Yule Georgieva: Wonderful. Well, Jane, thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast. I know all of our listeners are very excited to hear from you as well.

Jane Anson: Well, thank you for asking me. I'm looking forward to it.

Yule Georgieva: Very well. So before we dive into talking about Bordeaux, the place, let's talk about you, the wine writer, and your connection to wine, how you got into it, and then your connection to Bordeaux today. 

Jane Anson: Okay, so I moved to Bordeaux in 2003 with the intention of staying for a year or two, and somehow we're about to head into 2023, and I will have been here for 20 years. 

Yule Georgieva: So, crazy. 

Jane Anson: I came into wine as a writer, and I would still think of myself primarily as a writer and an author who specializes in wine. And that's the kind of the way in into it. So I began writing about wine and just finding it a more and more fascinating subject to discover. And from that began taking the WSET courses. I did a tasting diploma at the Institute of Enology here in Bordeaux, so I kind of got the depth of knowledge through being here and through being interested really, just kind of thinking about what I was drinking, trying to understand why things tasted the way they did and what influences are there in what we get in our glasses. And so it was slowly but surely is what I would say. 

Yule Georgieva: Well, let me ask you this, since you did both the intellectual side of education, right, as you said, you did courses, but you've also been drinking Bordeaux for 20 years at least. So between the two, did you find that with that, the studio side, did you actually get quite a base of knowledge or was it really just through the experience? And the reason I ask is maybe we all just need to be drinking more Bordeaux to learn about it.

Jane Anson: It's definitely a mix. I think I've been super lucky to be here and to have people like Professor Denis de Bordieu, Jean-Michel Kars, key figures, Jean-Claude Berouet, people here who really have incredible expertise in winemaking and were able to share and be really generous enough to share their knowledge with me. And I had to keep my ears open. And I think that's really a big part of learning about anything is you have to be interested. You have to ask the right questions, but you have to listen to what you're being told and to then bring that back to your own experience in front of a glass. So I definitely think that practical side was extremely important. But there was a moment and of all of the things that I've studied doing this year long is called the GEOAD, it's the tasting diploma at the Institute of Enology, that was probably the thing that really switched my experience and my home tasting to actually feeling like I'm quite confident in what it was I was tasting and why. And the reason for that is because they really break down the molecules, the different elements in the glass and all of the different impacts that cold weather against warm weather and all of these tiny, tiny things that make a difference. And I think that was the switch when I really started thinking, OK, we read all of these things that people write and you can think, oh, it's just kind of made up or it just sounds over the top. And it can be hard to really understand where it's coming from. But that experience really helped me personally to understand that there is a reason that you sometimes get blue fruits and you sometimes get overripe fig flavors, you know, all of those things and to bring it back to the actual molecules contained within that glass was very helpful for me. And I should say that as a non-scientist, it was probably the first time as well that I fell in love with science. I was like, oh wow, this really does mean something tangible and in terms of what we're drinking.

Yule Georgieva: Well, one thing I think that's very impressive about you is that you're able to take that technical, you know, viticultural side and all of those scientific details, really translate them into things that we can digest and understand. I mean, you did that when you were writing a decanter and now on Inside Bordeaux, your website, it's just, it seems a style of yours that you're able to translate things into the layman's terms for us. 

Jane Anson: Thank you and I think that is because I am not a scientist and yet I want to understand things so I definitely go through that process for myself as well and good thank you I hope that I can share that a bit.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah well let's dive into Bordeaux so before we go on our tour just level set for us set some context how does Bordeaux fit into the it occupy? 

Jane Anson: Okay, so I think if you ask wine lovers globally to name top three wine regions, I would really think we can all expect that nine out of ten of those people would put Bordeaux somewhere within that top three of famous regions worldwide. And you wonder why is that? I think partly it's because of the centuries and in fact millennia that wine has been made here. So you have about 2,000 years of people making wine in Bordeaux since the Romans, but the Romans introduced wine all over Europe, all over many parts of the world. One of the big differences here is that they've never stopped doing it. They really kind of embraced it and ran with it and ever since then, they have been making wine. I think one of the other reasons is the geography, the location of where Bordeaux is on the side of the Atlantic Ocean. It's a port city. It's a fairly safe port city because we're about 70 kilometers from the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean. So therefore, you had, again, centuries and centuries and centuries of people being able to safely load wine onto ships here and take it out. It's always been a trading city. So that as well, so that's kind of the structure of the wine trade has meant that for at least a thousand years, it has been sent out to the rest of the world. Bordeaux wine is sold in 170 countries worldwide. I mean, it's incredible. So those things building up over many, many centuries is a lot of the reason why Bordeaux is so top of mind with wine fame. And you'll notice that I'm not specifically talking about quality there. There is no doubt that Bordeaux makes some of the greatest wines in the world. But one of the reasons it was able to invest over the centuries into continually making great wine is because there was a market for it. So that's a really an intrinsic link between having people who are willing to spend the money to buy something and producers being able to invest in making great wine.

Yule Georgieva: That's so interesting. And to your point about the history, I think many people often comment on, you know, oh, they haven't been making wine in Bordeaux for that long because the Dutch engineers drained the marsh on the left bank and that's what gave us the Medoc. But to your point, I mean, Chateau Auzon, that's named after a Sonean, right? It's a Roman, I don't know what he was, but especially in the right bank, they've been making it for quite a long time.

Jane Anson: Exactly. And so the Romans, when they were here, they didn't make wine in the Medoc, they're quite right. There are a couple of vineyards in the Medoc that are very old, on the highest points of the Medoc, but actually where wine was being made was south of the city in the Grave region and over on the right bank in Sant'Emilion. So the Medoc is a relatively new, probably if we think of it being about the same as South Africa, it's about the same age of a vineyard. So it's not that new, 400 years, but in the context of 2000 years of viticulture, that is a baby. 

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, if you talk to the Burgundians, they might say that. So before we get into the tour, you mentioned the market for Bordeaux. Now Bordeaux is sold in a pretty unique way, and for some people who aren't familiar with the best of Bordeaux is sold.

