Broaching Bordeaux’s Banks: Left versus Right explained
An essential guide to the wines, estates and feel of Bordeaux’s Left and Right Bank
When I first joined the wine industry, I understood the Left Bank – somehow, despite being home to the aristocratic Classed Growths, it made sense, it felt reassuringly familiar and available. I was oddly exposed to even some of the Médoc’s most grandiose names; but the Right Bank, those exclusive wines that seemed to be made in increasingly tiny volumes, at extortionate prices, were alien and hard to grasp. People didn’t seem to crack them open in the same way. In my ignorance, I was inclined to dismiss them, foolishly, as over-blown, bold, Parkerised styles – and, while there are certainly some of those, I was completely wrong.
I paused in between all the 2022 releases to breakdown the basics of these two alternate faces of Bordeaux, two completely different expressions of a region that has much more to offer than you might first realise.
