The classifications of Bordeaux

The Classification of 1855

Drawn up by the brokers of the Bordeaux exchange in 13 days for a world fair, and changed 2 times since.

April 18, 1855. The brokers deliver the list. The syndics of the brokers of commerce write to the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce. What they hand over is 2 rankings on 1 sheet: 57 red growths in 5 classes, every one of them of the Médoc but for Haut-Brion of the Graves, and 21 sweet wines of Sauternes and Barsac in 3, with Yquem alone above the rest.

September 16, 1855. Cantemerle is written in. Caroline de Villeneuve-Durfort took 40 years of sale records to the brokers. Her whole crop had gone to Holland, sold direct, so the Bordeaux ledgers the brokers ranked from had never bought a cask of it. The name sits on the original document beneath the last of the fifths, in a different and smaller hand. It is the only estate ever added. [[case:06]].

1960 and 1961. A revision that failed. The INAO drew up a reclassification that dropped 17 estates and brought in 13 new ones. The proposal reached the press before it reached a decree and was never adopted. Alexis Lichine published his own classification in 1962 and revised it until 1985; the only one of his proposals ever realized was lifting Mouton out of the second growths.

June 21, 1973. Mouton Rothschild is raised to first growth. The minister of agriculture, Jacques Chirac, signed. Philippe de Rothschild had asked in 1961, in 1969 and in 1971 before it carried. The label had read Premier ne puis, second ne daigne, Mouton suis, which is to say: first I cannot be, second I do not deign to be, Mouton I am. It now reads Premier je suis, second je fus, Mouton ne change: first I am, second I was, Mouton does not change. [[case:01]].

The Classification of Saint-Émilion

Made 7 times between 1955 and 2022, annulled once by a court, and the only classification of crus classés in Bordeaux that an estate can lose.

June 16, 1955. The first classification. Published in the Journal Officiel on June 24, 1955 and completed by the arrêtés of August 7 and October 18, 1958. It is the October arrêté that created the A and B distinction inside the premier tier, with Ausone and Cheval Blanc as the 2 A. The estates date both letters to 1955, the year of the first list.

November 17, 1969. The second classification. The premier tier does not move at all. The lower tier grows from 63 names to 72, and Cap de Mourlin appears 2 times, once for each of the 2 proprietors then holding a share of it.

Décret of January 1984. The ranks stop being appellations. The appellations Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Classé and Saint-Émilion Premier Grand Cru Classé are abolished, because they no longer fitted the European definition of an appellation. Only Saint-Émilion and Saint-Émilion Grand Cru survive, and the classified ranks become mentions, awarded for 10 years at a time. The same text orders a new classification within 1 year, capped at 90 estates.

May 23, 1986. The third classification, and the first move down. Beau-Séjour Bécot, a premier since 1955, moves to Grand Cru Classé. It had taken in 2 other vineyards in 1979, La Carte and Trois Moulins, raising its area by 85% without applying for the amalgamation. The estate argued that the tastings showed no loss of quality. Ten more estates leave the list entirely, two of them the vineyards Beau-Séjour Bécot had absorbed.

Arrêté of November 8, 1996. The fourth classification. Angélus rises to the premier tier and Beau-Séjour Bécot is a premier again, 10 years after it moved down. Ten estates go out. Four come in, three of them returning after the list of 1986.

Arrêté of December 12, 2006, annulled. The fifth classification, and the courts. Pavie Macquin and Troplong Mondot rise to the premier tier, 6 estates come in and 10 are removed. Four of the estates left out go to law. The tribunal administratif de Bordeaux annuls the whole classification on July 1, 2008, holding that organizing the tastings by category rather than at random broke the equality of treatment between incumbents and candidates. The Bordeaux court of appeal confirms on March 12, 2009 and the Conseil d’État on December 23, 2011.

Law of May 12, 2009, article 65. Parliament keeps 2 lists alive at once. The law of August 4, 2008 had extended the 1996 classification, which protected the estates classified in 1996 and nobody else, leaving the 8 estates promoted in 2006 with bottles on the market carrying a rank the courts had erased. Article 65 of the law of May 12, 2009 let both sets use their mention until the 2011 harvest. The 8 were Bellefont-Belcier, Destieux, Fleur Cardinale, Grand Corbin, Grand Corbin-Despagne and Monbousquet as Grands Crus Classés, and Pavie Macquin and Troplong Mondot as Premiers.

Arrêté of October 29, 2012. The sixth classification, and a criminal case. The A tier doubles from 2 to 4: Angélus and Pavie join Ausone and Cheval Blanc. La Mondotte and Valandraud go straight into the premier tier without ever having been Grands Crus Classés. Corbin Michotte, classified at every edition since 1955, is left out of the list. Three declassified estates lodged a criminal complaint, and on October 25, 2021 the tribunal judiciaire de Bordeaux convicted Hubert de Boüard, co-owner of Angélus and president of the classification commission, of prise illégale d’intérêts, the offense of a public official taking an interest in a matter he oversees. He was fined 60,000 euros, of which 20,000 suspended. Philippe Castéja of TrotteVieille was acquitted. De Boüard did not appeal.

