Like a Fine Wine, Bordeaux Gets Better With Age : France’s sophisticated southwestern metropolis has a joie de vivre that extends beyond vineyards.

Bordeaux is wine--grand, tannic red capable of long life and alive with vivid flavor; crisp, smoky white, simultaneously rich and dry; opulent dessert wine the color of amber, as sweet as honey and as fine as silk . . . .

But Bordeaux is also a city, and a wonderful one at that--a sophisticated, wealthy metropolis, in which contemporary fashion, art and design play animatedly against a backdrop of exquisite 18th-Century buildings, bright boulevards and charming medieval back streets. Bordeaux is also today, as the French would say, une ville qui bouge --a city on the move.

Wine, or more specifically the wine trade, animates much of the city’s activity, of course, keeping Bordeaux wealthy and insuring its continued prominence on the world stage. But other factors--its proximity to Spain (the “happening” European nation of the early 1990s), its long tradition of gastronomy, its avid civic sponsorship of daring architecture--imbue it with remarkable energy and make it not just an interesting but an exciting place to visit.

Bordeaux is the second-largest city in France in area and the fourth-largest in population. Located on the Garonne River, near its confluence with the Dordogne, not far from the Atlantic coast (and about 120 miles north of the Spanish border), it was built on or near the site of a settlement established in the 3rd Century BC by Celtic tribes. One of Julius Caesar’s lieutenants captured it for the Romans in 56 BC and built it into a fortified town, which became known as Burdigala, from which the city’s modern name derives. Two of modern Bordeaux’s main streets, the Rue Sainte-Catherine (now a sort of elongated shopping mall) and the Cours de l’Intendance, were first laid out in this era.

Bordeaux’s later history is surprisingly English. It was here in 1137 that the future King Louis VII married Eleanor of Aquitaine, whose considerable dowry included the entire Aquitaine region--which is to say most of southwestern France. After a stormy 15-year marriage, their union was annulled and Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet--who almost immediately inherited the English crown to become Henry II of England. For the next 300 years, until 1453, England and France disputed the ownership of Bordeaux and the surrounding region--and the Aquitaine remained, in effect, English.

During this period, the English developed a taste for the wines of the region, and established a thriving wine trade that built Bordeaux into a major port. The English involvement in Bordeaux winemaking explains why so many famous wine estates today bear English or Irish names in whole or in part--Palmer, Talbot, Leoville-Barton and Langoa-Barton, Cantenac-Brown, Phelan-Segur, even the famed Haut-Brion, which is French for O’Brien.

As a matter of fact, though, only a handful of wine-producing chateaux are located within the Bordeaux city limits. The rest surround Bordeaux, on both sides of the Garonne and the Dordogne--most notably in the Medoc to the north of the city (home of such blue-chip estates as Lafite, Mouton and Latour), Graves and Sauternes to the south and Pomerol and St-Emilion to the east. All these regions are within easy driving distance of the city, and hotel concierges can arrange vineyard tours--though Bordeaux chateaux seldom have fancy visitors’ centers of the California wine-country sort, and they won’t necessarily offer free samples.

Two new facilities, both in the Medoc, that are more accommodating than most, though, are the chai (above-ground wine cellar) with visitors’ center and museum attached at Chateau Pichon-Baron, and the gift shop and restaurant behind the 16th-Century Chateau Prieure-Lichine. Also in the Medoc is the Chateau Cordeillan-Bages, a luxurious small hotel with restaurant and wine-tasting facilities next door to (and partially owned by) Chateau Lynch-Bages.

Bordeaux itself is notable for both its beautiful, almost stately business quarter--with its monuments, parks and long vistas, it almost suggests a Gallic Washington, D.C.--and its well-preserved old town. In spirit, it seems to blend the orderly design and classic architecture of northern France with the informality and verve of the south, rather as if a portion of Paris had been transplanted into the midst of Toulouse or Montpellier.

The city’s more casual charms are most apparent in the old part of the city, with its warren-like tangle of streets, opening occasionally onto attractive squares scattered with cafe tables and ringed with handsome old buildings of glowing sandy-blond stone. The more serious portion of downtown Bordeaux, to the north and west, has some charming old streets too--but its best features, besides some spectacular buildings (the Grand Theatre and the Eglise Notre-Dame, to name but two) are its tree-lined thoroughfares and vast public spaces. One such space, the Esplanade des Quinconces, is said to be the largest place in France, covering some 140,000 square yards (compared with a mere 90,000 for the Place de la Concorde in Paris).