Jane Anson: Sure. So this again is really, you kind of can't get away from the history when you think about why this is so different to the rest of the world. Bordeaux system has a kind of a three prongs to it. You have the chateaus who are making the wine, you have the negotiants or the internal merchants within Bordeaux who are selling it out to the rest of the world, and then sat in between those two people or those two entities, the brokers, the courtiers. The whole system works without contracts, but it works on a system of allocations where the chateaus make the wine, the brokers help them decide who gets that wine and the negotiants receive those allocations that the brokers have helped the chateaus decide. It goes right back to the Middle Ages. There was a very important dynastic marriage in the mid-12th century where the woman who was kind of the Duchess of this area, she was called Eleanor of Aquitaine, she married a man. She first of all had been married to the King of France when she was 15. She married Louis who was 16 and they were King and Queen of France for a while. But in the end, they got divorced and very quickly afterwards, she married a guy who would quickly become the Queen of England. So she's in fact the only woman to have been Queen of France and Queen of England under two different husbands. They were pretty impressive. But by that dynastic marriage, all of her land, which really went from Cognac down to Spain, became a duchy of the English crown. So then from that moment on, we talked about why Bordeaux, yes, it's a port city, but you also had this 300 years when it was seen as really English soil. So you were able to sell within England with no taxes if you were selling in France or other places, you would be taxed heavily and you'd be selling into enemy territory. So it would have been dangerous to go up to Paris to do it. So that kind of set very early on this idea of overseas merchants or people speaking a different language effectively coming into France and buying the wine and trading it and taking it off up the mouth of the river over first of all to England and then to Germany, Holland or many, many different places. And because of that system, you needed somebody somebody who could sit in between those two sides. So you have the largely French-speaking chateaus and the largely English-speaking originally merchants and then the brokers would sit in between making sure that everybody understood exactly what was happening, making sure it was fair trading, making sure people paid what they said they'd pay and more importantly of all, making sure taxes were paid to the city on these or import whatever the word was, whatever cut was needed by the city, by the local lords, they would make sure that that was happening. So that system grew up very, very early on. I would say we're going on 900 years now and it's never stopped. And at a certain point, even in the 17th century, it became essential if you were selling Bordeaux wine, you had to use this broker. There was no way around it. Today, that's not the case, but still about 70% of Bordeaux wines get sold in that system of Chateau going to a negotiant but passing by these brokers. And I'm just, this is a huge subject, I'll keep it really simple. But just to think about it, what that means is that the Chateau have this kind of sales arm, which are all of these negotiants set in Bordeaux. There are about 300 different negotiant firms and they probably employ a couple of maybe 40 or 50 people each, whatever. So you really have a vast number of salesmen whose job is to go around the world and taste Bordeaux wine or have Bordeaux wine tasted, talk about it, sell it. So it's been a brilliant marketing thing over the centuries as well.

Yule Georgieva: That's so interesting. So the Chateaux themselves don't have to do as much marketing because the Négociants will do it for them.

Jane Anson: Yeah, and they don't even pay for it. The people who pay for that system are the end buyers. So it's not the Chateaux directly paying the courtiers and the Négociants, it's the end buyers who pay for them. So it's a pretty smart system.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, yeah. One reason why maybe the prices have to creep up a little, a few moments. So very quickly, the Empriment system, how does that work? What does that mean?

Jane Anson: So futures, you're buying a wine after the harvest, before it's been bottled, at some point, normally about six months after the harvest. And pre-COVID, you would have around 5,000 people who would come once a year to Bordeaux, normally it was March, it's now been put back to April, who would come and taste the new vintage, discuss it, give feedback on the quality, a price would be set following that week. So each of the individual Chateaus make their own price, of course, and to make that price, they're looking at the quality of the vintage. They're also looking at their own brand power, how is their Chateau doing in the global market. Also, very importantly in Bordeaux, looking at global economic events, what's happening, what can the market support. One of the things that I always say to people if they're interested in Bordeaux wine is they have to be interested in politics as well. You can't talk about Bordeaux wine without talking about economics and politics because more than pretty much any other wine region, because of the fact that it's distributed in so many countries, it is impacted by global events. So you'll get years like 2019, 2019 was an excellent vintage in Bordeaux and yet it was being released to the market in the middle of COVID and even the Bordelais got a little bit spooked about whether or not people would take the prices and so they brought their prices down fantastic, brilliant quality for a very good price in 2019. Conversely, you'll have years like, let's have a think, I think 2013, I think it could have come down more than it did because the quality wasn't the greatest vintage ever, to put it mildly. But at that time, the market was pretty strong. You had a lot of Chinese purchasers, of new purchasers who are coming in and who were buying and so the shadows didn't feel the need to drop. So it's super interesting if you look at the economics of Bordeaux within the global, a bigger global picture.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, it's definitely a region you have to pay attention to and see how the prices are going to fluctuate.

Jane Anson: Yeah, and I think it's one of the reasons why it's kept me hooked for the last few decades.

Yule Georgieva: Well, yeah, as you said, you're a writer first, so you're always looking for interesting stories and interesting companies, right?

Jane Anson: Exactly.

Yule Georgieva: So let's go on our tour. I'm going to turn it over to you to walk us through however you'd like to. Just in the interest of time, maybe we stick to the main communants, but let's walk through the left bank over to the right bank. And as you go, if you can just share with us any stylistic characteristics or other characteristics you think worth mentioning, maybe a couple of producers you'd like to call out. I think that'd be great and give us a great basis. I'm very excited to learn about this.

Jane Anson: OK, perfect. So I'm thinking I need a map in front of me while I'm doing this. I'm just turning to a page of Inside Bordeaux that has a map on it. OK, let's look at Bordeaux as a whole. It is a very large region. This is the biggest fine wine region in France, which means the biggest Appellation Contre-Roulais region. So meaning that if you make wine here and you have the name Bordeaux on your label or any of the appellations within Bordeaux then you have to have followed certain rules to allow it to carry that name. And that might be rules like the yield, so you've got a maximum that you're allowed to make each year and that is in theory to ensure that quality is kept. There are certain alcohol levels that you have to... all different appellations have their own rules. There are 65 appellations in Bordeaux. I will definitely not take you through all of them.

Yule Georgieva: We'll just follow up episodes.

