, Lafite, Haut-Brion and Mouton et al., here we are much closer to the Bordeaux of cafés, easy-going restaurants and French supermarkets. You don’t post a photo of a bottle of these wines, you post a photo the friends you share it with.

Each year on the second Sunday of June, you can share some with 2100+ friends as the wine cooperative Les Caves de Rauzan organizes a walk in the vineyards, a day of wine, food, music and viticultural brotherhood on the edges of the small town of Rauzan (population 1100). Rauzan is 30 miles east of Bordeaux and 10 miles south of Saint Emilion.

Les Caves de Rauzan represents more than 400 growers totaling 8649 acres (3500 hectares) in the Entre Deux Mers zone of the Bordeaux winegrowing region. While the individual growers take care of their vineyards, the cooperative takes care of the winemaking. Recent mergers of the cooperatives of Rauzan, Grangeneuve and Nérigean, each with its own site of vinification, have made Les Caves de Rauzan the largest producer of appellation wines in France, primarily AOC Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur and Entre-Deux-Mers.

The vast majority of the vines in the zone produce red grapes—merlot, cabernet franc, cabernet sauvignon—blended for the Bordeaux and Bordeaux Supérieur. The white grapes—sauvignon blanc, semillon, muscadelle—are blended for the Entre-Deux-Mers. All told, the cooperative produces 176000 hectoliters of wine. That’s the equivalent of about 25 million bottles: 70% red, 15% white, 15% rosé. Eighty percent is sold by wine trading merchants under a wide assortment of labels. The rest is sold directly.

Cellar treasures? No. These are young and relatively low-end wines on the Bordeaux scale. Oak-heads should look elsewhere, though they’ll certainly enjoy themselves at the party in the vines.

All ages are welcome as the event draws hikers, bon-vivants, couples, families and groups of friends or co-workers. The 3.7-mile (6K) walk or “promenade gourmande” takes place in seven musical and appetizing steps from mid-morning and through the afternoon: welcome, aperitif, oysters, foie gras and cold cuts, entrecote (rib steak), cheese and dessert.

Within the ruins of the Chateau de Rauzan, participants are greeted by the Order of Bordeaux and Bordeaux Superieur Winegrowers (and a jazz trio) and are ceremoniously given a glass and a collar glass holder, turning each person into wine pilgrim of sorts.

Departures every 15 minutes from 10am to 1pm keep the 2100+ participants from bunching up in any one stop. Pilgrims proceed at their own pace, lingering as long as they want at any one station. Nevertheless, a bottleneck inevitably forms at the vine-grilled entrecôte stop where the accumulation of wine and now the steak and marching band help bring the atmosphere to its most joyful pitch.

Watch this video and join the party in the vines.

For more information about this walk in the vineyard see the site of Les Caves de Rauzan.

© 2016, Gary Lee Kraut

The post A Joyful Walk in the Bordeaux Vineyards of Rauzan appeared first on France Revisited - Life in Paris, Travel in France.

The festival, which takes places through the month of April, reveals a diversity of approaches to travel and place—poetic, harsh, intimate, imaginary, mysterious, playful—by French photographers who collectively present far-flung “itineraries” from Bordeaux to Tokyo to Africa to South America.

Their work is shown in thirteen venues spread throughout Bordeaux (museums, galleries, garden gates, public spaces), with most of the venues being devoted to the work of individual photographers. Entrance to all venues is free.

Among the photographers for the festival’s 2012 edition are:

Sophie Chausse, who returns to her native Gabon 20 years after leaving the country:

Cyrus Cornet, who takes an “antivoyage” into the French suburbs:

Damien Guillaume, who brought back still-life images from travels in South America:

Christopher Héry, who photographed individuals encountered in Nigeria:

Pascal Ken, who presents images of seven days in Tokyo:

Julien Lombardi, who examines a city’s potential for drift, whether natural, uncontrolled or dangerous:

Thibault de Puyfontaine, whose “Late Colors,” images from Egypt and Mozambique, were shown in Paris in 2011, as described at the time on France Revisited:

Kristine Thiemann, who presents a playful vision of Bordeaux’s Benauge quarter:

Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs, Bordeaux, an annual festival of travel photography taking place in April. For more information see www.itiphoto.com.

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By H. T. Wald

When will you come
visit me in hills
where Paleolithic hands painted
where Cathars became Perfect
where men still speak of the earth

When will you come
sip the wine
feast together
sit in the garden by the old stone wall
remembering how you laughed so hard the chair broke
and you said “If I could live here”

When will you pack your bags lightly
for your cousin to drive you to the airport
for the plane to Paris or Toulouse or Bordeaux
for a train to the station where I’ll pick you up
just thirty minutes away

When will you come to the hills
Where you dreamt that you cloaked yourself
in a landscape of fertile green and felt
so secure and free
at home “If I could live here”

When will you come
stay in the village
rejoice in the seasons
explore the known and unknown of ourselves
each other and the world at this wooden table

When will you come
as you said you would come
some day soon
if you could
live here

© 2010

H. T. Wald is a writer and poet.

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