How this site is made

What is here

Bordeaux Reviews covers the wines, estates, appellations and classifications of Bordeaux. Most of it is reference: the estate profiles, the classification and appellation pages, the study cards. The Case Files are argument: each takes 1 claim the region repeats about itself and sets it against the record. The tasting notes are mine, written from the glass. The news is other people’s reporting, summarized and linked to the outlet that published it.

Who is the authority on what

An estate is the authority on its own property: its owners, its vineyard, its grapes, its cellar. The appellation body, and behind it the INAO and the texts published in the Journal officiel, are the authority on the ground and the rules: where an appellation runs, what it allows, who is in a classification.

When an estate and an official body disagree about the estate, I print the estate’s figure. When an estate contradicts itself, or 2 official bodies disagree with each other, I print neither.

Everything else is a lead

Merchants, critics, magazines and wine websites are where much of the research starts. A figure from one of them is a lead to take to the estate or to the rules, not a source to print on its own. The press is cited for events: what an estate announced, and when.

Praise is attributed. Where a page calls something the oldest, the largest or the best, it says who said so.

Books

The older history comes from printed books. They are cited by author, title and year and are not linked, because most of them are not online. Where 2 books give different figures, I print 1 and name the book it came from.

What a page leaves out

If I cannot find a fact in a source I trust, the page does not mention it. An estate I cannot source properly has no profile yet, however well known it is. Prices are not published.

Dates and change

Owners, vineyards and ranks change. A profile gives the year an owner arrived and the vintages a rank covers, and each page carries the date it was last updated. The source links are checked again from time to time; when a page an estate published disappears, the claim it supported is sourced again or removed.

2 languages

Every page is published in English and in Brazilian Portuguese, and the 2 editions are written to say the same thing. In the estate profiles a check refuses any page whose figures differ between the 2. A news item may appear in English first, marked as Portuguese to follow.

How AI is used

AI tools help with research, drafting, translation and the daily news summaries. The rules on this page bind them as they bind me: every figure has to point to a source a reader can check, and I answer for everything published here.

Corrections

Write to antonio@bordeauxreviews.com. Profiles, classification pages and study cards are corrected in place, and their update date moves. A change of substance to a published Case File is listed, with its date, on the Corrections page.