Jane Anson: If we just think of Bordeaux as being this space, you can split Bordeaux pretty much down the middle. The backbone is one river that is called the Garonne River. The Garonne River goes from Spain, in fact its source is in the Pyrenees and it goes all the way through to the mouth of the Atlantic Ocean right through Bordeaux. That is really the main river which divides the left from the right bank. Now it is more complicated than that because there is another river that comes from the Massif Central which is called the Dordogne River, a beautiful, beautiful river that many, many people go on holiday near the Dordogne. It's prettier than the Garonne overall. And that will come through the right bank of Bordeaux. So that comes through Saint-Emilien, through Liban, and it joins up with the Garonne. And at that point, which is about where Margot is, where the Appalachian of Margot is, where those two rivers join up, they then turn into the estuary and they together drop into the Atlantic Ocean. So you have these two major rivers that are cutting through Bordeaux. And if we're going to really stick exactly to the geography, the right bank is actually on the right bank of the Dordogne River, and the left bank is the left bank of the Garonne. And in between, before they've met, there's a whole tract of land that is called Entre-Deux-Mers, between two seas. And it's called between two seas because they're tidal rivers. You can actually surf on the Garonne and the Dordogne at certain times of year. They're not very high, but you get like two or three meter waves. Sometimes they go up as high as five meters. And you do see surfing winemakers taking their boards out and going up them. So that's why that section is called Entre-deux-Mers. But to keep things simple, I'm just going to say, think of left and right bank of either side of the of this Garonne, of the main river. And the reason that's easier is because if you're here, that's the river that goes right through the centre of Bordeaux. So if you're in downtown Bordeaux, you see the Garonne River, and it's much easier to visualise what does it mean, left bank and right bank. Okay, the big differences between the banks are that the left bank is slightly lower, and it's more gravelly. So when you look at the soils, much more gravel is on the left bank than the right bank. The right bank is slightly higher, it's slightly older in fact, the soils of the right bank, and they are more clay and limestone. Bordeaux is a massive, massive area and everything I tell you there is the alter, you'll always be able to find where this isn't true. It's again partly why this is so interesting. The Baudelaire's have not historically talked very much about their soils. They talk more about the brand, they talk more about the history. One of the reasons for that, I think, is because it's so complicated. In fact, it's an extremely complex and varied soil type across the whole region. Again, it's something that I, coming into it as a non-scientist, as a non-geologist, I wanted to understand why these things had such an impact on the glass, as in the taste. So one of the things that I did for Inside Bordeaux was I got hold of a couple of professors who were real experts in terroir and same thing, I just drilled it, asking them questions and try to convert it into stuff that me and you and normal wine lovers could understand. So I'm going to just go massively general learnings and feel free people to say, I know where this isn't true, but let's take a general high level. Over on the left bank where you've got more gravel, gravel is kind of warm soil. So you have Appalachians where Cabernet Sauvignon is dominant. So particularly in the Medoc where we talked about, it was drained by the Dutch in the 17th century, 16th, 17th, 18th century. So you have relatively new land in the Medoc because before that it was marshland. You have a lot of gravel and if you purely think about it's lower than the right bank and you've got all these rivers, you have these two rivers coming into it, so deposits have been continually going onto that land. It's why you get much more gravel over there because they're river deposits over the millennia. And here you have the key appellations. We're going to go south to north in the Medoc. You have AOC Margot, you have AOC St Julien, you have AOC Poyac, and all four of them are gravel dominant, which means they are Cabernet Sauvignon dominant. Why are there slightly different tastes between them all? One of the key reasons is because the size of the gravel changes. So in Margaux, the gravel is thinner, it's finer, partly because you have both of the rivers coming together at that point, so you have a lot of action on the gravel in terms of water, again, not now, but in the past. You have finer gravel, and it's one of the reasons that the expression of Margaux tends to be a little more elegant, a little more floral. You have these incredible aromatics that Chateau Parma as well. Both of those very, very famous expressions of the appellation of Margaux. Margaux is big, so you have lots of different quality levels, but generally speaking, that's a wonderful appellation if you like this kind of elegance, balance, beautiful wine. As you head further north in the Médoc, there are other appellations, but I'm just going to deal with the main ones. So as you go up to the other three, say Sangiulian, Poyac and Sainte-Esteve, they tend to get slightly more powerful, the wines, particularly Poyac and Sainte-Esteve. So if you like your Cabernet Sauvignon to be a little bulkier, if you like bigger tannins and you really want to have something which you feel like you're getting this incredible texture to as opposed to the aromatics, then you really want to be looking at Poyac or Santistef. Sangilion is kind of a mix of them all, beautifully balanced, plenty of concentration, but a little bit more balanced than Poyac and Santistef. And why is that? Poyac and Santistef particularly have more clay in their soils, particularly Santistef. And if we're just going back to this really simple rule, where there will always be an exception, but a simple rule, the more clay the more power. Clay is a slightly cooler soil than gravel. It holds a really powerful expression in the glass. And so as a rule, that's also why Pomerol over on the right bank, often you get very, very powerful wines from Pomerol because there's a lot of clay. So that's my kind of whistle stop of those four appellations, but any wine lover, if they're interested in Bordeaux, those are the four kind of key Medoc appellations to know. It's not the most beautiful to visit because the Medoc is quite new. So most of the villages there are 200, 300 years old, and in fact, many of them were only built in the beginning of the 20th century as workers' villages. So there aren't so many restaurants, there aren't so many places to hang out in the Medoc. So if you're looking for a slightly more fun nightlife, and along with great wines, my suggestion would be to go over to the right bank and to go to the Santa Milian. The Santa Milian is really the center of, it's still a medieval village, but it's very, very beautiful. It's probably the center of wine tourism in Bordeaux. The Medoc has this very famous road called the Route des Châteaux, which is a bit like Highway 29, that kind of idea in Napa of a road where you do see, and you sometimes have to pinch yourself because you're driving up the Route des Châteaux and you see Château Béchevel, Château Margaux, Château Parma, Château Pigeon Baron, Château Pigeon Contest, etc. All of these very, very famous names and they look wonderful. And if, by the way, you're going up to the Medoc, I should mention there is one place that does have wonderful restaurants and beautiful places to stop. And that's a little village called Barge, which is just outside Poyac, which was created by the family at Chateau L'Entourage. And it's got that does have a little hotel, a lovely bistro, a shop where you can buy, you know, buy whatever really, really lovely homeware. So that's worth a stop. But generally speaking, head over to Santa Milian, because there you have a thousand-year-old medieval village, which has been stunningly preserved, absolutely beautiful, lots of great restaurants and wine shops. And because the chateaus over on the right bank are a little bit older, because they have been making wine there for 2000 years, as we talked about, there's a feel of a more lived-in landscape. It's very beautiful. Again, go back to what I said at the beginning, it's higher over on the right bank, so you have more hills, you have more of that kind of traditional landscape that you might find in Tuscany or you might find in northern Italy, maybe not quite as undulating and magnificent as those two regions, but it has that feel. And what you find over particularly in Santomalian is limestone. So limestone, one of my favourite soil types for wine, can be quite austere when it's young because it's a lower pH, so you get slightly more perception of acidity on a limestone wine when it's young, but amazing as it ages, beautiful, beautiful, long-aging and again, these aromatics and this sense of freshness and balance. So I'm a big fan of that. But in terms of visiting the Appalachian, it's great because a lot of those chateaus have caves underneath, have cellars, so limestone cellars that people can go and visit and look through. So there's one called Chateau Francmain. Francmain has an excellent, excellent tour under its cellars where you can see the limestone, you see the roots creeping down through the limestone and you understand how this is such an interesting type of soil for wine because in very hot years the limestone is acting like a sponge and the roots can work their way down and then they can get the necessary moisture quite easily in limestone in a way that is not always so easy in gravel, because gravel obviously is extremely well draining, brilliant when you have a rainy year, but when it's a very hot year it can be tougher because it's not holding the water so much, so there can be more water stress for the vines. So yes, Centermillion is very beautiful to visit. Right next to Centermillion you have Pomerol, but quite an unusual appellation in Bordeaux because it is again relatively new in terms of its fame. The century for many, many millennia was there for two millennia. It was a big site of pilgrimage, it was a big religious centre, and then right next to it is Pomerol, which was not so well known really until the late 19th, beginning of the 20th century, but today very famous for names such as Petrus. Petrus, I'm going to give you the top one, we all know. Also, Le Pan, Le Fleur, maybe those are probably three of the most famous in Pomerol. And we all think of Pomerol as being pure clay because of Petrus. Petrus is 100% Merlot on pure clay in that kind of Burgundy and almost style of a single grape to a single soil type and a single estate. That's really what it's very, very famous for. But in fact, much of Pomerol still has clay, but it has gravel over the top of it. So you have this brilliant combination of warm gravel over cooler clay, and the combination together makes for this very velvety kind of tannins, very velvety, fruit-driven because you've got the big power of the clay. And it's a wonderful, wonderful appellation. Merlot-dominant in the way that Cabernet Sauvignon is dominant around the left bank. And small, not even a boulangerie or barely a boulangerie, not really the place to go to, again, if you like walking. There's gorgeous, gorgeous walks around Pomerol through the vines. It feels a little bit more kind of down to earth than much of Bordeaux because the chateaus, not really chateaus, often they're very small houses or there are a couple of chateaus, but nothing on the scale that you find over in the Medoc. I'm going to stop talking then because I have not stopped talking now for 10 minutes, but just really one last thing to bear in mind visually between the two. Because the Medoc was really turned into a winemaking centre in the 17th century, people were able to build big chateaus because there wasn't anything there before. And because they were people with a lot of money coming in all at once and buying up large tracts of land and planting vines, you again, you have bigger states, you have those kind of dream states that you've seen on labels. So most of the states in the Medoc are maybe 40 hectares, 50 hectares, some go up to 180 hectares. They're really the biggest states with these kind of dream chateaus. Over on the right bank, they tend to be much smaller. So your average on the right bank is about 6 hectares compared to 40 hectares on the left bank. And it's because they have been family-owned for much longer. They weren't all bought at once with chateaus thrown up next to them to show how powerful and wealthy the owners were. They were really family homes and smaller properties that had been gradually built over the centuries. So there's a different feel between the two banks. And that's something which is really charming, I think, about when you visit Bordeaux and gives this other layer of interest. I think Bordeaux is, you know, some people prefer Cabernet Sauvignon, some prefer Merlot, some prefer left, some prefer right. 

