The Château de Raze of Bordeaux

When I first visited Bordeaux, the sleepy landscape of turreted stone châteaux and vineyards seemed timeless, with traditions so well established you felt they would go on forever. But new energy in this famous wine region is visible and audible: bees buzz and sheep graze in organic vineyards; brand-new cellars brim with sustainable features and wine fermenting in trendy amphorae; unusual grapes are gaining attention; and the number of women in key roles keeps growing. Yoga among the vines is s ...

Police ordered the evacuation of more local residents in the Landiras area yesterday (Monday 18 July), with Liber Pater’s vineyard in Graves also evacuated as firefighters continued to try to contain a large forest fire that has been burning for the past week. A ‘fog’ of fire smoke behind Liber Pater vines on Tuesday morning (19 July), said owner Loïc Pasquet, who was briefly able to return to the site. Smoke hasn’t been a problem so far, he said. Credit: Loïc Pasquet. ‘The pol ...

The focus of the symposium, unsurprisingly, was on the challenges posed by climate change. As if to illustrate the immediacy of the threat, the symposium took place during a heatwave, with temperatures of over 40°C  in Bordeaux and extreme weather events recorded across the coountry: parts of southwest France saw violent storms and winds of 112kph on the evening of 20 June, while vineyards across the Médoc and St-Emilion were damaged by hailstones ‘the size of golfballs’. As Olivier Bernard of D ...