The Bordeaux Club's Classy Gents in New Academie du Vin Book: Could These Old School Influencers Become the Next Masterpiece Theater PBS Series?

The Sanctum Sanctorium of the Classy Gents

As the wine loving historian Andrew Roberts (not a club member) writes in his introduction, "Imagine a fictional claret society, in which six distinguished Englishmen meet thricely in black tie at their stately homes, 18th century London clubs or Oxbridge master's lodges, in order to drink, discuss and rate the greatest wines ever produced."

Now, thanks to Neil McKendrick, Hugh Johnson and the Academie du Vin Library, you can visit the inner sanctum sanctorium of seven of wine's most highly esteemed Classy Gents in a new book The Bordeaux Club: The Seventy Year Story of Great Wines and the Friends Who Shared Them.

Meeting thrice a year in luxurious settings–Hugh Johnson's garden, where they sip Champagne by his apple orchard, at Oxford's prestigious halls, or in wine merchant's splendors–they sample the best of what the post World War II era had to offer, spanning the years from 1949-2019 when close to the last of their breed had died out.  

 

Roberts tells us "...each member competes subtly to serve better food and wine than his five fellows." 

He also says, "Associations and societies such as the Bordeaux Club are the very acme of civilization." Hyperbole? Perhaps. (It says something that only Bordeaux is in scope, for the club, an historical fact that shows how much the world of wine has changed.)

While these stories offer their own unique pleasures, they also shed light on the history of Napa and the direction our local wine industry–spanning from low wine to high wine culture–chose to go. 

Napa-Bordeaux Connection

Napa went from jug wine coop for Gallo's Hearty Burgundy to wealthy wine enclave and boomtown, a la a mini-Medoc. The reason is connected to these influencers of the post War era. I call them the Classy Gents and you'll recognize them at once. 

They're not Robert Mondavi, raised in an Italian immigrant family in Lodi, seeing the prices for Bordeaux wines. But after seeing Bordeaux's economic success, it's no wonder he led the Napa region to commercial and wine success by aping, mimicking and in some cases surpassing (or at least partnering with) the favorite wine of Classy Gents–Bordeaux First Growths–when he launched Opus One, a co-brand with a First Growth–Lafite. 

Due in part to England's global wine trade and its long ties to Bordeaux in history (as well as geographic proximity), Bordeaux–and the grape varieties it grows–have been elevated to top dog in world wine prices (until recent decades) as well as dominant grape variety status. Cabernet is a bet Napa made–and won.

The English authors, merchants, upper class and businessmen so aligned with Bordeaux–and the prices it commanded–indirectly led to Napa's reinvention of itself as a satellite of Bordeaux, catering to marketing for both affluent lifestyles and elitist wine for the wealthy. (Proximity to wealthy San Francisco and Silicon Valley helped).

It also affected everything in California from the fine wine market–including our internationally celebrated Ridge Vineyard–to the cheapest wine grape vineyards. A fifth of California's vineyards are planted to Cabernet. So the book is highly relevant to our local scene. 

Napa could not command the tasting fees and wine prices it currently does were it not for the Classy Gents and their Bordeaux precedent. 

In 2022, Napa's wine growers produced close to a billion dollars worth of grapes, with Cabernet leading in price per ton at $8,819. French wine professors leading Napa tours for their business school students are astounded by Harlan's Promontory prices–$1,200 for a 2018.

And today you can find Napa wines for sale–Inglenook, Favia, Promontory–at the prestigious La Place de Bordeaux alongside LaTour, et al. 

An Intimate Peek

But enough about class and economics. Let's get to the story and the deliciously rendered hedonism, please.

The volume is a hefty, condensed brick of a book (2.4 pounds, 383 pages) featuring some of wine's most eminent personalities–Hugh Johnson, the notorious historian John Plumb, Michael Broadbent, Simon Berry (yes, of THE Berry Brothers), and Steven Spurrier (of the Tasting of Paris fame, the 1976 contest that brought Napa wines to the world stage). It is rich in content. 

Author and historian Neil McKendrick, once a student of Plumb's, is the club member who took notes for the club which now form the basic backbone of this book–that historical archive will please Bordeaux collectors–along with biosketches of the more illustrious and newsworthy members. Menus of their meals are included along with photos that make their world come to life. 

McKendrick is a good writer, starting off the chapter of the history of the club with, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a wine in possession of a good reputation must be in need of a club." 

Furthermore he writes, wine collectors have wine cellars full of treasures to be shared. A club must be fun, too, he says.

He writes, "It greatly helps if they (the club members) are colorful, distinguished and interesting characters–and no one can doubt that the Bordeaux Club members were an arrestingly (in some cases alarmingly) colorful crew.They make for very good copy."

I agree, and thanks to McKendrick, the book is very good copy indeed. There are no technical notes on the wines, with the emphasis on a well rounded picture of the people, places and pleasures. 

In my mind, it seems likely that some U.K. production company might see this club as the perfect subject for a new Masterpiece TV series, don't you think? It's got all the right stuff.

Thanks to McKendrick, now almost 90, for a shining a light on the pleasures of wine among friends and for sharing it more broadly with us.