History of Bordeaux wine dry, 3.2% for sweet). History of Bordeaux wine The history of Bordeaux wine spans almost 2000 years to Roman times when the first vineyards were planted. In the Middle Ages, the marriage of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine opened the Bordeaux region to the English market and eventually to the world's stage. The Gironde estuary and its tributaries, the Garonne and the Dordogne rivers play a pivotal role in the history and success of this region. Bordeaux wine production seems to have begun sometime after 43 AD, during the Roman occupation of Gaul, when the Romans established vineyards to
Bordeaux wine regions in fact exclusively lists red wine producers from the Haut-Médoc plus Château Haut-Brion of Graves, and (in a separate list) sweet white wine producers from Sauternes (including Barsac). Estates in the Médoc which were not classified in that listing may be classified under the Cru Bourgeois label. In 1953, a Classification of Graves wine was produced. Although this purports to classify the whole of Graves, it exclusively lists châteaux in Pessac-Léognan. In 1954, a separate classification of Saint-Émilion wine was set up for this Right Bank region. There are eight AOCs that cover the entire department of Gironde. Any producer