Two things surprised me about Bordeaux. The first was the breathtaking beauty of the place. The second was the warmth of the welcome from the Bordelaises. They seemed less prone to that haughty froideur that can sometimes greet you elsewhere in France. “Perhaps it’s the wine”, I thought, as I drooled over a city centre bar’s list full of world famous chateaux names.

Wine, unsurprisingly, is abundant. In 1308, for instance, the annual export to England was 900,000 hectolitres. Today the region produces 6,000,000 hectolitres of wine and in the department of the Gironde one in six people earns their living from the wine trade with more than 11,000 estates, 400 shippers and 130 brokers.