Entre-deux-Mers introduces red as well as white wines under the AOC

Think you know all the Bordeaux AOCs? Get ready to add another one… as Entre-deux-Mers gets the official go-ahead to bottle reds as well as whites under its appellation name.

After two years of debate, AOC Entre-deux-Mers’s new red wine cahier de charges, or winemaking charter, has been accepted by the INAO, France’s national body that oversees the country’s wine appellations.

The new AOC Entre-deux-Mers (rouge) will have slightly stricter rules than the classic AOC Bordeaux or AOC Bordeaux Supérieur – both of which will still be available to all winemakers in the region who want to continue to use them (almost all of whom have been growing and bottling red wine all along, just under the wider Bordeaux appellation).

The reds wines, for example, must be matured for one year and a half before being released on to the market, ‘so that they reach the consumer ready to drink with a certain complexity,’ as Jacques Lurton, owner of Vignobles André Lurton, put it. This is compared to six months of ageing for AOC Bordeaux Supérieur. Vines must also be planted at a density of 4,500 vines per hectare (compared to 4,000v/ha for AOC Bordeaux).

We will see the first wines under the new label in the 2023 vintage, but with the required ageing, the first bottles to reach consumers will arrive in January 2025.

‘Things are moving in Bordeaux,’ says Lurton, who confirmed that his Château Bonnet will be using the new AOC. ‘As consumers care increasingly about authenticity, and as Bordeaux does more to reflect the complexity of its terroir, it is only right that we recognise the superb soils of Entre deux Mers for red as well as its famous white wines’.

The Entre-deux-Mers appellation dates back to 1937, and has been white only since its inception in 1937, and dry white only since 1957. Discussions in the 1920s intended for the appellation to apply to both red and white wines, but the initial decrees applied only to whites – although both sweet and dry for the first few decades.

Entre-deux-Mers today counts 276 winemakers, with 1,580ha of white grapes. It covers 135 communes, selling around 9 million bottles annually, with an average estate size of 11.2ha. The red wine AOC will cover the exact same geographic footprint, and can apply to the 5,700ha of red grapes that are currently planted within this area at the allowable density, and to any new grapes planted (or to existing red wine vineyards that increase their density to the required amount, something that potentially applies to a further 25,000ha of vines).

This is a relatively cool part of Bordeaux, located between both the Garonne and the Dordogne rivers, where the low temperatures are a little higher than average across the region, but the higher temperatures a little lower. It is also one of the most biodiverse regions of Bordeaux, with far less monoculture of vines than you find in areas like the Médoc. The eastern side, which is more clay dominant, has the best potential for red wines, as does the western side close to Cadillac with its gravel-dominant soils.

Winemaking rules for AOC Entre-deux-Mers rouge include:

• Planting density 4,500v/ha minimum (same as white wines in AOC Entre deux Mers)
• Plot by plot working
• 21 months of ageing before release (in vat, bottle or barrel)
• Traditional Bordeaux grape varieties with a requirement to blend.
• Thermovinification (pre-fermentation heating of the grapes) is forbidden.