Yule Georgieva: There's lots of things to kind of divide and talk about within Bordeaux. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, we still have to do PESAC and maybe a quick hint on Soterma. So we'll try to get to some of the other. But I do want to ask you one thing about the brand names. As you mentioned, there are some big, powerful brands in Bordeaux that I think people will recognize. Lafite on the left bank or Petrus, as you mentioned, on the right bank. Now, here's a difficult question. Obviously, there is some qualitative difference or reason why these particular producers have bubbled to the top. There's a reason for it and we can talk about the classification in a moment. But just taking quality just as an example of the wine itself. There's a reason for that. But today, do you find that the difference in those top estates and the other ones that are a bit more, let's call them in the middle, is it that market or is it more that when you buy those wines, you're really buying the story? You are really engaging in that little piece of history or that piece of reputation that's maybe giving more value to the wine. What do you find there in the quality differences?

Jane Anson: I think that you definitely are pinpointing something which is extremely important in how we relate to those wines and how we assign value to those wines. One of the things that I really love about tasting first growths, if we just purely take those 1855 famous left bank first growths, so your Lafitte, Mouton, Aubryon, Latour and Margot, because so many of us know something about their history, you know, maybe we know that Chateau Margaux was almost sold to the Americans, but the French president stopped it in the 1970s and wanted to keep it as a piece of French heritage. Maybe we know that Oberon was the first place worldwide that really understood about using barrels to properly age wines and to allow them to make wine which could age for 10, 20, 30, 40 years. There are little bits of things that we know. Oberon is owned by a prince today. There's this level of celebrity almost that we can assign to those wines, along with the brilliance that we find in the glass. Because of this Bordeaux distribution system, different countries and many different levels of us as wine drinkers get to experience it. If it's just a glass or it's a bottle or we had it at our uncle's wedding once 40 years ago, whatever it is, there are many ways for all of us wine lovers to touch those particular five wines. They make a lot. It's important to say that they make a lot of production and they have consistently made a lot of production over the last couple of hundred years. So put all that together and you've really said something important there, which is there is a story that we can all touch. It's not just about, even with DRC and Burgundy, it's a mythical wine. We all want it, but not many people have tasted DRC because there's such tiny production and it doesn't have the same huge distribution channel that the top Bordeaux's do. So in answer to your question there, yes, I definitely think that part of the value that we assign to it is this shared, is a communal shared experience, which is really quite beautiful that you don't have in many, many fine wines around the world because there simply isn't the history of distributing large amounts of it for so many years. So for that, yes, that is partly why we're assigning its value. But at the same time, the fact that they were able to produce over those hundreds of years quality at that level is not just about their history, it's not just about the fact that they had wealthy owners, it is also about their terroir. It's also about their location and they do make exceptional wine because of the microclimate and the things that make them them in those particular spots. Now, when I was researching for Inside Bordeaux and I looked at the terroir of the whole of this region, one of the things I really wanted to do was to show people, here are some spots that you don't know about that can make great wine. And I hope I've really done that. And I think with climate change, we're going to see certain areas like perhaps Fronsac, which is a slightly cooler, but still limestone. You've already seen 2018, 2019, 2020, brilliant wines from Fronsac, which by the way, is just next to Anyway, those 1855 estates, all 61 of them, are located on the same two particular gravel terraces that you find running up the left bank. And I didn't necessarily expect to find that. I was definitely thinking that it would be more to do with their history and having been in the right place at the right time. But I was really pleasantly surprised to find that, in fact, there's a very strong link between the brilliance of those chateaus and where they're located. So it isn't just about their history. Having said that, yes, there's more investment now in the vineyards. There's much more awareness of viticultural techniques, how to make sure that you can bring the best out of whatever your spot of vineyard is. So we're seeing some fantastic wines that you don't have to pay those top prices for. But I don't think they will ever be able to replace quite that shared communal experience of drinking a wine that has all of that history attached to it.

