Bordeaux-Undiscovered offers wine lovers in the UK the chance to buy wine at prices even we can’t believe! Enjoy some great value, high quality wines from Bordeaux at our online wine shop.
Bordeaux-Undiscovered specialises in hunting down fine wine direct from Bordeaux which we deliver to your door here in the UK. Our online wine shop supplies wines at wholesale prices - many of our wines are exclusive to us and all are traditionally made by skilled, small châteaux.
We offer FREE DELIVERY and a guarantee that if you find any of our wines
cheaper any where in the UK we will refund you your money!
You can mix and match your bottles of wine in each case – choose from
velvety Bordeaux red wines with aromas of blackberries and vanilla:
luscious fruit driven clairet and rosé, bright, crisp, white wine
crammed with fruits and fragrance, superb Champagne, sparkling wine from
Alsace and dessert wine from Sauternes.
Or you can Ask Nick to choose for you from our Bordeaux wines to suit your menus!
Clairet is not a rosé. It is a very different creature indeed and has its own AOC: Bordeaux Clairet to regulate its production.
The grape varieties used in Bordeaux Clairet are the same as those in Red Bordeaux: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot and Malbec. Bordeaux Clairet is darker than Bordeaux Rosé and has less tannins, has more fruit, power and structure. It's maceration (time spent on the grapes) can be up to 2 days and beyond - compared to the 4 or 5 hours that a Rosé spends.
They have great aromatic power and the bouquet is of ripe strawberries, blackberries and blackcurrants. Depending on the style of the wine they can also have the zest of pomegranate, cranberry or raspberry – even plum. The scents can be floral and are likened to peonies or roses. In the mouth they are voluptuous, velvety, rich, round, smooth and silky and the colours are luminous like jewels. The word Clairet is the French for clear and this is where our word Claret comes from. Originally all clarets were clairets and the English adored them. Our love affair with clairet stems from Eleanor of Aquitaine's marriage to Henry Plantagenet of England in the 13th century. Eleanor brought with her a taste for these wines and before long galleons were shipping barrels of wine to and fro the Channel. In fact there was so much wine shipped that the weight of a ships cargo became measured by the number of wine barrels (tonneaux) it could hold - giving rise to our word “ton”.
Wine making techniques were fairly rudimentary in those days and wines were made quickly to avoid spoiling. As soon as the wine was fermented, it was run off into barrels, so the grape skins (which contain the colour and tannins) were left only a short time in contact with the juice. These wines didn't last long, and were usually drunk very quickly.
In the 17th century, after the Aquitaine returned to French ownership, the Dutch became the main importers of Bordeaux wines. The Dutch brought improvements to the wine making techniques of the region which made longer fermentation and ageing possible. They were therefore able to produce the "black" (or darkly coloured) red wines that better suited their palates and so claret became the dark red that we recognise today.
