Entre-Deux-Mers is the large wedge of country between the Garonne and the Dordogne, the two tidal rivers that give it its name, and it is the biggest single area of vineyard in Bordeaux. The landscape is rolling limestone and clay, scattered with bastide towns, windmills and the ruins of the Benedictine abbey of La Sauve-Majeure, and it has as much cereal and pasture as vine.

The appellation itself applies only to dry white wine, from Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon and Muscadelle, usually crisp and grassy and made to be drunk within a year or two. Any red grown on the same ground is sold as plain Bordeaux, which is why the name is better known than the wine. The district was the engine of the Bordeaux white trade when sweeter styles were in fashion, replanted wholesale for dry wine in the 1970s, and has been the part of the region hit hardest by the recent fall in demand.