Surprise: Bordeaux Whites Are a Delight

It almost sounds contradictory: exquisite white wine hails from Bordeaux, the unofficial home of red. But the whites produced in Pessac-Léognan—the heart of the Bordeaux region in France—include "some of the most thrilling, underappreciated white wines in the world,” Eric Asimov raves in the New York Times. Historically popular in Britain, the whites are now gaining traction in Belgium, Russia, and Japan.

Still, these lesser-known rising stars of the vineyard haven’t caught on in the US. “Americans think varietally unless it’s a well-known label,” explains a winemaker. “It’s another example of the relatively complex nature of traditional French sources.” That’s a real shame, since so much care goes into making white Bordeaux: “One bottle of white requires 70 times more precision than one bottle of red,” another maker explains. (More wine stories.)