Yule Georgieva: That is such a nice way to put it, right? Because I think many people think that the volume of production maybe takes something away from the romance of Bordeaux as opposed to Burgundy, where of course there's the romance and the two barrels from Dominique Caloir or somebody. Whereas to your point, that kind of is something that does bring people together as they've probably all had the chance to try one, hopefully.

Jane Anson: Yeah, I think it's a different kind of experience, but I think we underestimate how tough it is to make that amount of great wine at a first growth level where you can't afford to get things wrong because there's a certain value attached to your brand and people are expecting a certain thing when they taste it and they don't want to be disappointed. And to be able to do that year after year at the level that they can do and the quantity they can do it, personally I think that is worthy of respect.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's dive back into our tour. If you don't mind talking about Pestac a little and so Taryn just giving you a quick taste of those. 

Jane Anson: Okay, so I'm located in the center of Bordeaux, that's where I live, right downtown, because, well A, because I like to be able to walk to restaurants and cycle to the shops and all the rest of it, but also because I spend so much time in the vineyards. If I was located in Saint-Eustache, for example, it would take me hours, like literally probably three or four hours to get down to Sauterne if the traffic was bad and if whatever happened, because it's a big region, as I said. So here I am in the center, so I've taken you north up to the Medoc, I've taken you over to the right bank, so going east, going over to Santa Maria and Pomerol. So now let's head south. So out of the city center of Bordeaux, we're going to head south, and the very first appellation that you get to is called Pesac Léonienne. It's probably one of my favorite appellations and it's literally just to the south of the city center. So if I'm going to an estate like Chateau Carme-Obrion, for example, which is relatively new in its buzz, it's been here for hundreds of years, but it's really, really started to gain a big following over the past decade, I would get to Carme-Obrion within about 20 minutes from my house. So its Pesat Leonian is a relatively new appellation, dates to 1987, but only because it was created out of the bigger Grave appellation. So Grave is really the cradle of the history of Bordeaux. It goes all the way down, really almost as far as the southern tip of the Bordeaux region. As I say, 65 appellations. Anywhere where you're not getting one of the major appellation names, you're probably going back into AOC Bordeaux. So AOC Bordeaux is the generic name which covers spots all over the whole of the region. And for example, in Entre-deux-Mers, that big area between the two rivers, that Entre-deux-Mers is a white wine appellation. So you can make white wine there, you call it Entre-deux-Mers. But if you make red wine there, you have to call it AOC Bordeaux. So AOC Bordeaux is kind of a catch-all, very useful to think about. Graves sits this long kind of strip of land from the south of the city going down towards nearly the end of the Bordeaux region, but there is a bit of AOC Bordeaux underneath the Graves. I'm going to just talk about Passat Leonian because that is for our purposes in terms of investment wine, in terms of wines which collectors often are interested in, that's really the spot. Beautiful, beautiful wines that has classified. So you've only got three. I almost feel like we should take classifications separately because it adds another layer of complication. But generally speaking, there are three classifications in Bordeaux. There's 1855, there's Santamillion, and there's Pesat Leonian. And the Pesat Leonian classification is called Cru Classé de Grave. And the reason for that is because Grave existed before Pesac Leonean, but it just so happened that all of the classified Grave wines were in this top northern section. And so they were like, okay, we need something to show people that we're different, that we kind of concentrate all of the good stuff up here. And so they created the Appellation Pesac Leonean. that I really recommend people get to know. Obayee is a wonderful, wonderful red wine that is a Cru Classé de Grave, Domaine de Chevalier, fabulous red wine and white wine. Smith Oat Lafitte, gorgeous, gorgeous estate which has again really kind of, it's been here for centuries, but it's been the last two decades that it's absolutely kind of burst out onto the consciousness of wine lovers worldwide. Again, a wonderful red and a wonderful white. And that's one of the reasons that I'm such a fan of Pesat Leonian, because they make fantastic wine in both colors and they classify their whites. It's the only part of Bordeaux that classifies its whites as well as its reds. The reds are kind of given the top billing on the pedestal all over Bordeaux, except for the dry white, except for Pessac Leonium. So yes, I would look out for both of them there. And speaking of white wines, the other appellation that I haven't mentioned yet, which is a famous appellation in Bordeaux, is Sautin. So Sautin is also within the Graves region, but it's its own little pocket within the Graves region. So you're heading further south again. So you've got to Pessac, you then go through a whole stretch of AOC Graves. There are some lovely, lovely wines there. They're not classified, but some delicious wines. And then towards the southern bit of the Grave, you hit Sauternes. Sauternes and Bassac are two little villages next to each other. There are a couple of other ones, but they're the two famous ones. And they have a specific kind of strange microclimate where they have the main river, the Garonne River, and then they have another smaller tributary that's called the Sihon, maybe the Sihon, probably Sihon with a C-I-R-O-N-S, and then there are lots of other small streams kind of all around there. And what happens is you get this strange kind of misty, foggy microclimate that happens during harvest. So because of that microclimate, a funny fungus will form on the grapes themselves, and that fungus is called noble rot. It's kind of a brown... At its base, it's the same rot as you get everywhere else, but because of the microclimate in soten, the rot forms as a kind of protective furry layer almost on top of the skin of the grape, and it sucks a lot of the moisture out. But what's happening inside the grape is the grape is panicking, thinking, I'm being attacked by, I'm paraphrasing for the grape, the grape is thinking, oh my God, I've got lots of rot forming on me. And so it starts shooting out all of these kind of defense mechanisms. And one of the great mysteries of the wine world is that this impact on the grates not only concentrates the sugars, but it also multiplies aromatic precursors, which means what you find aromatically in the glass in a noble rot wine is many, many, many, many, many hundreds of times more complex than in a normal dry wine. So say we have, let's imagine we have 70 aromatic precursors or aromas in your glass of dry white or red wine. You'll have about 700 in a sweet wine which is made by the noble rot method. And it's why you find so many. You can find truffles, you'll find pineapples, you'll find melons, you'll find orange rinds, you'll find you name it, you'll find those aromas in a glass of sweet wine. So they're very, very complex, but they're also very rich, because what's happened is the liquid has been sucked out through this noble rot. And so what's left behind, all grapes, as we know, are sugar plus water effectively, and then all these other molecules and compounds within them which give us the taste and the flavour, but in your noble rot grape, because the liquid has evaporated, you have just as much sugar but much less liquid, much less juice. So when you turn it into wine, you will ferment as you do normally, so you'll ferment and you'll get to the same amount of alcohol as a normal wine, so maybe 12 or 13 percent, but you've still got sugar left over. At that point, the fermentation stops naturally. It can't go anymore because the alcohol's got to a certain level and there's a density. Anyway, but you're left over with sugar in the grape. So it's a slightly different way of making wine than a German sweet wine or many other sweet wines where they will actually artificially stop the fermentation when it's half alcohol and half sugar. But in a noble rot wine, there's so much sugar to begin with or so much concentration to begin with that you get to a normal level of alcohol but you still have sweetness. So it's a very unusual kind of wine and there aren't the conditions to make it in most of Bordeaux. Most of Bordeaux, they're scared of rot. They don't want it. It's grey rot and it could damage the grapes. But in Sauternes, they're waiting for this special kind of noble rot. This year has been a very, very hot summer, 2022, so they really had to be patient. But it is kicking off now. It is happening at the moment. The noble rot is setting in. But probably in every decade, you'll only get three or four truly good noble rot years. And everything has to be done by hand. Every single gesture in that vineyard from beginning to end is done by hand. And in fact, that's within the winemaking rules in Sauterne, that you have to pick by hand, you're not allowed to bring in machines. And a lot of it is visual. So your harvesters have to go through the vineyard several times and see when are the grapes at the exact right moment of rot to be picked. And a bunch won't do that all at the same time. So you have to make decisions about which parts of the bunch you use. It's a very precise process. And unfortunately, at the end of it all, there's less of a market for those very beautiful artisan noble rot wines than there used to be. So, yeah, I think it's pretty tough in Soten right now. But the product itself is an extremely unusual and extremely beautiful form of sweet wine.

