KUALA LUMPUR, Nov 15 — Think of fine wine, think of France. Think of French wine, and Bordeaux inevitably comes to mind. 

The wine capital of the world, Bordeaux produces over 700 million bottles of wine on average each year, including some of the most expensive in the world: the “first growth”, or premier cru red wines, like Château Lafite Rothschild, retail at around RM5,500 for recent vintages, while older, historic vintages can fetch tens of thousands at fine wine auctions.

But recent headlines paint a very different picture of Bordeaux. Demand has slowed: the Liv-ex Bordeaux 500, an index that tracks the prices of the region’s most prestigious wines, has lost nearly 20 per cent of its value in the last five years. 

This year, a climate crisis posed the biggest threat: wildfires that burned through the pine forests of the Gironde this summer came within 20 kilometres of some of Bordeaux’s oldest vineyards. 

The main winegrowing areas and the city were spared, but the fires were a reminder of how exposed the region has become.

To understand what is at stake, it helps to understand why Bordeaux became so prized in the first place.

“Obviously, it’s because the wines are good,” says Jean-Jacques Bonnie, 52, who co-manages Vignobles Malartic with his sister Véronique. The family company owns Château Malartic-Lagravière in Pessac-Léognan, just south of the city of Bordeaux. 

But Bonnie says history also did much of the work. The port city was under British control for close to three centuries, and its wines were traded across the empire. 

“The wines from Bordeaux were being shipped and traded all across the empire, all over the world, which grew Bordeaux’s reputation, in a time when there weren’t as many wine producers in the world as there are today.”

That headstart established Bordeaux’s fame, he says, and the estates have kept up the quality since. 

“Even today, Bordeaux is still — I don’t know if you call it a benchmark, but a reference point — for wine, in terms of quality and history.”

The second part of the answer is the land. Winemakers use the French word terroir for everything a place gives its grapes: soil, subsoil, slope and climate. 

Bordeaux’s Gironde estuary and rivers divide the region into a left bank and a right bank. Bonnie’s château is on the left, in Pessac-Léognan, part of the wider Graves area, which takes its name from the gravel in the soil.

“If we’re talking about the left bank, the composition is gravel and a layer of limestone underneath, and this particular composition compensates for extremes,” he says. 

“When there is too much water, the roots drown because they cannot breathe; the gravel provides good drainage; when it’s too dry, roots that reach the layer of limestone beneath benefit from the limestone acting as a sponge, bringing water from underground.”

This matters because of what a winemaker is trying to balance. A good red grape needs three things in proportion: sugar, which becomes alcohol; acidity, which keeps the wine fresh; and tannin, the compound in grape skins and seeds that makes red wine feel dry and grippy, much like strong black tea. 

When a vine is stressed, it shuts down to protect itself, and each time, Bonnie says, “it unevens the balance of sugar, acidity and tannins”. 

If the terroir helps the vine, “the ripening process will go more steadily, and the balance between these three major criteria of what we look for in a grape will be much more coherent”.

Climate helps too. Bordeaux is in the south of France, so summers are warm, but the Atlantic keeps the nights cool. The difference between day and night temperatures speeds up the ripening of tannin, which is usually the slowest of the three, and that “will help you get a balanced grape at the end”, Bonnie says.

The most commercially significant part of the equation is Bordeaux’s classification system, which formalises prestige by rewarding terroir. 

These official rankings of estates are the reason certain châteaux are so revered, and why the wines are priced the way they are. The best-known classification comes from 1855, when Napoleon III asked for a ranking of Bordeaux’s best wines for the Exposition Universelle in Paris. 

It covered only the Médoc for red wine and Sauternes, known for sweet white wine, and sorted the estates into five levels, with the first growths at the top. 

Graves, the birthplace of Bordeaux wine, where the Romans planted the first vines some 2,000 years ago, was left out, apart from one estate, Château Haut-Brion. 

It received its own ranking only in 1953, revised in 1959. That list names 13 reds and nine whites, and Malartic-Lagravière is one of only six estates classified for both.

The prestige and distinctiveness of the land is what brought Bonnie’s parents to Malartic-Lagravière in the late 1990s. “What my parents were looking for was terroir,” he says. “That’s something you cannot bring from somewhere else, or recreate.”

