La Cité du Vin in Bordeaux
In February 2020, I visited the city of Bordeaux for the first time in 17 years and it was the first time I had been to any of the wine regions, although I had of course studied them in detail for various wine courses. I was captivated by the beauty and vibrancy of the city, and determined not to wait another 17 years to revisit: three and a half years later I’m back, visiting Sauternes, Haut-Médoc, and St. Emilion and Pomerol.
Looking back at my posts from that previous visit, I realised I had started a post on La Cité du Vin but never actually finished it. Maybe because it’s such a wonderful museum—for want of a better word, as it looks as much towards the future as the past—I just couldn’t do justice to it. Returning to Bordeaux, it was a must: and if a museum is good enough to revisit, it’s worth rewriting a post about.
Bordeaux has changed a lot since I first visited in 2003. It was then a construction site, as the city was being completely redeveloped with a new, modern tram system. It’s now a city transformed: vibrant, clean, beautiful, and easy to navigate around—one of the most pleasant cities to visit in France.
These changes are encapsulated in La Cité du Vin, an architecturally bold wine museum opened in 2016 next to the river. For anyone interested in wine, whether a novice or expert, it’s a must. The experience is entirely interactive, with the visitor in effect able to curate their own tour. For instance, the first exhibit focuses on the major regions of the world and features interviews with leading winemakers from each, from Australia to Georgia. Also on arrival, there’s a beautiful large-screen montage of wine regions from across the world, sharing the dramatic locations that vines are planted on from Switzerland to Mendoza. It’s immediately apparent that is this is not a museum about France, or even Bordeaux, but about the vast world of wine.
Probably the most fun section of La Cité du Vin is the aroma section. Thankfully, it does not dictate what we should and should not smell in a wine, but allows the visitor to explore through their senses themselves. Sight, touch, hearing, and taste are also involved, but the primary is focus is on smell. The visitor squeezes a gramophone-like instrument and receives a puff of an aroma from several grouped categories. Unlike many tasting simulations, the aromas are natural, evocative, and a great educational experience.
Other experiences include a pretend stomping of the grapes; an introduction into how wine impacts many other areas of life and business; clips from films which have featured wine; and a Which Wine Am I? questionnaire, which concluded to my surprise that I am an Alsace Gewurztraminer. There is also an excellent sub-exhibition on the importance of rivers to the history of wine.
Perhaps the cheesiest part of the museum is the least interactive, an overview of the history of wine from Egyptian times through Ancient Greece, Rome, medieval Europe, into the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The exhibition features cut-out animations which are meant to be fun but are a little odd. However, it still presents an easy-to-follow and informed history of wine in different cultures and epochs.
The breadth of La Cité du Vin is seen in the range of wines available at the end of the exhibitions, where visitors receive a free glass of wine on the museum’s rooftop with views over the city. I had a glass of Bulgarian sparkling wine: I can’t remember the last time I had the opportunity to taste a wine, let alone sparkling, from Bulgaria. At the bottom of the museum is a wine shop which features wines from around the world: from Denmark to Ireland to Brazil. Although there is a large selection of French wine, the comprehensive collection of other countries underlines the global focus of the museum.
Both times I have been to La Cité du Vin, it’s been busy. It allows visitors to enjoy the wonder of wine in an informal, personal way that, I hope, incites an enthusiasm they take back to their usual wine purchases and habits. Also of note: across the road is Les Halles de Bacalan, a market full of bars and restaurants, the perfect place to finish the visit. La Cité du Vin isn’t quite in the centre of Bordeaux, but it’s more than worth the short tram ride. I wish there were more wine experiences around the world like La Cité du Vin, to show that wine is, and has been for millennia, a lived, everyday, joyous experience.