Yule Georgieva: And I do think it's one of those collector wines that if you are a collector, if you're in the know, if you're interested in sweet wines, then it's to our benefit that we're able to get Sauternes at quite a reasonable price compared to other things in Bordeaux.

Jane Anson: Yeah, that's so true. So I mean, the most famous one, obviously, is Chateau Ikem, Chateau and that is still relatively high but still not as high as its equivalent. So Chateau Aix-en-Provence was another 1855 first growth and in fact it was placed above all of the other ones because in the mid-19th century it was more expensive, more sought after than any other wine. So that is a first growth superior but today it is expensive but it is not at the same level as those reds. And then once you go underneath Aix-en-Provence you will have Chateau Riesec, that's very well known, Chateau Climonts. I mean, there are some beautiful ones, but they're all, as you say, one of the great bargains of the wine world, in fact.

Yule Georgieva: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we only have a few minutes left. I have two more topics there, tiny, tiny topics, I'm sure. I thought we could very quickly, to the extent it can be done quickly, as you say, it's pretty complicated, just go through the classifications in the Medoc, in Saint-Emilion, you covered the Pesac de Grave classification a little bit. So just a quick overview to give people a bit of context. And then I wanted to talk a little bit about vintages and aging of Bordeaux wines and how collectors should think about that. So classification.

