Our story begins in the final decades of the 17th century, not with a reinvention but with an invention: that of the grands crus and, in their wake, of the whole Bordeaux range as we know it today. Before then, wines were a sort of Beaujolais nouveau, to be drunk before summer or they turned sharp. The discovery, around 1670, of the antiseptic properties of the sulphur wick made it possible to produce wines able to age.
The split between white and red wine at the very start of the 18th century seems fairly balanced. A first crisis occurred around the middle of the Age of Enlightenment: demand for white wines, mainly dry ones, fell considerably. Fortunately, at the same time, consumption of reds soared. The solution was obvious. Monsieur de Navarre noted: “if it happens… that owners uproot or graft their white vines in order to have only reds… it is because they realise that the agents of their usual merchants, who used to buy only white wine, have changed their taste and now ask only for red”.
A century later, towards the middle of the 19th century, a new crisis hit Bordeaux: consumption of red wines fell sharply while that of dry whites collapsed. Demand shifted in part towards sweet white wines. This was the “dazzling breakthrough of Sauternes”, in the words of Professor Enjalbert. The Bordeaux vineyard questioned itself and developed a very substantial production of sweet and semi-sweet whites, to the point of outstripping reds in volume. The first statistics, published only in the 1840s, show a Bordeaux output of 59% sweet and semi-sweet white wines against 41% reds, with dry white wines accounting for only a negligible share.
After the Second World War, in the 1960s, tastes changed again. Consumers burned what they had once adored and turned away from sweet white wines. This production, then the majority in Bordeaux, went through a very serious crisis. But, once again, the surge in red wine consumption offered growers an opportunity to convert, which they seized. With the exception of the Sauternes area and a few small neighbouring appellations, they uprooted their sémillon and sauvignon to plant merlot and cabernet. A few, far fewer, switched to producing dry whites, for which demand was growing. In about fifteen years, the Bordeaux vineyard landscape was transformed.
In the early 1980s, annual red wine production reached about 3 million hectolitres, the equivalent of Bordeaux’s total production of the 1960s across all colours, while whites represented only about 20% of volumes. Twenty years later, at the start of the new millennium, the share of whites fell further to account for only 12% of total production, or 800,000 hectolitres, mainly dry wines, while reds had doubled their volumes to reach 6 million hectolitres.
The first years of the new millennium marked the early signs of the current crisis. Sales of wines of the colour known as Bordeaux began to decline, and then the fall accelerated after Covid. Unlike the three previous crises, no rise in sales of another type of wine compensates for the declining segment, with the exception of Crémant, so that, under the effect of grubbing up and low yields, Bordeaux’s production across all wines has now been halved, falling to just over 3 million hectolitres.
At the start of 2026, the Bordeaux vineyard has reached the point where the changes in market direction are now perceived and accepted. The phase of reducing the area planted with red wine grapes, already under way, can continue, while the phase of reinvention, which must begin quickly, will have to consist of adapting our red wines to the demands of today’s consumers.
Yves Raymond
