Graves de Vayres

grahv duh VAIR

How to read this

Capitals mark the stressed syllable. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.

A Graves of its own, across the Garonne from the Graves: red and white from 2 communes in a bend of the Dordogne west of Libourne, a name its growers defended in court in 1928.

The place

Graves de Vayres is 2 communes, Arveyres and Vayres, on the left bank of the Dordogne just west of Libourne, on a plateau and on the river plains held inside a wide bend of the river. The name is the soil: beige, very sandy soils, and clay and gravel soils whose heavy load of stones and gravel is bound in ochre clay. The climate is oceanic. In 2010 the vineyard covered 500 hectares and made an average of 25,000 hectoliters of red and 8,000 of white, about two thirds of the white dry, from some 40 producers.

The rules

Red from Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère, Malbec, also called Cot, Merlot and Petit Verdot; white from Muscadelle, Sauvignon, Sauvignon Gris and Sémillon, with Merlot Blanc, an old local variety, as an accessory. At least 4,500 vines a hectare, in rows no more than 2.50 meters apart. The red asks 189 g/l of sugar for Merlot and 180 for the others, 10.5% of natural alcohol and 53 hectoliters a hectare with a ceiling of 65; it is raised until May 1 and sold from September 1 of the year after the harvest. A dry white asks 170 g/l, 10.5% and 55 hectoliters with a ceiling of 72; a white with more than 4 g/l of sugar asks 178 g/l, 11% and 50 hectoliters with a ceiling of 55. The cahier des charges in force, the appellation’s official rulebook, dates from the arrêté of November 26, 2025.

The names

No classification. The growers went to court to keep their name apart from the Graves of the left bank of the Garonne, and the judgment of February 11, 1928 confirmed it. The decree of July 31, 1937 made it an appellation. It sits inside the Entre-deux-Mers country, but it is an appellation of its own.

Colors: Red; white, dry or with sugar
Communes: Arveyres and Vayres
Vineyard: 500 hectares, some 40 producers; 25,000 hectoliters of red and 8,000 of white, in 2010
Soil: Beige, very sandy soils; clay and gravel bound in ochre clay
Grapes: Red: Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, Carmenère, Malbec, Merlot, Petit Verdot; white: Muscadelle, Sauvignon, Sauvignon Gris, Sémillon, with Merlot Blanc
Density: 4,500 vines a hectare at least
Yield: Red 53 hectoliters, ceiling 65; dry white 55, ceiling 72; other white 50, ceiling 55
Alcohol: Red 10.5%, dry white 10.5%, other white 11% natural at least
Release: Red from September 1 of the year after the harvest
Classified: No classification
AOC since: July 31, 1937; cahier of November 26, 2025

Sources: FGVB, cahier des charges Graves de Vayres, arrêté du 26 novembre 2025 · INAO, Graves de Vayres blanc

The stack

The same land in Graves de Vayres may also be labeled Bordeaux, Bordeaux Supérieur and Crémant de Bordeaux. A grower chooses which appellation to sell under, and the narrowest is almost always the dearest.

The appellations of Bordeaux are stacked, not laid side by side. The map draws the whole stack. Open the map

The pyramid of names shows what each step promises: vines a hectare, bottles, ripeness, day of sale, grapes. Climb from here

Terroir

Somebody once made a quartzite pebble into a chopping tool, and it came out of this terrace. Flint cores, blades and flakes have come from the same gravel. It is the Dordogne's old work: 87.4% of the delimited area lies on ice age river terraces, and the main one, a sheet of sand, gravel and pebbles 10 to 15 meters thick, spreads as a low platform on the river's left bank.

The maps disagree on what to call it. The Libourne sheet names it the high terrace, the Bordeaux sheet the middle one; both date it to the same ice age, and both give it to the Dordogne. Below it, along the river, the marsh soils (palus) are clay and silt, waterlogged for good and peaty in places.

Cut open southwest of Arveyres, the terrace shows clean, unreddened sand and gravel at its base, greenish-gray silty clay above, and a top strongly oxidized to red. In the terrace's red top lie many pebbles of metamorphic rock, whitish and partly turned to kaolin clay. In the red, old pebbles have turned to ghosts.

1,365 ha delimited

Slope wash and cover5.9%
River and estuary deposits of today1.8%
Ice age river terraces: sand, gravel, pebbles87.4%
Molasses: sands and clays of old rivers and lakes4.8%

Shares of the delimited area, measured on BRGM’s geological map, in families by the age and rock its legend prints, youngest first.

Half its delimited soil lies above 26 m, and 9 tenths lies between 10 and 37 m. 4.6% of it is steeper than 10%.

Measured section

The line runs 7.1 km, from 2 m to 35 m. Inside the delimited area it lies between 5 and 35 m.

Colors: Slope wash and coverRiver and estuary deposits of todayIce age river terraces: sand, gravel, pebblesMolasses: sands and clays of old rivers and lakes

Measured section: one elevation every 10 meters, north to south, along the whole of a 7.1 km line set across the appellation by a fixed rule, not chosen for the view (IGN, RGE ALTI 5 m, with LiDAR HD where the 5 m grid came from the old BD ALTI 25 m), with the geology at the surface (BRGM, BD Charm-50). Heights stretched 20 times. The layers below the surface are not drawn.

The units, as BRGM prints them

Code	Name and age, as printed	Share
Slope wash and cover		5.9%
CF	Formations superficielles	5.7%
	and 1 more unit under 1% each, 0.2% in all
River and estuary deposits of today		1.8%
Fy3-z	Alluvions subactuelles à actuelles indiféernéciées (sic), Pré-boréal à actuel	1.8%
Ice age river terraces: sand, gravel, pebbles		87.4%
Fxb3	Basses terrasses (RD Garonne) - Terrasse d'Izon (type 6), Saalien - "Riss"	16.4%
Fwb(D)	Moyennes terrasses - Terrasses du Malleret sup. indifférencié (type 3 à 5), Esltérien - "Mindel"	71.0%
Molasses: sands and clays of old rivers and lakes		4.8%
e7-g1-S	Molasse du Fronsadais sup. à facies sableux dominant, Priabonien sup. à Rupélien basal continental	1.4%
e6-7	Argiles à Paléotherium, Bartonien sup. à Priabonien inf. continental	2.7%
	and 2 more units under 1% each, 0.7% in all

Informative figures, computed from INAO’s digitized parcel delimitation of October 12, 2026 and BRGM’s harmonized geological map (BD Charm-50); heights from IGN’s RGE ALTI 5 m. The plans held at the town hall are the legal reference. The delimited area is always somewhat larger than what is planted.

Sources: BRGM, Notice explicative de la feuille Libourne à 1/50 000, 1995; BRGM, Notice explicative de la feuille Bordeaux à 1/50 000, 1977; INAO parcel delimitation (file of 2026-10-12) laid over BRGM BD Charm-50 Gironde, harmonized geological map.

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News from Graves de Vayres

Nov 6, 2026

Graves de Vayres marks a century of defending its identity

The Graves de Vayres appellation union will celebrate its 100th anniversary on Saturday, November 7, 2026, marking a century of efforts to defend the small Libournais terroir’s identity.

Graves de Vayres remains easily overlooked beside the better-known appellations of the Libournais. Its centenary puts the relationship between collective identity and market visibility back into focus.

Source: Sud Ouest Graves Graves de Vayres History and Archives The New Bordeaux