Bordeaux Mayor Jacques Chaban-Delmas--who has held office since 1947!--has said that his goal is to turn Bordeaux into a major European, as opposed to merely French, capital. Indeed, the recent extension here of the TGV Atlantique super-train line puts the city within easy reach of Paris (the trip now takes less than three hours), and thus of the world beyond. At the same time, Bordeaux, which has traditionally had close cultural and business relations with its Spanish neighbor, has begun to cast itself as Europe’s “gateway to Spain,” in both a cultural and an economic sense, in obvious anticipation of the unification of Europe in 1992.

Chaban-Delmas has also encouraged and supported a number of so-called grands projets that are redrawing the city’s profile--and that, when completed, will give visitors to Bordeaux a good many new things to see and do. The most important (and expensive) of these by far is the impending revitalization of the moribund industrial suburb of La Bastide, on the right bank of the Garonne across from Bordeaux proper--which is being supervised by controversial Barcelona architect Ricardo Bofill.

A major project which is pretty much completed is the Cite Mondiale du Vin et des Spiriteux or International Wine and Spirits Center, in the city’s Chartrons quarter, the center of the wholesale wine trade since the 15th Century. It is partially open to the public, with conducted tours of the facility (some in English) and a rather curious museum dedicated to European gastronomic and oenological confreries or brotherhoods. These are organizations of men (mostly) who dress up in medieval-looking robes who meet for long banquets and give each other medals and certificates attesting to their gustatory seriousness.

On a rather higher cultural plane, Bordeaux is also rapidly establishing itself as an important art capital. Inspired perhaps by Barcelona, where public art has lately become a mania, Bordeaux now earmarks an astonishing 20% of the city’s annual budget for cultural projects and support of the arts. One of the major local banks, the Credit Municipal de Bordeaux, even has a special low-interest loan program to help individuals purchase works of art from local galleries. Thus the Bordeaux gallery scene is thriving, and such art dealerships as the Galerie Zographia, the Galerie Jean-Francois Dumont, and Jean-Christophe Aguas’ two Ek’ymose galleries show up-to-the-minute work by a wide range of contemporary European and American artists, famous and otherwise. The Galerie BDX, meanwhile, specializes in furniture and objects by contemporary architects and designers.

More than for its galleries, though, Bordeaux is known in the art world today for its remarkable CAPCMusee d’Art Contemporain de Bordeaux (the “CAPC,” which the museum likes to append to the word musee , stands for Centre d’Art Plastique Contemporain). Opened originally in 1979 in the Entrepot Laine, a 19th-Century warehouse once devoted to the colonial spice trade, the museum was substantially expanded and redesigned, with “interior architecture” supplied by the trendy French designer Andree Putman.

The museum’s permanent collection includes works by a number of avant-garde artists, by no means all of them French--Christian Boltanski and Daniel Buren, yes, but also Gilbert & George, Jeff Koons, Richard Serra, Sol LeWitt, Mario Merz and many others.

Sharing space with the museum in the Entrepot Laine is the Arc en Reve Centre d’Architecture, both a gallery and an architectural study center. Still another attraction is the museum’s rooftop cafe, with Putman chairs and frescoes by Richard Long. The food (terrine of pike with fennel, savory pastry filled with tarragon-scented lamb, bitter chocolate cake, etc.) is substantially above average for a museum restaurant.

Another noteworthy museum in Bordeaux is the Musee d’Aquitaine, dedicated to the history of the region from prehistoric times through the 18th Century. A new section of the museum, almost doubling it in size, opened last year, and many treasures formerly in storage are now beautifully displayed--among them a 20,000-year-old bas-relief Venus from the Dordogne and a magnificent 2nd-Century bronze of Hercules.

A cultural monument of a different sort is the Virgin Megastore, recently opened behind a classic Louis XV facade on the Place Gambetta. Though quieter and somehow more elegant than its counterparts in London and Paris, this gigantic emporium of books, recordings and miscellaneous pop-cultural objects is no less well stocked. It is also very popular with the local citizenry for its skylit top-floor cafe, with furnishings by Andree Putman and reasonably priced food (tuna carpaccio, stuffed chicken leg, creme brulee ) supervised by Dominique Nahmias, late of the acclaimed L’Olympe in Paris.

