Fire Nears Bordeaux, a City of Wine and History

A wildfire scorching tracts of southwestern France is inching closer to Bordeaux, the city at the heart of a famed wine-producing region.

On Saturday, the Saumos wildfire came within 20 miles of the city, Laurent Nuñez, France’s interior minister, said during a news briefing. Officials said they did not intend to evacuate Bordeaux, but were drafting plans in case it became necessary.

The city, the ninth largest in France with a population of around 270,000 people, is about 30 miles inland from the Atlantic Ocean and about 300 miles south of Paris. It is east of the wine-growing area of Médoc, which produces some of the most well-known Bordeaux reds, including Cabernet Sauvignon and Cabernet Franc. Most of the region’s wine industry is concentrated north and east of Bordeaux, and not to the west, where fires are burning.

Bordeaux has been populated since the Bronze Age and its historic city center is a UNESCO World Heritage site. The city contains the ruins of a Roman amphitheater, bell towers from the 15th Century and the Grand Théâtre, a neoclassical building completed in the late 1700s. During World War II, the city was heavily bombed before it was occupied by German troops, and bombed further by the Allies before it was recaptured.

Some of the city and surrounding region’s most famous natives include Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the oceanographer; Édouard Molinaro, the filmmaker perhaps best known for “La Cage Aux Folles” (1978); Rosa Bonheur, one of the most famous female painters of the 1800s; and Montesquieu, a jurist whose ideas on the separations of powers during the Enlightenment helped inspire revolutions in France and the United States.

Millions of visitors each year flock to the city and its surroundings, many for wine-focused travel, such as exploring local wineries or visiting the Cité du Vin, its wine museum.