Bordeaux wine can "see the river" from their vineyards. The majority of land facing riverward is occupied by classified estates. Red Bordeaux is generally made from a blend of grapes. Permitted grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec and rarely Carménère. Today Carménère is rarely used, with Château Clerc Milon, a fifth growth Bordeaux, being one of the few to still retain Carménère vines. As a very broad generalisation, Cabernet Sauvignon (Bordeaux's second-most planted grape variety) dominates the blend in red wines produced in the Médoc and the rest of the left bank of the Gironde estuary. Typical top-quality
Bordeaux wine regions 4g/l of residual sugar. This appellation covers around 6500 hectares of vines and 38 million litres of wine. If it has more than 4g/l of residual sugar, then it may be labelled as Bordeaux Molleux AOC, but little wine is in fact produced under this AOC. Bordeaux Supérieur AOC covers both red and white wines, and the grapes used are the same, but permitted yields are slightly lower, minimum alcohol content is slightly higher and slightly longer aging is required. The amount of red wine produced under this appellation (around 45 million litres, from 10,000 hectares of vines) is much