Bouchon Bordelais: The Sweet That Looks Like a Cork | Food Tour de France
Le bouchon bordelais — the small cylindrical confection shaped like a wine bottle cork that is the most distinctive sweet in Bordeaux — is one of those French regional confections that is almost impossible to find outside its home city and completely synonymous with it inside. Today's Food Tour de France episode finishes in Bordeaux — the UNESCO World Heritage city on the crescent of the Garonne — and tells the full story of a sweet invented by a single pastry chef who went for a walk in a vineyard in 1976 and came home with an idea that turned into a family business now in its third generation. A soft, chocolate-scented almond and raisin paste inside a thin crispy butter biscuit shell, flavoured with Fine de Bordeaux — a six-year-old grape brandy — presented in a round cork-shaped box with golden writing on a green background. A sweet that looks like Bordeaux before you have even opened it.
The episode tells the full story of Jacques Pouquet — the maître pâtissier-chocolatier who created the bouchon bordelais in 1976 after noticing almond trees growing among the vines in a Lussac-Saint-Émilion vineyard and combining them with the raisins of the Bordeaux wine trade in a preparation that captured the identity of the city in a single bite. The name was registered as a trademark in 1977. Awards followed quickly — first prize at the Salon Intersuc in 1980, best petit four in France in 1988, the Cordon Bleu at Salon Intersuc in 1990. When Pouquet died in 1998 his daughter Véronique — a hairdresser by trade — took over rather than let it stop. In 2019 her daughter Julia joined her. Three generations of the same family, making the same recipe in the same workshop in Bruges on the outskirts of Bordeaux, from a closely guarded secret recipe that has never been written down outside the family.
The Food Tour de France is a daily series running alongside the 2026 Tour de France on Fabulously Delicious — one episode for every stage start and finish. The bouchon bordelais episode closes this leg of the series through the southwest — from the Tomme des Pyrénées at Les Angles through the cassoulet of Carcassonne, the rouzole of Foix, the haricot tarbais of Lannemezan, the béarnaise and garbure of Pau, the mouton Barèges-Gavarnie above the Tourmalet and the Tursan wines of Hagetmau — arriving finally in Bordeaux with a sweet that tastes of the wine trade, the almond trees and the Fine de Bordeaux brandy that makes this city unlike anywhere else in France.
As Fabulously Delicious steps into its sixth year, one thing is clearer than ever: five years of French food culture has taught Andrew that the subject is genuinely inexhaustible.
My book Paris: A Fabulous Food Guide to the World’s Most Delicious City is your ultimate companion. This is a new 2026 update for the book and you’ll find hand-picked recommendations for the best boulangeries, patisseries, wine bars, cafés, and restaurants that truly capture the flavor of Paris. You can order it online at andrewpriorfabulously.com
For those who want to take things further, why not come cook with me here in Montmorillon, in the heart of France’s Vienne region? Combine hands-on French cooking classes with exploring charming markets, tasting regional specialties, and soaking up the slow, beautiful pace of French countryside life. Find all the details at andrewpriorfabulously.com
You can help keep the show thriving by becoming a paid subscriber on substack where you'll also get fabulous extra content. Every contribution makes a huge difference. Join here at Substack
Merci beaucoup!
Newsletter Youtube Instagram Facebook Website
#FrenchFoodPodcast #FabulouslyDelicious #foodpodcast #bouchonbordelais #JacquesPouquet #Bordeaux #FrenchFood #FoodTourDeFrance #TourDeFrance2026
