by Nancy Yos

Created on: May 19, 2009

They will be Bordeaux, and to know them we must master the famous "1855 classification." Think how fun.

All wine books summarize the classification nicely. In that year, Emperor Napoleon III asked the authorities in Bordeaux to draw up a short list of the district's finest wines in preparation for an Exposition in Paris. Different wine authors today give slightly different details. His imperial highness may have asked the wine growing chateau owners themselves for the list, and they for fear of creating mutual jealousies may have fobbed the job off on the local Chamber of Commerce; or he may have asked the Chamber of Commerce first, who then fobbed the job off on local wholesale wine merchants who knew their product.

In any case, the list of the very greatest Bordeaux was made, and of the hundreds of wine making operations in the area, it ranked only 61 chateaux. Determinations of quality were based on the prices these wines fetched in the market. It was a sensible way of doing things: it would be as if the Chicago city council should be asked to list the best department stores in the city. Powerhouse European couture boutiques would crowd the top, followed by the swankier stores and so on down to K-Mart, if our council cared to pursue the matter that far. The Bordelais did not. Judging quality merely by price may at first seem cart-before-the-horse presumptuous, but if we've ever treated ourselves to an exalted shopping experience, as exalted as a Bordeaux shopping experience would be, we know that that judgment is usually very right.

The 61 "classified" chateaux were divided up into five subcategories, again determined by prices fetched. They were simply called "premier crus" (first growth), "deuxieme crus," and so on. Of those 61, only four were allotted "first growth" (shall we say, "most expensive"?) status. These were Chateau Margaux, Chateau Lafite-Rothschild, Chateau Latour, and Chateau Haut-Brion. One hundred and eighteen years later in 1973, one more chateau, Mouton-Rothschild, was elevated to first growth status following twenty years, or was it fifty, of "nagging" (according to Jancis Robinson) of the French authorities on the part of its proud owner, the Baron Phillippe de Rothschild. This represents the only change ever made to the 1855 classification.

Wine writers are careful to emphasize that the list and the judgments were made based on market prices, and further to emphasize that the term "cru" should really be mentally translated as "classification"

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