TMC Guide: Low Intervention Red Bordeaux, Part 1

37 red wines tasted and rated by our panel

It means a lot to me to be publishing this guide, the second such report on The Morning Claret (here’s a link to the first). Bordeaux was very much my first love, decades before I knew natural wine existed. It saddens me that the region has almost lost an entire generation of drinkers who think that there’s nothing here for them. The news stories about pesticides, the size of the estates, the perception of Bordeaux as an old man’s thing plus high prices for the top wines have all contributed to the issue.

My message is don’t turn your back on these wonderful wines! In a region the size of Bordeaux - which produces a greater volume of wine annually than the whole of Austria - there is massive stylistic diversity, and there are ever more growers focused on chemical-free farming and artisanal winemaking. As I realised when I visited the region in 2019, there is a wealth of exciting and delicious wine to discover, much of it available at very fair prices.

Our supermarkets may still be full of industrial swill that costs €5 a bottle and says Grand Vin de Bordeaux on the label (I can assure you there will be nothing grand about it, and probably little to do with vin either), but there is another reality. Here, we pulled together a selection of 37 wines from 20 different estates, all of which I consider as natural. I’ve used the term low-intervention to avoid offending the more radical amongst you, as a few wines were coarse filtered, and most saw some sulphite additions.

Every wine in this guide complied with this standard:

• Hand harvested grapes

• Certified organic or biodynamic farming (with one exception, Château Bel-Air Marquis d'Aligre, uncertified but does not use synthetic products in the vineyard).

• Spontaneous fermentation, with no must additions or corrections (no chaptalisation, no acidification, no added tannins, yeasts or enzymes)

• Unfiltered and unfined (excepting three wines which were coarse filtered).

• Maximum total sulphites in the finished wine of 50mg/L

• Vintages currently available for retail

Just in case anyone thinks the above is normal in Bordeaux, here is the ingredients list published on Tesco’s website for their cheapest AOC Bordeaux wine (£5.75):

Grapes, Sugar, Stabiliser (Potassium Polyaspartate), Acidity Regulator (Tartaric Acid), Preservatives (Sulphur Dioxide, Potassium Bisulphite), Packaging Gas (Nitrogen).

We tasted all wines blind. This guide is divided into two parts.

Part 1 (below)

Introduction, taster’s biographies and comments, plus their top three wines.

Wines from right bank satellites including Blaye, Côtes de Bourg, Castillon, Cadillac, Canon-Fronsac and Fronsac.

Wineries: Tire Pé, Château Mangot, Château de Piote, Château Shuette, Charivari, Carsin, Peybonhomme-les-Tours, Château Grolet, Clos Puy Arnaud

Part 2 (here)

Our top ten wines.

Wines from St. Emilion and its satellites, St. Emilion Grand Cru, Haut-Medoc and the classed growths of the Medoc.

Wineries: Château Moulin, Château Fonroque, Château Mazeyres, Château Bel-Air Marquis d'Aligre, Uchida, Clos du Jaugueyron, Dufort-Vivens, Château Pontet-Canet, Vignobles Pueyo, Le Puy and Closerie Saint Roc.

Our Tasters

Claire Louise Mumford is an English painter currently retraining as a wine consultant and winemaker. She holds the Dutch Vinoloog qualification and is currently studying for Magister Vini, the Dutch equivalent of the Master of Wine.

Red Bordeaux is not a category I would often choose. Lower alcohols and greater affinity with vegetable dishes often draw me to whites, rosés and oranges. The enormous range of wines shown today however really challenges the view that red Bordeaux has to be traditional in style and tied to classic pairings.

Claire’s favourites

Château Shuette - Sanguis Claret 2023
Clos Puy Arnaud 2014
Château Bel-Air Marquis d'Aligre 2009

Jasper van Amerongen is head sommelier at two Michelin star Vinkeles Restaurant in Amsterdam. Although the restaurant focuses on a more classic wine list, Amerongen’s tastes are broad.

I prefer left bank over right in the ‘classic’ Bordeaux world and it seems the natural style on the left bank also impresses me more. There was a great balance between serious, playful and complex wines with their own character, but also often a classic undertone. I suspected Bordeaux had many more great natural orientated producers and today’s tasting proved it.

Jasper’s favourites

Château Pontet-Canet 2016
Clos du Jaugueyron - Haut-Medoc 2019
Uchida - Rosa 2022

Simon J Woolf is the editor of The Morning Claret.

If there is something that differentiated the wines for me, it was use of oak. My favourites were those where the oak took a back seat or felt more sophisticated and integrated. Money talks, I suspect. It was wonderful to see so many cuvées partly or wholly aged in clay or concrete. Almost everything delivered when it came to freshness and fruit. Low intervention winemaking and even the complete eschewing of sulphites doesn’t seem to stop these wines showing their terroir and classicism. Anyone who thinks natural wines can’t express origin should invest some of the bottles we’ve reviewed here!

Simon’s favourites

Clos Puy Arnaud 2014
Christophe Pueyo - Dérives Pourpres 2016
Uchida - Rosa 2022

Symbols used in the guide

⚘ Certified biodynamic (Demeter or Biodyvin)

🌿 Certified organic

🏆 our top ten wines

🫰 Excellent value (not necessarily cheap, but above-average price/quality ratio)

❤️ One of our taster’s personal favourites

0️⃣ No added sulphites

Winemakers and Wines