Bordeaux, the port that made claret

The story of claret begins with a wedding. In 1152 Eleanor, Duchess of Aquitaine, a great heiress, married Henry Plantagenet, who two years later became King Henry II of England. Her lands came with her, and Bordeaux, the chief port of Aquitaine, became for the next three centuries a possession of the English crown.

That suited both sides. England had little wine of its own and a great thirst; Bordeaux had vineyards and a river leading to the sea. Each autumn, fleets of ships sailed up the Gironde to load the new vintage, and the light, pale red wine of the region, the clairet, became so familiar in England that its anglicised name, claret, has meant red Bordeaux ever since. When the English were finally driven out, after their defeat at Castillon in 1453, the trade survived the war. The English kept drinking, and Bordeaux kept shipping.

The Port of the Moon

Bordeaux is not on the sea. It lies on the Garonne some way inland, and below the city the Garonne meets the Dordogne to form the Gironde, a broad estuary running north-west to the Atlantic. Ships have always had to come upriver to reach it, past the vineyards of the Médoc on one bank and the hills of Bourg and Blaye on the other, and the long approach is part of the pleasure of arriving. The first bridge across the river in the city, the stone Pont de Pierre, was not built until the early nineteenth century, on Napoleon's orders.

The city that grew from the trade stands on a great crescent bend of the River Garonne, which is why it was called the Port of the Moon. Most of what you see is the work of the eighteenth century, when Bordeaux, rich from wine and from Atlantic trade, rebuilt itself in pale limestone. Its riverfront is a single long, classical façade, and in 2007 the whole historic city, the Port of the Moon, became a World Heritage Site.

The centrepiece is the Place de la Bourse, a square of elegant eighteenth-century buildings opening onto the river. In front of it lies the Miroir d'Eau, a shallow sheet of water laid on granite that alternately floods to a mirror, reflecting the façades, and puffs out a cool mist. It opened in 2006 and has become a favourite place to cool off and to take a photograph.

North of the centre, along the quays, is the Chartrons quarter, once the home of the wine merchants. Many of them were from abroad, British, Irish, Dutch and German families who settled in Bordeaux to buy, blend, age and ship the wine, and their warehouses and long, low cellars still line the streets behind the river.

Wine country

Bordeaux's vineyards surround the city in every direction. The Médoc runs north along the left bank of the Gironde estuary, the country of the great châteaux. In 1855, for the Universal Exhibition in Paris, the city's brokers ranked the best of them into five growths by the prices their wines fetched, and that classification, with a single change in 1973, still stands. Across the river, on the right bank, are Saint-Émilion, a medieval hill town above its vineyards, and Pomerol; to the south, Graves and the sweet white wines of Sauternes.

In the city itself, the Cité du Vin, a museum of wine opened in 2016 in a swirling, curving building beside the river, tells the story of wine around the world and ends with a glass on its top floor, looking out over the Garonne.

Cruises that go there

Bordeaux is a natural port of call on cruises along the Atlantic coast of France.

Fred. Olsen's nine-night France with Bordeaux & the River Seine sails from Southampton in July and calls at Bordeaux, St Malo, Rouen and Honfleur.

Ambassador Cruise Line's twelve-night Bordeaux & Beyond: A Journey Through Western France sails from Newcastle in September, with Honfleur, Cherbourg, St. Malo, Bordeaux, Brest and Fowey in Cornwall among its ports.

Ambassador's twelve-night Classic French Escapes: Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg & Honfleur sails from Belfast in May, with Brest, Bordeaux, Cherbourg, Honfleur and Liverpool on its itinerary.

With a day in port, walk the riverfront from the Place de la Bourse to the Chartrons, and leave time for one glass of something red. It would be rude not to.