Living vintage mapsŽivé mapy ročníku
Real day-by-day growing-season weather from ERA5 reanalysis — played over the map, read like a winemaker. Pauillac free; all appellations and history for Collector members.Reálné počasí vegetační sezóny den po dni (ERA5) — přehrávané nad mapou, čtené očima vinaře. Pauillac zdarma; všechny apelace a historie pro členy Collector.
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All of Bordeaux on one mapCelé Bordeaux na jedné mapě
Real appellation boundaries, the Gironde, Garonne and Dordogne — and every château we have tasted in any vintage. Click an appellation to load its living map above.Skutečné hranice apelací, Gironde, Garonna i Dordogne — a každé château, které jsme kdy degustovali. Kliknutím na apelaci se nahoře načte její živá mapa.
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Legend · châteaux tastedLegenda · château s degustacemi
AccessModel přístupu
Boundaries: commune contours (IGN) of each appellation's core communes, simplified — parcel-level INAO delimitation is finer. Rivers drawn along the banks, approximate. Château positions approximate.Hranice: obrysy kmenových obcí apelací (IGN), zjednodušeno — parcelová delimitace INAO je jemnější. Řeky zakresleny podle břehů, orientačně. Polohy château orientační.
The terroir dictionarySlovníček terroir
Eight terms the map layers stand on — the estuary, the gravels, the names on the land. Written from our visits and the sources behind each layer; the full per-appellation readings live in the maps above.Osm pojmů, na kterých mapové vrstvy stojí — estuár, štěrky, jména v krajině. Psáno z našich cest a ze zdrojů jednotlivých vrstev; plné čtení po apelacích najdete v mapách výše.
The Gironde estuary
The joint mouth of the Garonne and Dordogne is western Europe's largest estuary — a 75 km funnel where the tide turns twice a day. That mass of water acts as a thermal flywheel: in April it shields budding vines from frost, in September it smooths the swings before harvest. Hence the Médoc saying that great wine comes from vines that can see the river — Latour, Montrose and Sociando-Mallet all stand on its bank.
Palus
The estuarine clays right on the bank — young, heavy, wet alluvium (mapped as “argile des Mattes”). Vines grow vigorously here but the wine turns out thin, so the AOC parcel delimitation excludes the palus: today you find pasture and maize a few hundred metres from million-euro vineyards. Yet in the 18th century “vins de palus” were a sought-after export — history has a sense of irony.
Gravel terraces (Dubreuilh 1976)
Through the Pleistocene the rivers repeatedly dumped and re-cut gravels carried from the Pyrenees and the Massif Central — building a staircase of terraces that geologist Jacques Dubreuilh ordered into types 1–6: the older the terrace, the higher it sits. For Cabernet the middle types are gold: deep, free-draining, nutrient-poor gravels force roots metres down and yield small, concentrated berries. The Terraces layer shows them under every appellation.
Croupes
The gravel knolls left where erosion carved up the terraces — the Médoc's micro-relief. A few metres of elevation decide everything: the crown of a croupe drains, warms and ripens earlier, while the hollow stays cold and damp. Lafite, Mouton and Pontet-Canet each sit on their own croupe — and the Relief layer shows them on a real elevation model.
Würm alluvium & Holocene floodplains
The youngest deposits — sandy gravels of the last ice age (“Würm”, more precisely Weichselian) and floodplains laid down along streams over the past ten thousand years. They lie low, hold moisture and frost air, which is why the great appellations tread carefully around them. The greenish and bluish bands between the golden gravels in the Terraces layer are exactly this.
Named plots (lieux-dits)
The historic named sites of the cadastre — Bages, Batailley, Anseillan, Carruades… Names centuries old, still christening second wines and parcel cuvées: Lynch-Bages carries the hamlet of Bages, Carruades de Lafite the Carruades plateau. The Plots layer maps up to 150 of them per appellation; hover to reveal each name.
The INAO delimitation
An appellation is not a whole village: the INAO defines, parcel by parcel, where vines may carry a given AOC. The gold area in the Plots layer is that parcel delimitation — which is why it has holes (palus, woods, hamlets) and why a few Pauillac vineyards lie beyond the core commune. The rendering is indicative; the legally binding plans sit with the communes and the INAO.
Jalles
The drainage streams and channels threading the Médoc — the Jalle du Breuil separates Lafite from Cos d'Estournel, and with it Pauillac from Saint-Estèphe. Their network is the work of 17th-century Dutch engineers who drained the marshy Médoc; only then could the croupes show what they can do. Appellation boundaries still trace the jalles today.
Editorial content by bordeaux.guru. Geology after Dubreuilh (1976) / BRGM; plots from the Etalab cadastre; delimitation INAO (indicative).Redakční obsah bordeaux.guru. Geologie dle Dubreuilha (1976) / BRGM; tratě z katastru Etalab; delimitace INAO (informativní).