Bordeaux’s Cité du Vin gets a new exhibition with ’toned-up’ content

fter seven years of loyal service and one month of building work, the permanent exhibition visit at the Cité du Vin in Bordeaux revealed its newly made over content on February 4. Eighty percent of the original content has been replaced and 50% of the scenography updated, and the changes are very tangible. The overriding aim of the make-over was to “to make the tour more accessible and more seamless for the public” explains Véronique Lemoine, the scientific manager of the Foundation for the culture and civilisations of wine. Admittedly, the original tour was far too rich for visitor needs: the first one provided 13 hours of videos and readings, while the second ones lasted about 90 minutes. In its new version, the tour is still rich – with 8 hours of content – but it has been toned-up both in form, with film extracts where wine is shown on screen replacing the short film featuring historical characters, and in content; the vineyard site table now only features 10 winegrowers, compared with 50 previously.

The update of the Cité du Vin's visit tour is part of the ‘Neo - Experience 2023’ plan, whose main features will be ‘Via Sensoria, an immersive tasting tour’ from 7 April to 5 November 2023 so that tastings of wines/non-alcoholic beverages can be offered on a seasonal basis.

After welcoming 391,000 visitors in 2022, the Cité du Vin has exceeded the 2 million visitor mark since it opened in spring 2016.