Rolf Bichsel - Best of Bordeaux

quality and price, and were thus reserved for a financially stronger class of pur-

chasers. The four current Premiers Crus Margaux, Latour, Lafite and Haut-Brion

were described by an English wine merchant as ‘topping growths' as early as

1723. In 1740, a list of wine-producing municipalities was published giving the

three categories of Premier, Second and Troisième Cru. The Premiers include

Pessac (or rather les Crus de Pontac, in the plural), Pauillac, Saint-Julien, Mar-

gaux, Sauternes and Barsac. The wine enthusiast, French ambassador and fu-

ture American President Thomas Jefferson visited Bordeaux in 1787 and scrib-

bled a list of the best wines in his diary – with three categories from Premier

to Troisième Cru. He is therefore occasionally described as the founder of the

Bordeaux classification, and a couple of the estates Jefferson listed still use him

as proof that they were already famous and sought-after. This is not entirely un-

34

History1855 classification

true. However, it is scarcely conceivable that Jefferson came up with his classifi-

cation by himself – he quite simply did not have the time, as he spent just three

days in Bordeaux. He arrived in the city from Toulouse/Agen/Langon on 24 May

and travelled on towards Blaye and La Rochelle on 28 May, probably never even

entering the Médoc.

He mentions that he crossed the Garonne near Langon, near Sauternes where

the Gironde's best white wines were produced, which automatically puts him in

southern Graves and means he must at least have passed through Preignac and

Barsac. He also wrote: ‘We find the plains entirely of sand and gravel, and they

continue so to Bordeaux. Where they are capable of any thing, they are in vines.'

He definitely also paid a personal visit to Haut-Brion: he writes that he examined

its sandy and stony soils, extremely different to the chalk soils of ‘Pontac' which

he also investigated. Haut-Brion had belonged to the de Fumels since 1749. It is

unclear which estate he means by ‘Pontac belonging to a M. Lamont': he could

perhaps be describing what is now Carmes Haut-Brion, sitting on a limestone

base next to the present-day Haut-Brion and originally belonging to the Pontacs,

who bequeathed it to the Carmelites. Je

ff

erson is not always as unfailingly pre-

cise or reliable as is sometimes claimed, and was simply writing a diary which

was only published after his death.

Nevertheless, in his travel journal he always clearly notes facts deduced

from his own experience or insight. This does not apply to the ‘classification',

suggesting that it was a generally accepted list: he most likely simply asked a

Bordeaux broker or merchant to dictate a list of the best and most expensive

wine, perhaps the broker Desgrands whom he cites as a source of information

at another point. Incidentally, Jefferson was not only interested in wine – he also

showed an interest in activities such as strawberry production near Agen, ice

manufacturing in northern Italy, to which he devoted several pages, and ox feed

production or the fact that oxen were virtually the only source of motive power

used in Bordeaux, which will be of interest to all of the estate owners now using

horse-drawn ploughs to cultivate their vine rows as part of the booming organic

movement.

The state-certi

fi

ed classi

fi

cation of 1855 came about after Bordeaux mer-

chants heard rumours that the Burgundians, who had gained direct access to

the Atlantic and Mediterranean following the opening of the Canal de Bour-

gogne (1832), were wanting to have their wines o

ffi

cially classified at the 1855

Paris Universal Exposition. The Bordelais simply decided to beat them to it. In

1855, Dijon-based doctor and researcher Lavalle did indeed publish a compre-

hensive work covering all wines in the Côte d'Or, which is still a treasure trove of

information about the region. There was never any mention of the state's bless-

ing. However this was also no longer relevant, as the initiative taken by the Bor-

deaux Chamber of Commerce and the city's wine brokers gained Bordeaux and

Eric de Rothschild

36

its new-born ‘Crus Classés du Médoc, de Sauternes et des Graves' an ingenious

advertising campaign which is still benefiting the region today. It is therefore no

surprise that two other Bordeaux appellations have since emulated this rank-

ing system, namely Saint-Emilion and Graves (now Pessac-Léognan), which

have also been operating their own classifications since the mid-1950s. Graves

has a similar static system to their model, whilst the Saint-Emilion classifica-

tion is updated every ten years. Whether or not this is an advantage remains

open to question: sometimes, it seems to me that the biggest beneficiaries are

the lawyers who are constantly appealing against the recently adopted reclas-

sifications, on behalf of those who have been declassified of course. The value

measured by all of this cataloguing, often based on quality but also nearly al-

ways on high prices, is something that wine enthusiasts are capable of deciding

for themselves. We should note that state-sanctioned classifications are not the

same as state protections of origin (AOC), which have applied in France since

1937 for the geographical origins, style and production conditions of a particu-

lar area. In Bordeaux a distinction is drawn between regional appellations (e.g.

Haut-Médoc) and village appellations (e.g. Margaux, Sauternes, Pomerol) within

the base appellation (Bordeaux), and Saint-Emilion has two appellations, name-

ly Saint-Emilion and Saint-Emilion Grand Cru, with the latter awarded annually.

The Saint-Emilion classification on the other hand di

ff

erentiates between Grand

Cellar of Pichon Baron

37

Crus Classés and Premier Grands Crus Classés A and B, and is updated around

once a decade. Still clear?

The 1855 classification is first and foremost a historical legacy with obliga-

tions: not a single estate under that classification currently fails to produce

at least good and generally excellent wines, with the same also applying to

Saint-Emilion Premiers Crus Classés and Graves Crus Classés at the very least.

Whether or not historical classifications can or should be updated remains open

to question: to me, it is like wanting to banish Picasso or Braque from the pan-

theon of fine art because their works were not painted on an iPad. The fact that

Lafite is still Lafite and Margaux is still Margaux does not prevent any wines with

lower classifications or no classification at all from tasting even better than them