What they changed was the farming. Like much of French agriculture, many Bordeaux estates had turned to chemical fertilisers and herbicides (weedkillers) after the war to raise yields. 

In the top 30 to 40 centimetres of soil, Bonnie says, “it’s easy for the vine to be lazy”, and the roots never push through the gravel to reach the limestone. His parents removed the chemicals and returned to more traditional farming. The first vines reached the limestone after about 10 years; it took 20 years for the roots to get there across the whole vineyard.

This summer, the fires brought a different kind of test.

The second half of July was “tough”, Bonnie says. It was “a little scary”, but not because the flames were getting closer. 

“When you’re a vineyard, at some point the fire stops. Nothing left to burn.” The worry was the animals. Malartic keeps close to 40 sheep to maintain the green cover between the vines, along with geese, horses to plough the clay zones, goats, a donkey and a cow. 

“You can’t wait till the very last moment to evacuate when you hear that the fire has reached. We have to anticipate.” When the next village was evacuated, the estate had to find somewhere to put more than 50 animals. “So the biggest concern was the animals, in the end.”

Staff also began filling tanks with water ahead of the harvest in case firefighters needed it. “It was a tricky atmosphere,” Bonnie says.

There was also the question of smoke. Smoke can taint wine, giving it unwanted flavours, and the damage is not always visible at first. 

Grapes are most vulnerable when they change colour from green to red, Bonnie says. A molecule from the smoke gets into the skin and has no effect on the fruit, and cannot be detected by tasting it. 

“We’re not well-versed in detecting it; Australians will know better, and Napa to some extent, because they have more experience with fires.”

A lab can analyse the wine, he says, because the molecules only change during fermentation, developing aromas of cold ash. “Unless you like your wine to be barbecue sauce flavour, it’s not worth making.”

Bonnie says he was confident this year because the estate did not get much smoke. Taint requires “quite an intense exposure to smoke for quite some time”. It can happen quickly, he says, but depends on the intensity and density of the smoke. “It didn’t happen to us.”

Beyond the fires, the bigger worry is the heat.

“I’m concerned, definitely,” Bonnie says. The first vintage that really preoccupied him was 2017, when frost destroyed more than half the crop. Since then, he says, the climate of each vintage has swung between extremes: some wet and cold, others very hot and dry.

This year was the hottest on record, he says. France as a whole had its hottest summer since measurements began in 1900. 

During a severe heatwave in June, Bordeaux recorded its highest temperature in over a century of observations, and more days above 40°C in 2026 alone than in all the years from 1920 to 2025 combined. It was also very hot in 2022, Bonnie notes.

His main concerns were the whites and the Merlot. Merlot, one of Bordeaux’s two main red grapes alongside Cabernet Sauvignon, “tends to get a little fat when it’s too hot”, he says. 

When overripe, it turns “flabby”, a winemaker’s word for a wine that feels heavy and shapeless in the mouth because it has lost its acidity. Cabernet Sauvignon, by contrast, “loves heat; it’s very difficult to overripe a Cabernet”.

What eased his mind was 2022. “I saw the compensating effect of the terroir,” Bonnie says: the whites were brilliant, and the estate has “never made Merlot that good since we took over”. 

The gravel-and-limestone soil he described earlier, which cushions vines against extremes, appeared to be doing its job. He is more relaxed still after 2026, he says, because the vines reacted even better than in 2022. 

“It looks like it’s adapting,” he says, “but still, the stress is there because it’s changing so quickly. There are so many things we don’t know.”

Farmers are used to depending on forces they cannot control, he says. What is harder is not knowing where the change is heading, what its effects will be, or whether growers can adapt to it. 

Had someone asked him in 2015 whether he could make wine in a summer like 2026, he says, he would have said no, or that it would not have kept the personality of Malartic. “But that’s the magic of the terroir. It stands up to the test.”

Heat is not the only pressure. Drinkers in many markets are cutting back on alcohol and on wine. Bonnie says wines like his have felt it less, despite the Liv-ex numbers. 

“Everybody is trying to make sense of what they consume,” he says, and not only with drinks. In countries that have drunk wine for generations, he says, wine was part of the meal. 

A bottle of top Bordeaux is opened for a different reason. “It’s like going to a museum to see a painting; it’s to get an emotion. You don’t drink it just to drink without thinking.”