Jane Anson: So 1855, let's talk about that one first, since that's the granddaddy of all classifications. Let's take ourselves back to the mid-19th century. I think this was a time when France was picking up steam again and being seen as a safe and stable trading partner after the French Revolution, which certainly needed a couple of decades after it to re-establish France as being somewhere that other countries could understand. When we bear in mind there were monarchies in pretty much every country that was a trading country at that time. Okay, so mid-19th century, London had just had its own exhibition in Crystal Palace in, I think it was 1851, that was very, very successful and established England as being one of the great trading nations of the time. I go back every single time to say you understand Bordeaux, you understand the history of Bordeaux, what you're actually learning is about the socio-economic history of the trading world over the last couple of centuries. So yes, 1851, England had had this very successful exhibition and France, and it was Napoleon III at the time, who was the president of France then, probably not president, I can't remember what we would have called him, but anyway, Napoleon III, he said, right, we're going to have our own equivalent and show that France is open for business. So what they did was they asked the different traders around France to kind of showcase the glories of French engineering and French production. And they asked the different wine regions to show what they were all about. So home to Bordeaux, Bordeaux, classically a trading city, a port city. What they did was they established who were the great wines of that time and it was really as a shorthand to make things easy, doing it as a classification, a ranking. These rankings had happened for really about 100 years before 1855 as a way to help the merchants sell the wines and to establish benchmark pricing. So they went to the merchants and in fact to the brokers, these people that we talked about right at the beginning, this unusual system where you have brokers who are effectively the eyes and the ears of what's happening in Bordeaux. So they went to the brokers and they established, really they took older rankings but crystallized it into the 1855 classification where you had these five layers of wines. Now to establish those five layers, first growth, second growth, third growth, fourth growth, fifth growth, they weren't doing a tasting. What they were doing was they were looking at what were the prices on the market for not just a snapshot of that time but that had been commanded for these wines over 40, 50, 100, 150 years previous 1855. And they had price bands and the first growths were at the top price band. And you would have found at the time that the price band differences were not as extreme as they are today, but still those first growths had established over a long time that they were the wines that people paid the highest for. Famously, there were only four at the time in 1855. So of the five current, Mouton was seen at the top of the second growth. It wasn't the first growth. Now, my very, very first book I ever wrote was called Bordeaux Legends, and it was about how those five chateaus became the first growth. And one of my favorite chapters was about how Mouton Rothschild got promoted, and a lot of it was to do with the charisma and sheer stubbornness of Baron Philippe de Rothschild, who was absolutely convinced that his chateau deserved to be a first growth, and lobbied five different ministers of agriculture and just kept on going really very impressively until he did manage to get it. There's a whole story there that we definitely don't have time for, but a great, great story if anyone look into it. Anyway, that 1855 classification, nobody knew at the time that it would last for as long as it has, but it has proved extremely useful, and even though today it's not as clear-cut as the first, I think the first we can say it is clear-cut, they are still exceptional and probably do stand apart from much of the rest of Bordeaux, but of the left bank. But when you get down to third, fourth, fifth, there has been change, of course. The market price really reflects the quality of those wines today rather than their specific classification. But is there a value to 1855? I would say absolutely there is. And one of the reasons is that it gives, into Bordeaux that simplifies a complicated region. It definitely has helped collectors and wine lovers worldwide focus and dream a little bit about what there is and what's possible in Bordeaux and it also has protected those pieces of land. After the two world wars in the 20th century Bordeaux was really broke, there was like much of Europe, there was no money here, the chateaus were all really struggling. And you look at those 61 estates, and many of them went down to one hectare, two hectare, were nearly wiped out. And if they hadn't had the name 1855, the classification attached to them, it's very likely that they would have disappeared. But because there was this value intrinsic in them, this piece of history attached to them, there were always people who came along and invested in them and who said, you know, I'm going to replant, I'm going to rebuild it. So it had its use beyond anything else, purely of preserving those estates for history. So that's something rather lovely. Anyway, 1855, apart from Mouton, it will not change. The question I get asked a lot is, will people redo 1855? No, they won't. Because now it kind of has its own momentum. As we say, the market helps change the prices, but the actual level of 1855 will stay as it is. One of the reasons for that is because 100 years later, in the 1950s, over in Santa Milian, they decided to do their own classification. They no doubt could see the benefit that it was doing for the left-bank classified wines and wanted their own piece of the pie. I'm sure that was part of it. But what they decided to do was quite innovative, quite different, and they tied the land to the classification. So in the Medoc, it is the name of the chateau that is classified. So that is why you can expand your land in the Medoc. So if you're Lafitte, there's no problem buying more pieces of land as long as it's in Poyack and you can include it within your Lafitte brand. What they tend to do is they wouldn't put it into the first wine, but they maybe increase Carrewood de Lafitte or they would be a third label. There is a way to expand. Over on the right bank, it is your land that is classified. So in Centermillion, if you're, let's say, if you're Clo Forte, for example, maybe that's not a good example because I think they are 100%, but there are lots of properties which are classified for say 17 hectares of their land. They also have another, maybe they have 30 hectares and some of it is not classified. So it's much more kind of fair in some way because there really is a direct link to the specific quality of land and the classification. They also take into account price. They also take into account viticulture. There are other things, but at its heart, it is a terroir classification. So that's kind of a different thing. The other really revolutionary thing that Santa Maria did was they decided every 10 years that they would redo it. So there is the possibility built into the Santa Maria classification of going up and going down. And so there is a reason, the way they saw it, was that is a reason for people to invest. It's a reason for people to really keep on pushing at the quality because they can be rewarded for it in a way that you won't be on the left bank. So that has been, I think, in many ways very good for the consumer and you've had lots of new estates coming up that maybe you would never have had because they have the ability to become classified. The drawback, as we all know, over the last couple of decades is that it has also caused lawsuits. There have been a lot of people who, if they've been demoted, have taken the classification to court. And that has become confusing for the consumer, really taken away from the idea of the benefit of having that classification. I would say, overall, it has done more good than harm having this classification. Centermillion is a big appellation. There are 800 estates within Centermillion, possibly more, I think that's about right, and there are only maybe 60, 65 who are classified. So it is a way of really showing the estates that are worth looking out for. There are only three levels of classification in centimillion compared to five in 1855. So you have Premier Grand Cru A, Premier Grand Cru Class A, Premier Grand Cru Class A B and then Grand Cru Class A. So those are the three levels. In Grave, I love Grave Appellation because it's really simple, it's Cru Class A to Grave or not, that's it. You don't need to worry about it. Super simple. And it is the wine that is classified in Grave. So again, slightly different. It's the name of the wine. So when Chateau La Mission Aubryon chose to change the name of La Ville Aubryon to La Mission Aubryon Blanc, so La Ville Aubryon was a classified white in the Cru Classé de Grave. But because they decided the brand of La Mission Aubryon was much more powerful than La Ville Aubriant. They changed the name of that wine, so they lost their classification. So La Mission Aubriant Blanc is no longer classified, but it is from the vines of La Ville Aubriant. So they made the decision to think brand is more important than classification, which is probably quite interesting within the context of classification today. But not everybody has the brand of Obreon and the mission Obreon. So yes, there we go. That's, I hope, a useful overview of the difference between the three.

Yule Georgieva: Oh, absolutely. And I think it's great to just go over that because I think it can be very confusing, especially for people who maybe are familiar with the burgundy system of Grand Cru, Premier Cru, right? And then they see Premier Cru and Bordeaux and they're thinking, well, this must be second tier.

Jane Anson: But no, actually, it's not. Exactly and even more confusing there is an appellation Santa Maria and Gran Cru, they are not classified. The classified comes out of that appellation but it's like the exact opposite of Burgundy because the premier cruise are higher in Bordeaux than those Santa Maria and Gran Cru. 

Yule Georgieva: Yeah it's not that we'd have to do, there's definitely more to talk about here but I think that's a great overview. And then just to round things out, I mean we could go on forever and you're actually giving me an idea that we'd have to do another episode just about those five premier cru Chateaux because I think that'd be a fabulous deep dive. But for vintages, one thing Bordeaux is famous for is that there is quite a bit of vintage variation because it is a maritime climate. So especially historically, I think there was much more. Now, is that still something that you see, quite a bit of vintage variation? And can you give us maybe your top three vintages over the last 20 years for both the right and left bank or for whites and reds?