Another new temple of consumerism in Bordeaux is the Galerie des Grands-Hommes, on the site of the old Grands-Hommes market in the middle of town. This multilevel, glass-domed retail complex, located in the midst of what was already a chic shopping district (its neighbors include St. Laurent, Kenzo, Kookai, Tartine et Chocolat, Descamps, Habitat and Burberry), houses a nice mix of big names (Cardin, Soleiado) and local businesses. What really sets it apart from other complexes of this kind, though, is the fact that--only in France!--the entire basement of this atrium-style structure is devoted to gastronomy. Not only are there several take-out food stands: There are also several fruit and vegetable sellers, a fishmonger, a charcuterie and two cheese shops--all adding a certain, well, atmosphere to the shopping court overhead.

And on the subject of gastronomy, Bordeaux has long been known for its good restaurants--among them the venerable Le Chapon Fin (now in the hands of Catalan-born Francis Garcia), Michel Gautier’s innovative Le Rouzic, and Jean Ramet, owned by the estimable chef of the same name. Newer gastronomic stars, all opened within the past two or three years, include Le Pavillon des Boulevards, Les Plaisirs d’Ausone and Didier Gelineau.

For more modest fare, though, the hot restaurants right now include: Le Nouveau Saucier, hidden away on a small street near the Palais de Justice, which serves warm lobster salad with balsamic vinegar, filet of sole with shallot butter and other simple but savory dishes on bistro crockery with paper napkins on the side. Chez Joel D., the city’s tres a la mode oyster bar (which also serves top-notch foie gras ). The Restaurant/Salon de The du Musee des Arts Decoratifs, adjacent to the pleasant museum of the same name and serving light food on the order of anchovy and tomato salad, salmon with sorrel sauce, and homemade fruit tarts (the patronne is Maite Garcia, sister of Francis, and it is said that her food is actually cooked in his kitchen at Le Chapon Fin). Le Rodes, hardly new (it opened in 1907), but under new ownership and currently considered very hip for its lively bar, its retro music--Piaf, Trenet, Sinatra--and its old-style French market food--onion soup gratinee , mussels and oysters, entrecote and the like--served seven days a week from 9 p.m. to 7 a.m.!

An older place, the always-popular La Tupina, was remodeled a couple of years ago in the style of a spare but welcoming farmhouse kitchen, and the menu is now determinedly rustic and (as the restaurant’s motto has it) authentiquement sud-ouest (authentically Southwest)--fried duck skin salad, grilled shad, salt cod stewed with white beans, grilled lamb, ice cream with pruneaux , etc. There are also excellent (need I say local?) wines at fair prices, listed in purple ink in a dilapidated old accounts book.

But the most talked-about restaurant in the Bordeaux region right now, as much for its architecture as its food, is Jean-Marie Amat’s Saint James, across the river from the city in the community of Bouliac. Everybody talks about the high-low minimalism of avant-garde French architect Jean Nouvel’s tobacco-hangar-inspired design for the restaurant and its adjoining hotel, Les Jardins de Hauterive. What is perhaps not as well known, though, is that the place is extremely discreet, showing only the ancient stone of the original Saint James building to the street; you’ll drive right past it if you’re looking for some Nouvelish eyesore. Though the Guide Michelin demoted him from two stars to one this year, Amat’s cooking is excellent--both unpretentious and extremely satisfying. A typical meal here might include local eels sauteed with bacon and tiny onions, sweet and tender chops of Pauillac lamb, and a souffle based on Marie Brizard anisette liqueur, a prominent local product.

The dining room offers a panoramic view of Bordeaux, incidentally, across the river in the distance. After a good meal here, washed down by a bottle of, say, 1979 Domaine de la Gaffliere, you might almost think you can see the city changing before your very eyes--and quite possibly you can.

GUIDEBOOK

Uncorking Bordeaux

Getting there: Air France has daily nonstop flights between Los Angeles and Paris, United Airlines three-times-weekly nonstops and AOM French Airlines one weekly nonstop. There are about a dozen daily flights from Paris to Bordeaux, from both Orly and Charles de Gaulle airports. The TGV, France’s super-fast train, makes the Paris-Bordeaux trip several times a day, in slightly less than three hours. Fares are about $72 first-class and $48 second-class each way.

