I received an invitation to a wine tasting recently, promoted as the Bay Area's biggest and best Bordeaux tasting event of the year. Sponsored by K&L Wines, the "Union Des Grands Crus de Bordeaux," a coalition of about a 100 classified growths and chateaus, would be in San Francisco for one afternoon of pouring the much-heralded 2005 vintage.

I have to admit that I have always been a "California guy" when it comes to my wine preferences, but this opportunity was too tempting to miss. I was telling someone about this tasting and realized they were looking at me a little quizzically. Sure they had heard of Bordeaux, even kind of knew where it was on the map, at least sort of, well, somewhere in France, but didn't know much about the region or the wines. I recognized, as I fumbled through a rather poor explanation of why I was so excited to go, that other than a little lip-gloss, I didn't know that much about Bordeaux, either. At least, I told myself, I knew where it was.

Actually, Bordeaux is pretty impressive. In fact, it is the single most impressive red wine region in the world. Bordeaux has more "most ofs" and "firsts in" than anywhere else.

France produces more wine than any other country in the world, and Bordeaux produces one-third of France's fine-wine production. Bordeaux has almost 300,000 acres of vines. It dwarfs other important French wine regions. The Rhone has 173,000 acres, the Loire hosts 75,000 acres and Burgundy has 62,000 acres. Napa Valley has 45,000 acres. Bordeaux produces a staggering 70 million cases of wine every year. The Rhone generates half that. Burgundy produces 15 million cases, or 20 percent, of Bordeaux's output. Napa is a mere dribble at 8.5 million cases annually. And who is turning all that French juice into wine? Bordeaux has over 7,000 wineries. In spite of a recent explosion, California has 2,700 wineries. All of America has 6,000.

It's not just quantity. Bordeaux sets the price standard for futures sales, new releases, retained resale value and auction prices. Wines from the world's other top regions ride the pricing escalator on the coattails of the prices of Bordeaux wines.

Here's another thing I didn't know. In Bordeaux, I thought Cabernet Sauvignon was king. While 90 percent of the wine produced in Bordeaux is red, Merlot represents 60 percent of the red grape total. Cabernet Sauvignon represents only 26 percent, Cabernet Franc another 12 percent, and the role players Malbec and Petit Verdot supply the final 2 percent.

In one sense Bordeaux is easy. Through four important wine classifications over the last 150 years they have created a very distinct pecking order for their wines. From the exalted position of First Growths, through Grand Cru Classé, Cru Bourgeois to simple regional Bordeaux, everything has its place. Still, it's confusing. Chateau Angludet and Chateau Angélus sound kind of similar yet are from opposite sides of the road with several hundred dollars difference in price. Haut-Brion is a famous and recognizable Bordeaux name. But when we see Les Carmes Haut-Brion, Bahans Haut-Brion, Laville Haut-Brion, La Mission Haut-Brion or La Tour Haut-Brion in a bin at the wine shop, can we remember which is which or how much to pay?

I thought it best to have a plan. It was a three-hour event. My goal was to taste 100 wines. That would be a wine every two minutes including writing tasting notes and navigating the crowd. Before arriving I made a list of all the wines being poured and ranked them in their order of pedigree. Why not start with the best ones first?

But within minutes of arriving, it became apparent that wouldn't work. The way the wines were laid out I would have had to run all over the building in haphazard order trying to find them. Plus I didn't want to be that geeky tourist reading the guidebook then pointing, inquiring, "is that it?" No. Better just to taste the wines, make my notes and find out later if what I liked "was the good stuff."

There was one other important concept I wanted to take into account. France has a peculiar notion they call terroir. It is best explained as a sense of place. It is the sum of the effects that the local environment has on the finished wine. They base their ranking system on it. So, with a thought to terroir, I decided to taste the wines by their communes, the specific regions of where in Bordeaux the wines were from.

I started with the "left bank" in the region known as Medoc. I began with the wines of Margaux, moving next to St. Julien, continuing through the wines of Pauillac, St Estephe, Moulis and Listrac. Then I moved south tasting the wines from Pessac-Léognan and Graves before heading east to the "right bank" to Pomerol and St. Émilion. Finally I ended with the sweet whites of Sauternes. When the buzzer sounded I had tasted 85 out of a total of 113 wines.

I love the concept of terroir, but in California I see precious little evidence of its existence. But this now was another matter. The wines from each commune had remarkable similarities to each other and yet were different from the wines of other communes. The wines of Margaux mostly showed aromas of dried earth, olive, leather, and tobacco. The St.-Juliens were much more fruit forward with layers of fruit, spice and perfume, much like good California Merlot. Pauillac was a cross between the two with fresh fruit layers of spice and berries over aromas of dried tobacco and olive. The wines of Pessac-Léognan were lighter and elegant with distinctly green, herbaceous flavors. The Pessac wines tasted like they all might be from the same vineyard, yet nothing else in the room tasted like them. I began to think that there might be something to this concept of terroir. For the first time I thought that, with a bit more exposure and practice, it might be possible to taste the wines and guess their origins.

Finally, when it was all done I looked at my notes and made a list of the wines I liked best. First of all, let me say that I liked a lot of the wines there. The overall quality was high. I was most impressed with the wines of the Medoc. There were no first growths there but there were plenty of second through fifth growths, the top tiers of Medoc rankings. I had a couple of seconds growths among my favorites, but I had even more fifth growths. Good for me because they are typically less expensive. Still, these are not wines for a slender pocketbook. Between acclaim for the '05 vintage and the weak dollar, prices have pushed to record highs with most of the wines falling between $40 - $100. Chateau Beychevelle from St Julien, Chateau Lascombes from Margaux and Chateau Lynch Bages from Pauillac were all spectacular wines, but at $60, $80 and $95 respectively, they can dent your checkbook. Chateau Beaumont, on the other hand, from the more general Haut-Medoc appellation, at $15 was the deal of the day. It offers an affordable way to stick your toe in the water to get a good glimpse of what the region has to offer.

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Rod Byers is Director of Marketing at Nevada City Winery, is a CSW certified wine educator, teaches wine classes at Sierra College and is a California State Certified Wine Judge. He can be reached by e-mail at wineonpine@sbcglobal.net or by phone at 530-913-3703.