Bordeaux 2016 Primeurs: Moulis & Listrac
I am ashamed to admit that I rarely stop in the Moulis or Listrac appellations during my time in Bordeaux. Making my way north towards appointments in St Estèphe, Pauillac or St Julien I am inclined to use the D1215, a more efficient if rather less scenic route than the D2, the famed Route des Châteaux. The road cuts right through these two appellations, and indeed passes through the town of Listrac-Médoc itself.
This means the visual images I associate most with this appellation are not great sweeping expanses of vineyard, nor the fine soils of gravelly clay and limestone, although such sights do indeed encircle the town. Instead I think first of the illuminated speed limit warning sign suspended above the tarmac at the periphery of the town, as the road transitions from rural racetrack to a town-centre street. And then there are the speed bumps dotted at intervals through the centre of the town, la limitation de vitesse clearly a concern for the town’s mairie.
And I think of the rather industrial frontage of the Cave Grand Listrac, which sits behind a row of parking bays at one side of the road, the exact raison d’être of which I have yet to determine (I mean the Cave Grand Listrac, I know what parking bays are for). It looks as though it might be a cooperative, perhaps serving the less famous châteaux within the appellation, somewhere to vinify their wines, perhaps paid for by donating some of their crop for the production of a cooperative blend. But this is entirely supposition on my part.
