Bordeaux

Red Bordeaux is the world's archetypal fine-wine blend: a structured, age-worthy dry red built chiefly from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot, grown in the maritime southwest of France around the city of Bordeaux and the Gironde estuary. Rather than a single grape it is almost always a blend, and its character splits along the rivers — firm, cassis-and-cedar Cabernet-led wines on the gravelly Left Bank, plusher, plum-and-velvet Merlot-led wines on the clay-limestone Right Bank. Tannic, savoury and famously long-lived, it is the template that "Bordeaux blend" or "claret" describes around the globe.