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Claret: The British and French Story of Red Bordeaux

The ornate château of Cos d’Estournel in the Médoc, Bordeaux — A grand Médoc château. For eight centuries the red wines of Bordeaux have flowed to Britain under the name “claret.” Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

By the This Day in Wine History Editorial Team✓ Researched, fact-checked & verifiedAugust 20269 min read

Walk into a British wine merchant and ask for “claret,” and you will be handed red Bordeaux — even though there is no claret grape, no claret appellation, and no French wine called claret at all. The word is a peculiarly British possession, an 850-year-old souvenir of the centuries when Bordeaux was not French territory but English¹.

Behind that one small word lies a story of a royal marriage, three hundred years of English rule, a war that ended it, and a national thirst that simply refused to die.

Quick facts

Claret is the traditional British name for red Bordeaux wine — there is no claret grape.
The word comes from the Old French clairet, a pale, light-red wine.
A 1152 royal marriage made Bordeaux part of the English crown for ~300 years.
English rule ended at the Battle of Castillon in 1453 — but the taste for claret never did.

1152

Bordeaux becomes English

1453

Castillon returns it to France

850 yrs

Britain has drunk “claret”

A word for a colour

“Claret” comes from the Old French clairet, itself from the Latin clarus, meaning “clear” or “light”³. It originally described exactly that: a pale, light red wine — almost what we would now call a rosé — pressed quickly from red grapes with only brief contact with the skins².

Medieval Bordeaux clairet was nothing like the deep, tannic reds the region makes today. It was pale, sharp and did not keep past the following summer — but it was cheap and abundant, and that was more than enough to change history⁸.

The marriage that made Bordeaux English

Tomb effigies of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II at Fontevraud Abbey — The tomb effigies of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II. Their 1152 marriage handed Bordeaux to the English crown for three centuries. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

The turning point was a wedding. In 1152, Eleanor of Aquitaine — heiress to a vast dukedom in south-western France that included Bordeaux, and one of the most formidable figures of the Middle Ages — married Henry Plantagenet, who two years later became King Henry II of England⁴. At a stroke, Bordeaux and its vineyards became part of the English crown’s lands⁷.

For the next three centuries, Bordeaux was in effect an English city, and its wine flowed to England not as a foreign import but as produce of the realm. Every autumn a great “vintage fleet” of hundreds of ships sailed for the Gironde and came back laden with the new claret — one of the largest and most reliable trades in medieval Europe¹.

1453: the wine runs dry

Bordeaux’s very prosperity made it a prize worth fighting for. The Hundred Years’ War (1337–1453) drew France and England into a long struggle for the south-west, and it ended in 1453 with a decisive French victory at the Battle of Castillon, just east of Bordeaux⁵. Aquitaine returned to France, and three centuries of English rule were over⁶.

Yet the English taste for claret did not die with English rule. The wine had become a national habit, and English — and later British — merchants simply kept buying it, now as a foreign import, often in the very teeth of the wars and punitive tariffs that followed⁶.

Claret ever after

The word endured for centuries more. Through Georgian and Victorian Britain, “claret” remained the affectionate British name for red Bordeaux¹. It runs like a red thread through the whole later story of the region — through Thomas Jefferson’s ranking of the first growths, the famous 1855 classification, and the Irish families who came to run so many Bordeaux estates. One small English word still carries eight centuries of shared history in a single glass².

Frequently asked questions

What is claret?

Claret is the traditional British name for red Bordeaux wine. There is no grape or appellation called claret; the word is simply the English term for the red wines of Bordeaux, dating back to the Middle Ages.

Where does the word “claret” come from?

From the Old French clairet, meaning a pale, light red wine, which in turn comes from the Latin clarus, “clear” or “light.” Medieval Bordeaux red was much paler than today’s wines.

Why was Bordeaux English?

In 1152 Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose lands included Bordeaux, married the future Henry II of England. Bordeaux and its vineyards became part of the English crown’s territory for about three centuries.

When did Bordeaux return to France?

In 1453, when the Hundred Years’ War ended with a French victory at the Battle of Castillon. Aquitaine returned to French control, though the English taste for claret continued.

Is claret the same as Bordeaux?

Effectively, yes. “Claret” is the British word for the red wines of Bordeaux. The term is used mainly in Britain and Ireland and carries the long history of the Anglo-French wine trade.

More from this day in wine history

See everything else that happened on May 6 — who was born, what was bottled, and which laws were signed.

Explore May 6 →

References

VinePair — Without Claret We Wouldn’t Have Cult Bordeaux Châteaux. vinepair.com ↩
Decanter — What is claret wine? www.decanter.com ↩
Wine Spectator — Why are Bordeaux wines called “claret”? www.winespectator.com ↩
Encyclopædia Britannica — Eleanor of Aquitaine. www.britannica.com ↩
Encyclopædia Britannica — Hundred Years’ War. www.britannica.com ↩
The Manual — Claret wine: a guide. www.themanual.com ↩
Encyclopædia Britannica — Henry II (king of England). www.britannica.com ↩
WineWiki (Seth) — Bordeaux Clairet AOC. www.winewithseth.com ↩