Guide
What is a second wine in Bordeaux?
Not a lesser appellation, not a cheap copy: a decision made vat by vat.
The short answer
A second wine is a selection, not a different place. It comes from the same estate, usually under the same appellation as the grand vin (the estate’s top wine), and is made from the lots left out of it. No law defines it. The estate does.
The same soil, a different decision
The grand vin is not a plot. It is a choice made after the harvest, vat by vat, and everything the estate declines goes somewhere. Most of it goes to the second wine.
The second wine is the second selection, not the last. What is left after it goes to a third wine, where the house makes one (Latour (opens in a new tab) makes Le
It carries the same appellation because it comes from the same legally mapped vineyard.
The rank does not travel with it. A second wine never carries "Grand Cru Classé" or the 1855 growth, which belong to the château and its grand vin.
The lots that fall into it are usually one of 4 things. Three are young vines not yet making the first wine, plots the estate rates below its best soil, and a vat that is good but does not fit the blend. The fourth is press wine (squeezed from the skins after fermentation) that the estate leaves out.
Older than the brand names
In 1845 William Franck, a Bordeaux broker, recorded that Cantemerle (opens in a new tab) made 120 to 130 tonneaux of wine a year, not counting 10 tonneaux of second wine sold on the spot for local drinking. A tonneau is 900 liters, so that second wine came to some 12,000 bottles a year, while the grand vin sailed for Holland.
The names came later.
What the name promises
Nothing, legally. The second wine has no definition in French or European law. It is a brand the estate owns, and the only rules it answers to are those of its appellation.
An estate may create one, rename it, or stop making it.
The cheapest way to taste an estate’s hand
A second wine is the cheapest way to taste an estate’s hand: the same cellar, the same people, the same vintage, with the best lots taken out. What it teaches is the house, one selection down.
It is not a discount version of the grand vin. The usual argument is that estates which raised the share of the harvest going into the second wine raised the quality of both. By the same argument, an estate that became stricter about the first wine made a second wine that carries more of the estate than it used to.
Names that only look like second wines
Some names that look like second wines are not. An estate may make a wine from other vines, in another appellation, under a name built from its own. Le Blanc de Duhart-Milon (opens in a new tab) is a Bordeaux Blanc, not a
The label says which. The appellation on it settles the question every time.
Where to go next
Sources: Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2019/33 of 17 October 2018 ·