Jane Anson: Yes, I definitely still think there is vintage variation and the last two years are the perfect example of that. 2021 was unusually for nowadays, was quite a rainy, cool vintage and you had lots of challenges going through in terms of mildew, in terms of rot, there was some hail, there was frost at the beginning. There were lots of issues in 2021 to do with a cooler climate. This year, 2022, it has been some of the highest temperatures that we've ever seen in Bordeaux. Many, many days over 35 degrees, some going up to 40, 43 degrees centigrade. So, it's completely different challenges. there was much drier. We've been more used to these kind of years, drier and hotter, but this was particularly extreme. Even had forest fires on the outskirts of Bordeaux, not that they impacted the vines. They came pretty close to be honest, at parts of Sauternes and Graves, but generally speaking, they didn't impact the vines, they were a long way away, but it was really an indication of just how hot and dry the 2022 summer was. So you had two vintages back to back with completely contrasting styles of vintages. And that sums up the fact that although we have more consistent good vintages today, there's no question that generally speaking, if you look at the last couple of decades, we've had more good than bad years or more good than challenging as they like to say. But yes, the last few years have proven beyond all doubt that we're still a vintage-led region. And that is exactly as you say, because with a maritime climate, we used to be pretty much the northerly limit of where you could fully ripen grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon that do need long hang time, they need heat to get fully ripe. But because of climate change, because of the generally heat rising, now Cabernet Sauvignon is getting ripe almost invariably every single year gets fully ripe. Merlot has some potential challenges because it is a grape which is relatively easy to ripen but if it goes over ripe it can drop acidity quite quickly. So you have potential issues with Merlot. But having said that, 2018 was a very hot year and you have some brilliant Merlots. So it goes back to those chateaus on the right spot and the right terroirs are very resistant to issues. And because Bordeaux has been making wine for so long, you have quite a lot of 30, 40, 50 year old vines. Older vines to climate change as well. So yes, in answer to the question, yes, there are still vintages and that's again part of the charm of this region. Best or my favourite rather than best, my favourite over the last two decades, I am a huge fan of 2001. I think 2001 was slightly underestimated at the time, but since then, certainly in the last decade, people have realized just what a beautiful vintage it is because it has that balance. It has ripeness, but it has freshness. It has elegance. I think if you look at the Fisiac 2001 or the Obaie 2001, two perfect examples for me of really, really beautiful wines within that vintage. I'm a huge fan of the 2005 vintage. 2005, again, kind of classic, old school, very concentrated. It was very tannic at the beginning, took its time to come around. I've just done a big retasting of the 2005s, which I just posted on my site two weeks ago. I tasted about 110 different 2005s, and it's really starting to open up now. It's kind of the perfect moment to start rediscovering your 2005s that I think a lot of people had almost given up on because you had the 2009, the 2010 that was so starry, everybody loved them. And so I think we forgot just how good the 2005 is. And it's one of the last truly balanced brilliant years where you have alcohols in about 13, 13.5 fairly regularly and yet no compromise in the concentration, the quality of the fruit, the depth of expression that you're getting. So beautiful wines there. Pomerol particularly, I think right now, 2005 Pomerol are excellent, really drinking very, very well. So you look at Trotto Noir 2005, it's still a baby, but you can just about start to truly enjoy and see how good it is. Other great ones recently, I think 2009, I underestimated at the time, thought maybe it was a little bit too warm, too hot to truly be expressive in the long term, but I've got to say I was wrong. And now the more I taste the 2009s, the more I see that as being a modern 1982. I really do see the 2009s as being an exceptionally good vintage which will go the distance, not everywhere, but the right terroir, the right soil types for 2009 are brilliant. And then if I'm going to pick a year in the last 20 years where you can really almost not go wrong, it's probably the 2016. The 2016 you can buy less expensive wines as well as very expensive wines and you're going to have a pretty good chance of getting something great.

Yule Georgieva: Perfect. Well, would you say, just as a last question, for somebody who's just trying to get into Bordeaux, obviously Lafitte may not be available to them out of the gates. If it is, congratulations to you. You're very lucky. But if it's not, to get a good sense of Bordeaux, is it, can you go to some of the cheaper, maybe, Cru Bourgeois level wines in those good years? Would that be a good way to do it? Or would you say get a better wine, but in an off-vintage? What's a better entry point? 

Jane Anson: That's an excellent, excellent question. I would say if you're going to go in and try to discover what Bordeaux is about and your budget is maybe $30, $40 or something that's not a huge, you must go to the good vintages because if you're really trying to understand then within that price point, then do look at 2016, look at 2010, look at those vintages which have enough tannic structure and fruit integrity that you kind of get what Bordeaux is about. Because one of the things that the reason why Bordeaux has hold such attractiveness of people is its ability to deliver wines that have structure, that have fruit, that have kind of something really about them, like a real sense of personality and punch in many ways. So yes, go 16 or go 10. Personally, if you truly want to know what it is that makes wine lovers feel so excited about Bordeaux, then I would probably try to go for some of the bigger names. It doesn't have to be, of course, a first growth, but I would maybe look at your Pichon Contesses or maybe your, let's think about a Santamillion. There are lots of wonderful Santamillions actually that you can get that are relatively good value, but really kind of show the beauty. A Chateau Canon, for example, Chateau Canon, the prices have gone up a lot in recent years, but you can still get some excellent Chateau Canons with maybe 10 or 15 years of age, which are a lovely entry point into understanding why Santamillion can deliver such beautiful wines. And for those, like 2001, for example, it's not a vintage which is the most highly priced vintage of all, but there are some truly beautiful wines from there. So maybe I wouldn't go to 2013. I think there is no reason for you to be buying a 2013. I just don't think the vintage is good enough for if you're trying to understand why Bordeaux is brilliant. But those slightly more charming off vintages like 2012, 2001, 2014, where you can get some great prices. 2019, we talked about 2019, you can get some excellent prices. So maybe go off vintages of the higher, of the better known estates as a way in to truly trying to understand the magic. But if you're really just buying to enjoy and you just want to see what Bordeaux is about, then go great vintages of the Cru Bourgeois or those kind of lower levels.

Yule Georgieva: That's good advice.So maybe start with the good vintages, try to get some of the, I think a good tip would be to go to Inside Bordeaux and look at your reports on the different chateaux. But then maybe once you're a bit more familiar, you can start to dabble into the challenging business.

Jane Anson: Exactly. That's a good tip.

Yule Georgieva: OK. You know, I feel like we could keep talking for another hour. I have so many more questions for you because, as you say, Bordeaux is such a fascinating and complex topic and there's no shortage of material here, but I don't want to keep you too long. So, Jane, thank you again so much for joining. We'd love to have you back to dive a bit more deeply into some of these topics.

Jane Anson: Wonderful.

Yule Georgieva: I hope you're up for that at some point and we'll look forward to speaking again soon. I hope you're up for that at some point and we'll look forward to speaking again soon.

Jane Anson: Thank you so much for asking me and I will speak to you again soon. Take care.