Interesting Facts About Bourg Gironde

Bourg is located in the Gironde Aquitaine region in the south west of France, a few kilometers away from the capital Bordeaux. The Bourg region has lots to offer to visitors, from the gorgeous city of nearby Bordeaux to the highest sand dunes in Europe.

The world famous wines from the Medoc and Saint-Emilion Vineyards are in themselves a great feature of this region.

Read on for more on this wonderful and popular area, much of which is devoted to viticulture:

• Bourg is situated at the confluence of the Garonne and Dordogne rivers just around the small town of Bourg sur Gironde.

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  One of the oldest wine producing places in France is Bourg Gironde because of it being very favorably located close to the river, with soil that is very fertile for growing vines. Historians have found evidence that Bourg’s wines dates back to as early as the second century, when “Vitis Biturica” was planted by the Romans, and which are supposed to be the ancestors of the present Cabernet variety. All the local wine in earlier times was shipped from Bourg harbor and the vineyards located along the estuary tried to keep up with the increasing demand.

• Bourg, being in close proximity to the Atlantic Ocean and with an average altitude of 20 m above sea level, enjoys a distinctive micro-climate contributing to its history of growing vines. The climate of Bourg is favorable as it gets a little more sunshine, less extreme temperature and on an average about 20% less rainfall than Bordeaux. The Gironde Estuary is like a thermal buffer protecting the vines from the extreme cold or frost.

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  One finds over 400 wine makers in Bourg out of which around two thirds are family owned with independent areas of 10 hectares each where vines are grown. The other third are cooperative members with small vineyards of less than 5 hectares.
  The 4 cooperative cellars Alliance Bourg, the Vignerons de Tutiac, The Cave du Bourgeais in Gauriac and the Chateaux Solidaires contribute about one fourth of the AOLs production volume.

   

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  The area under vine is 3950 hectares where red wine varieties are grown producing 180,000 hl of red wine and 29 hectares where white wine varieties are grown producing 12,000 hl of white wine. As far as sales are concerned around 85% of the production is sold in France itself but in recent times the percentage of export is continuously rising. Out of the total wine produced, one third is sold in bulk and the other two thirds are bottled by the wine merchants and the estate.

• There is a great concentration of limestone bedrock in Bourg covered with a thick layer of clay. The three major soil types present here are soil on sand and clay, clay-limestone soil, and soil on Quaternary Sil.

• There are many grape varieties to make red and white Cotes De Bourg with the right blend of the different varieties.

• Malbec is a variety that is used in the highest quantity when blended with other varieties to make historically great varieties of wines.

• Lately an experiment was conducted by planting 20 different clones and the harvested grapes were used for producing new varieties of wines.