Where to stay: Hotel Sainte-Catherine, 27 Rue du Parlement Sainte-Catherine, call 011- 33-56-81-95-12 from U.S. telephones, fax 011-33-56-44-50-51. Small but attractive rooms in a restored 18th-Century mansion. Excellent location in old Bordeaux. The restaurant, Le Puits Sainte-Catherine, is quite good. Rates: $95-$250 per night.

Hotel Royal Saint-Jean, 15 Rue Charles-Domer, 011-33-56-91-72-16, fax 011-33-56- 94-08-32. A good budget choice, in a lively quarter practically across the street from the city’s main railway station. . Rates: $55-$85 per night.

Chateau Cordeillan-Bages, Route des Chateaux, Pauillac, 011-33-56-59-24-24, fax 011- 33-56-59-01-89, reservations (800) 677-3524. A beautiful stone villa in the midst of vineyards, with a good dining room and wine-tasting facilities attached. Rates: $125-$165.

Les Jardins de Hauterive, 3 Place Camille-Hostein, Bouliac, 011-33-56-20-52-19, fax 011-33-56-20-92-58, reservations (800) 677- 3524. Not for traditionalists--a super-contemporary architectural statement in a quiet community across the river from most of Bordeaux. The restaurant, Amat, is world-famous, and well worth trying. Rates: $95-$250. Where to eat: Amat (see Les Jardins de Hauterive, above).

Le Chapon Fin, 5 Rue Montesquieu, dial locally 56-79-10-10.

Chez Joel D., 13 Rue des Pilliers-de-Tutelle, 56-52-68-31.

Didier Gelineau, 26 Rue du Pas Saint-Georges, 56-52-84-25.

Jean Ramet, 7-8 Place Jean-Jaures, 56-44-12-51.

Le Nouveau Saucier, 64 Rue du Ha, 56-81-11-22.

Le Pavillon des Boulevards, 120 Rue de la Croix-de-Seguey, 56-81-51-02.

Les Plaisirs d’Ausone, 10 Rue Ausone, 56-79-30-30.

Les Puits Sainte-Catherine (see Hotel Sainte-Catherine, above).

Le Restaurant/Salon de The du Museedes Arts Decoratifs, 39 Rue Bouffard, 56-52-60-49.

Le Rodes, 24 Place des Capuchins, 56-91-42-31.

Le Rouzic, 34 Cours du Chapeau-Rouge, 56-44-39-11.

La Tupina, 6 Rue de la Porte-de-la-Monnaie, 56-91-56-37.

What to see: CAPCMusee d’Art Contemporain, Entrepot Laine, 56-44-16-35. Admission: $6.25 regular, $3.15 anyone under 26 years of age, students, senior citizens. No admission charge daily from noon to 2 p.m. Musee d’Aquitaine, 20 Cours Pasteur, 56-90-91-60. Admission: $3.15 regular, $1.65 for the same categories as above. Admission free on Wednesdays. La Cite Mondiale du Vin et des Spiritueux, 20 Quai des Chartrons, 56-10-20-20; center open for tours Monday-Friday at 3 p.m., English-speaking guide available. Admission: $3.15. The Cite’s Musee des Confreries admits visitors Monday-Friday at 4 p.m. or by appointment. Admission: $6.25.

Galleries: Ek’ymose 1, 44 Rue Leyteire, 56-92-14-83; Ek’ymose 2, 25 Rue du Couvent, 56-79-23-82; Galerie BDX, 13 Rue Latour, 56-52-45-04; Galerie Jean-Francois Dumont, 15 Rue Maubec, 56-94-19-95; Galerie Zographia, 62 Rue Borie, 56-44-45-82.

Where to shop: The pedestrian-only Rue Sainte-Catherine, between the Place de la Victoire and the Place de la Comedie, is Bordeaux’s main shopping street, though many of the more upscale boutiques are clustered in or around the Galerie des Grands-Hommes on the Place des Grands-Hommes, slightly to the north and west. The Virgin Megastore is at 15 Place Gambetta, 56-56-05-56.

For more information: Write or visit the French Government Tourist Office, 9454 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 303, Beverly Hills 90212, or call (900) 990-0040 (50 cents per minute). In Bordeaux: Office de Tourisme de Bordeaux, 12 Cours du XXX Juillet, 56-44-28-41, or call the English-language Services Bordeaux Leisure, 56-48-04-61.