Is claret the same as Bordeaux?
It may be relatively rare to see someone ordering a glass of ‘claret’ these days, but the term has for many centuries been linked with Bordeaux – particularly for British wine lovers.
Claret is mostly used as an unofficial way to describe Bordeaux red wines, although it’s a protected name under EU law and there is reference to it in Bordeaux’s appellation rules.
The UK government has recognised claret’s status as a registered ‘traditional wine term’ within the Bordeaux PDO, as an ‘expression used to designate a pale red wine’.
Is claret good wine?
This is an impossible question to generalise, given its use as an unofficial umbrella term. It is like asking if ‘Chardonnay is good?’ or ‘Is Spanish wine good?. It’s just too broad.
However, the late, great wine writer Steven Spurrier once suggested that claret can convey a certain reassurance to the buyer, as well as a stylistic hint.
‘What is claret?,’ asked the late Steven Spurrier in a 2007 article on the ‘claret lover’s guide to New World Cabernets.’
He continued: ‘The red wine from Bordeaux, of course, but for the claret lover it is much more than this: an address book of well-known names, whose faces (or châteaux) are immediately recognisable, whose background and character, changeable with the years, is well known and well defined, on whom one can rely.’
Spurrier wrote that elegance, ‘fragrance of bouquet’ and ‘lift’ were among the central tenets of a good claret.
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