I luckily found myself in the France’s port city of Bordeaux this past week. I wanted to go there to taste and explore some of the area’s world-famous wines, like those from the Médoc and Graves regions, and also to visit the historical city centre. The day I arrived, I found out from a local that the country’s president, Franҫois Hollande, was also in the heavily-visited wine capital to celebrate the opening of the city’s new wine museum: La Cité du Vin. Taking three years to build, the mega museum is housed inside a remarkable gleaming and swirling bronze structure along the Garonne River.
I planned to go to the museum, which is easily reached via the city’s ‘B’ tramline, on a Friday afternoon, but my plans almost went down the drain when I found out that the trams weren’t running because of a strike. This is France, after all. I rushed to the tourism office and discovered I could rent a city bike and go that way. From the city centre it’s only about a 30-minute walk, but I was running short on time and wanted to get there as quickly as possible.
I whizzed down the paved bike lane next to the The Garonne and parked it hurriedly before crossing a bridge over a canal and heading inside the enormous and modern-looking structure that reminded me of a cross between a North American skyscraper and a curvy Gaudi building. I got my ticket and asked the friendly person behind the counter which floor most of the exhibits were on. “The second,” he told me, pointing to a wide, well-lit stairway. I grabbed a floor plan and headed up the stairs, where I was handed a smartphone-like gadget and headphones to play the audios in my language of choice. Wanting to get the most out of my visit, I asked the smiling woman behind the counter for English, please, before walking a few steps until my eyes were met with an array of screens behind other visitors choosing what to listen to, watch and learn about.
Going as far back as the Romans and Greeks, the museum provides a thorough overview of the history of this highly-consumed and important beverage up until the present. Visitors are able to choose from a variety of videos and interactive content explaining the historical and cultural significances of wines. I was drawn to the information about the wine trade in the middle ages and watched a series of videos featuring historical black and white images describing the wine industry along various European rivers, such as The Douro in Spain and Portugal, The Rhone and The Seine, the waterway known to have “watered Paris” for centuries.
It didn’t stop there. The permanent exhibit also describes how the different six main wine families – reds, rosés, sparkling wines, fortified wines and sweet wines – are made, with information about how and where around the world wine grapes are grown, as well as how the beverages are processed and matured. As a world-renowned supplier of high-quality wines, the museum also features information surrounding the history of wine production and trade in the Bordeaux area specifically.
After I finished that, I headed to the sensory part of the exhibit. Numerous glass domes were arranged on a long table connected to large black atomizers meant to show the connection between smell and taste, as well as how wines can absorb different flavours depending on the environment – or terroir – the grapes are grown in. For example, grapes grown near fruit or flowers, such as apricots or roses, can take on these fruity or floral flavours. After filling my curious nose with as much as it could take, I continued on to learn about wine table settings and everything from corks, to bottles and the dark side of wine and the danger of consuming too much alcohol.
19 different themes in the entire permanent exhibit provide something for anyone thirsty for learning about this diverse beverage that’s played an important role in human societies for centuries. The trip ends – or begins, if you’d like it to – with a tasting on the 8 floor of the museum. Deciding to keep it close to home, I went for a sparkling Rosé Brute from the Bordeaux area before moving to the balcony to catch a panoramic view of the city and the calm Garonne — the waterway that enabled Bordeaux’s wine trade to flourish and reach other parts of Europe and eventually the world.
Allow yourself a minimum of two hours for a visit to La Cité du Vin, which also features a wine cellar where wines can be purchased, a museum store and an on-site restaurant. For those wanting to dig deeper into the region’s rich wine culture, tours to nearby wineries and villages, such as the famed Saint Émilion, are organized through the tourism office (12 Cours du Julliet). You can also learn about the region’s wines by visiting many of the city’s wine stores, such as the welcoming Vinothèque de Bordeaux, located a few doors down from the tourism office.