My brief for this travel guide was to find 'great wines off the beaten track', no easy task considering Bordeaux is the world's biggest fine wine region - Bordeaux has more vineyards than the whole of Germany. There are 100 colour photographs and 12 maps, an overview of the wines of the entire region, plus suggested wine tours, traveller's tips (speaking French, visiting a château, selecting restaurants) and recommended producers.
It helped that I had lived and worked in Bordeaux's unfancied Entre Deux Mers region on and off for ten years after my first visit there in 1984 as a teenager.
The few dozen star châteaux of Pauillac, St-Julien, Margaux, St-Emilion and Pomerol are undeniably world-beaters wine-wise. However as Bordeaux's elite wines command stratospheric prices - and don't sell direct to members of the public anyway - I focussed on the best of Bordeaux's ten-thousand lesser-known wineries located in places like Entre-Deux-Mers, Bourg, Fronsac and the southern Graves. They are still capable of offering what Bordeaux does best: easily digestible, not-too-alcoholic reds and (mainly dry) whites. You just need to know where to look.
And if you get bored of wine, there are always the wide open spaces and beautiful light of Bordeaux's Atlantic coastline to enjoy.