But Bonnie also thinks Bordeaux has become easier for newcomers. Twenty or 30 years ago, he says, grapes were often picked at the first sign of risk, even when not fully ripe, so the tannins were harsh and the wines needed years in a cellar to soften. 

“It was more of an old-guy kind of thing.” Today, he says, growers wait for ripeness and extract only what has ripened in that vintage, so a 2022 Malartic can be opened now. 

The wines are still rich in tannin, he says, but the tannins are silkier. “We’re not trying to do lighter wines, but more precise wines.” There was a time, he adds, when many producers wanted “super muscular wines; after one glass, you’re finished.”

Red makes up 85 per cent of what Malartic-Lagravière produces. “Most of our terroir is good terroir for reds,” Bonnie says. So asked which bottle he would hand to someone who has never tried Bordeaux, he picks the red, from a vintage that is neither too young nor too old: a 2019, which he calls “a classical vintage with a modern touch”. 

It has the finesse for drinkers who like a light touch, he says, with the intensity of flavour and aroma expected of Bordeaux. “Tannin-loaded wines, that’s our DNA, but those tannins are silky and with good ripeness.”

Like many top châteaux, Malartic also makes a second wine alongside its flagship, known as the grand vin. Le Comte de Malartic, Bonnie says, comes largely from young vines whose roots are still working their way down to the limestone. 

The grapes lack some detail and do not ripen as far, so they are picked about 10 days earlier than a mature vineyard’s would be. The result is “very friendly, very open and approachable”, he says, but not long-lasting or intense: “a very nice first step into wine, into quality wine”.

The blends differ too, and change from year to year. The grand vin is led by Cabernet Sauvignon, followed by Merlot, with smaller amounts of other grapes such as Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. 

Le Comte de Malartic reverses the order: it is led by Merlot, followed by Cabernet Sauvignon, with smaller amounts of other grapes.

For a red wine lover, he would pour the white instead, and expects it to surprise. White is the smaller part of production, grown on small patches of clay where Sauvignon Blanc does well, and quality white Bordeaux is made in small quantities, he says; many people do not know it exists. 

Bonnie puts the blend at roughly 75 per cent Sauvignon Blanc and 25 per cent Sémillon, a softer, rounder white grape, with the proportions changing each year. 

He says the estate is not chasing the sharp, grassy character Sauvignon Blanc is known for. The grape is “a tool”. On that clay, it gives “white pear, white peaches, white flowers, and density of taste with nice freshness and acidity”. 

“You don’t feel the acidity, but you salivate.” That makes it a match for cheese, fatty dishes and spice, he says, whereas the tannins in red wine tend to clash with spice.

It is also served cold, which suits warm climates such as Malaysia’s. Bonnie says even the reds are now silky enough to drink cooler. “When the tannins are silky, you can drink it cold, and it won’t be harsh.” He would serve them closer to 15°C than 18°C.

Bordeaux’s reputation, he says, has long put people off. “People think that to drink Bordeaux, I need to study and have all this knowledge; if not, I don’t dare. It’s the reverse.” 

The grand crus, the top-ranked estates, are made with so much precision, from the best terroir, that “it’s hard to make a mistake; you can do whatever you want with it, even have it with Coke — no, I’m kidding.” 

“When you have a so-so wine, that’s when you need to think about all those things, have that kind of knowledge.”

And when to open a bottle? A young wine can be enjoyed now, he says; the best will last 40 years. “Perfect for you or me won’t be at the same time because we don’t have the same days and the same feelings, and that’s what’s really nice with Bordeaux.” His own plan? “I would buy a case of 12,” he says, laughing.

He is wary of the recent doom-laden version of the Bordeaux story. Coverage tends to focus on the most dramatic angle, he says, which is not quite exaggeration, but leaves out the rest. 

“There are real issues, no doubt, but it’s not happening like that.” Had he known 10 years ago what the weather would be like, he says, he would have predicted that the estate would close, “and maybe start opening padel courts”. 

Growers, he adds, are closer to the change than outsiders, but are also watching it unfold like the rest of us.

“What it’s going to be like tomorrow, I have no clue,” Bonnie says. “The only thing that I know is that I have a good teammate in the terroir, and my team has intuition on how to work with it, which really helps.”

For enquiries about Château Malartic-Lagravière’s wines, including Le Comte de Malartic, visit: fws.com.my or WhatsApp 019-332 6630

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