Bordeaux’s rebrand triggers backlash from English wine trade

The word “claret” has its roots in the Middle Ages, when the term “clairet”, meaning pale or clear, was used by the Bordelais, an apt description for the local wines of the time which were so light in colour as to be more deep pink than red. Many years later, the English took the word and made it their own. By the beginning of the 18th century, according to the Oxford Companion to Wine, the term “New French Clarets” was being used in Britain to refer to a very different style of Bordeaux red: wines that were richer, darker, barrel-aged and more tannic.

For the last 300 years, this has been the style of wine that most British people hearing the word “claret” would expect to be poured. The word has a whiff of the gentleman’s club. It conjures an expectation of a red punctuated with a prickle of tannin and a dry, savoury, occasionally mildly austere, flavour. Instead, anyone buying a wine labelled claret with a vintage of 2025 or later will find something rather different: a “smashable” red, in the Gen Z argot, often drunk chilled.

Tanner is not impressed. “I’m not sure that any of our customers will readily take to more carbonic maceration [a wine-making technique used in Beaujolais], bubblegum flavours and added sugar,” he says. “Put claret in the fridge? I think we’re going to struggle to get them to take it off the Aga!”

Not everyone agrees. “There is strong demand from our customers for a more accessible style of claret,” says Klarissa Stawarz, Bordeaux wine buyer at Waitrose, “which is why we have intentionally moved towards a lighter, more fruit-forward style with our Blueprint Claret.” Stawarz was not able to say, however, whether the IPT level (Total Polyphenol Index, the technical name given to the measurement of tannins in wine) of Blueprint Claret was low enough to qualify for the new claret.

“It will be murky for customers,” says Nicola Arcedeckne-Butler of Private Cellar, whose House Claret is made for them by Château Argadens. Arcedeckne-Butler admits she “hadn’t thought about the knock-on effect of the new claret designation on our House Claret” until The Telegraph asked but says: “We will need to redesign our label. We would not redesign the blend.”