Is vinho bordô the same as Bordeaux?

A color before it was a wine

The confusion starts with the word. In Portuguese bordô is the color of red wine, between dark red and purple, and it comes from the French bordeaux. The grape of southern Brazil carries the same word. In French, bordeaux is also the name of a city and its region.

So vinho bordô can mean 2 different things in Brazilian conversation: a wine made from the Bordô grape, or a wine the color of bordô. Neither means wine from Bordeaux.

An American grape with 3 Brazilian names

Bordô is an American grape. It was selected in Ohio by Henry Ives from a seedbed established in 1840, and it is a labrusca-type grape, of the kind Brazilian law calls American grapes. In the United States it is Ives, or Ives Seedling. In Brazil the name changes from state to state: Bordô in Rio Grande do Sul and Santa Catarina, Terci in Paraná, Folha de Figo in Minas Gerais.

It reached Brazil in 1904, from Portugal, and spread first through Rio Grande do Sul, then Santa Catarina, Paraná, and Minas Gerais. It is very hardy, resistant to fungal disease, and usually planted on its own roots, without a rootstock. What sets it apart is color. The grape is rich in pigment and gives wine and juice so dark that it is blended into Isabel and Concord wine and juice to deepen their color. It is also eaten as a table grape and pressed for homemade juice.

The law keeps it out of vinho fino

Brazil’s wine law, Law 7,678 of 1988 as amended by Law 10,970 of 2004, sorts wine by the grape. A vinho fino is made only from Vitis vinifera varieties. A vinho de mesa, table wine, may be made from vinifera or from American and hybrid varieties. Still (nonsparkling) Bordô wine falls into the second category: a table wine of American grapes, between 8.6% and 14% alcohol. No Bordô wine may be called vinho fino, however well it is made.

The same law says when a grape may be named on the label: only when the bottled wine contains at least 75% of that variety. A label that says Bordô is naming the grape, not a place.

Table wine is not a niche in Brazil. In Rio Grande do Sul in 2022, table wine production reached 195 million liters, against 47.5 million of vinho fino: 4 liters for every one.

Bordeaux is a place with a rulebook

The Bordeaux appellation, recognized by a decree of November 14, 1936, covers 494 of the 535 communes of the Gironde, in southwest France. Its cahier des charges (the appellation’s official rulebook) lists 6 principal red grapes (Cabernet Sauvignon (opens in a new tab), Cabernet Franc (opens in a new tab), Merlot (opens in a new tab), Malbec (opens in a new tab), Carmenère (opens in a new tab), and Petit Verdot (opens in a new tab)) and admits a few more on trial. No labrusca grape is on the list.

None of this is a judgment of quality. Vinho bordô has its own drinkers and more than 100 years of history in Brazil. Its name came from a color, and the color came from Bordeaux. Nothing else did.