Cité du Vin — Attraction in Bordeaux

Yesterday was the second time I visited this place in a few years, and I left feeling similar as I did before...

First, good things: beautiful advanced exhibit design with clearly a lot of work and attention put behind them. We loved the animations of the making of wine, the historical sections, and the map explaining the Bordeaux wine regions. Even the more abstract "á table" exhibit had its charms.

Middle-of-the-road things: audio guide syncing was sometimes not the best

Less appealing things: the museum is not critical at all about any negative aspects of wine. This ranges from obvious things like alcoholism to more hidden things like wine's association with colonialism (the museum makes such a big deal about wine growing everywhere but glosses over how it got there, or the land destroyed for agriculture...), or underpaid farm labor for harvesting, or even the history of the slave trade in Bordeaux. To try to keep the image of wine as simply innovative and luxurious and nothing else gives an image of a lack of self-reflection and awareness of its effect in the world.

Also - one exhibit was nearly entirely a voice over talking over what were clearly AI generated images. Some of which bordered on grotesque (like a live deer head morphing into its own skull). It seemed a bit ridiculous that a place that has access to so much wine can't even hire someone to take artistic photos of the wine or the flavor components and instead has to resort to typing in prompts for images.

Anyways. The view from the top is nice. But I probably won't return here again. It's worth going once and seeing how you...

MUSEUM ON STEROIDS! Smell, touch, listen and drink, this is not a museum but an interactive experience.

The self guide audio tour gizmo each visitor gets wasn't very well explained to is, so a bit frustrating at first, but once you click that you need to tap your mobile looking thing onto the designated red dots of each exhibit you want info on, then the fun and fascination starts.

We are not museum fans and thought 30 mins for the wine tasting and 2 hours for the exhibits would be plenty, but it was not because the exhibits are a combination of innovative videography, interesting facts and quizzes, wrapped up in succinct anecdotal info that you gladly remember and want to share with friends.

We started with the wine tasting, which was not as good as the museum. Yes, you read right, free wine not as good as the exhibits!? Yep, that good, so give yourselves time.

The imagery was brilliant and trivia Re wine packaging and labelling super interesting stdting.

🗺️ MAP TIP: They have those free tear out city maps of Bordeaux at reception. Grab yourself one as I never saw them anywhere again, not even at the (terrible) tourist info office.

Gift 🎁/ WINE 🍷SHOP TIP: This museums gift shop is of course a wine shop. Get its sommelier to show you your country's best, consistently good, inexpensive wines, take a photo and buy it once you are home. If its good enough for the world's best wine museum, it's good...

Was kind of confused if worth visiting initially due to debatable reviews and recommendations from other Google local guides profiles.

Still confused if I can suggest it.

If you know nothing about the wine making then go for it. If you know pretty basics, still go, you will get some value. If you know more than a few basic concepts of wine making, avoid as you would be disappointed. Kids from 6-7 years old might enjoy this museum, so that’s another factor to consider. We got the opportunity to try two wines at the end as we were a couple. The wines we chose were slightly above average but that might be subjective to our tastes and experience. The view from the top was nice.

The entire museum exhibits are mostly interactive video content as others have described. Each visit opt was its own headphones to join the listening of the interactive video. Still the video was informative in a few cases. Mostly if you knew only the basics (prior to your visit). However, in other cases the content felt slightly repetitive.

Overall we easily spent 2 hours and we don’t regret visiting, however we still consider it on the pricey range. Should it be cheaper might had been better recommendation.

NOTE: there are free lockers for luggage and backpacks - it is a very convenient service if you visiting the museum or spent time nearby. Accessing the lockers does not require having necessarily...