Arrêté of December 15, 2022. The seventh classification, and 5 estates walk away. Figeac rises to A, where it stands beside Pavie and nothing else. Ausone and Cheval Blanc announced in July 2021 that they would not apply; Angélus followed on January 5, 2022, and Quinault L’Enclos, which belongs to the owners of Cheval Blanc, stayed out with it. La Gaffelière, which had applied, withdrew its file on June 1, 2022, after the commission’s first opinion on it. Pauline Vauthier of Ausone put the objection plainly: marketing and wine tourism are very nice things, but the measure of great wine comes down to terroir, viticulture and time. Angélus said the classification had become a vehicle for antagonism and instability. Sixteen estates come in, among them Corbin Michotte, back after 10 years out. The list prints no B: its 12 other premiers are Premiers Grands Crus Classés, and the A is a distinction given to 2 of the 14.

The Crus Classés de Graves

One rank, no hierarchy, settled in 1959 and never revised. It ranks nothing except whether an estate is classified for red, for white, or for both.

1953. The first list. A jury named by the INAO classified the wines of the Graves, and the minister of agriculture approved the list in August of the same year.

Decree of February 16, 1959. The one and only change. The list of 1953 is completed for the white wines and settled by decree. The estates date their rank to 1953; the decree of 1959 is the text in force.

2005 the last vintage. Château La Tour Haut-Brion stops. Domaine Clarence Dillon announced in April 2007 that from the 2006 vintage the fruit of La Tour Haut-Brion would go into La Chapelle de La Mission Haut-Brion. 2005 is its final vintage.

2008 the last vintage. Château Laville Haut-Brion becomes La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc. Announced in March 2010: from the 2009 vintage the wine is labeled Château La Mission Haut-Brion Blanc. 2008 was the last under the old name, and the list falls from 16 estates to 14.

The Crus Bourgeois du Médoc

Ranked by brokers in 1932, made official in 2003, annulled by a court in 2007, rebuilt as an annual award, and a classification again since 2020.

1932. The brokers' list. Drawn up by 5 Bordeaux brokers under the joint authority of the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Agriculture, registered in September and October 1932. It was never ratified by the ministry.

1979. Europe removes the tiers. European rules restrict the label to Cru Bourgeois alone. Bourgeois Supérieur, Grand Bourgeois and Bourgeois Exceptionnel may no longer be printed. The syndicate had held internal contests in 1966 and in 1978, but those were lists of its own members, not classifications.

Arrêté of June 17, 2003, annulled. The first official classification. The state homologates the list for the first time. Out of 490 candidates, 247 châteaux are classified, and 77 estates that had been on the 1932 list lose the standing. Dozens of the excluded go to law.

February 27, 2007. The court annuls it. The cour administrative d’appel de Bordeaux annuls the 2003 classification. The reason is the jury: 4 of its members were themselves concerned by the classification. In July 2007 the fraud office banned use of the term altogether.

Décret of October 20, 2009. Not a classification at all. What replaces the list is an annual mention attached to a lot of wine, not to an estate. The first vintage covered is 2008 and the first list appears in 2010, published every September, with about 250 wines in a normal year.

February 20, 2020. The 3 tiers come back. A classification again, for the 2018 to 2022 vintages, under the arrêté of December 29, 2017. No list of refused candidates is published: taking part is voluntary and an estate may withdraw at any stage. The Bordeaux court of appeal upheld the list on September 29, 2023.

February 10, 2025. The list contracts by a third. Estates were tasted on 5 vintages from 2017 to 2021, and the classification runs on the 2023 to 2027 vintages. Eight estates came up into Exceptionnel, six kept the rank, and eight that had held it in 2020 are not in the list of 2025 at all; the list does not say whether they did not apply or were not kept. Of the 170, 144 stand in the 2 appellations that run the length of the peninsula, 91 in the Médoc and 53 in the Haut-Médoc. The communal appellations hold the remaining 26: Saint-Estèphe 9, Listrac-Médoc 7, Moulis-en-Médoc 5, Margaux 4, Pauillac 1, and Saint-Julien none. Where the classified growths of 1855 stand thickest, there is least room left for anyone else.

The Crus Artisans du Médoc

The smallest list in Bordeaux, and the only one that classifies the person as well as the wine: 40 of its 100 points are for the work the owner does with their own hands.

1868. The term is printed. The name Crus Artisans is printed in the Cocks et Féret guide of 1868. The thing it names is older than the name: in the 17th century the artisans of the Médoc, the wheelwright, the farrier and the cooper, held vines and worked them with their own hands between jobs.

1989. The syndicate is founded. After the term had fallen out of use in the 1930s, the growers form the Syndicat des Crus Artisans du Médoc at Pauillac to bring it back.

June 1994. Europe lets it on the label. European rules admit the mention and allow it to be printed on the main label. The French state published the designation in the Journal Officiel from 2006, and the first classification under it is of that year.

January 11, 2006. The first classification. The state approves the first official list of Crus Artisans: 44 estates, chosen from 59 candidates, from the 2005 vintage.

December 26, 2017. The 5 year cycle. The syndicate adopts a new cahier des charges (the classification’s own rulebook) at its extraordinary general meeting of November 29, 2017, and the order of December 26, 2017 homologates it. From here the classification is rebuilt every 5 years rather than renewed year by year.

May 12, 2023. The list in force. The order of October 21, 2022 homologates the cahier des charges (the classification’s own rulebook) and the verification plan, repealing the order of 2017, and the application window opens on October 28, 2022 for 61 days. Qualisud, the certifying body, declares the classification closed on May 12, 2023. It covers the 2022 to 2026 vintages.

The Michelin Guide selection

Announced on September 8, 2026 at the Cité du Vin. The first new list of Bordeaux estates since the Crus Artisans of 2006, and the first by a body from outside the wine trade.

September 8, 2026. The first selection. Presented at the Cité du Vin in Bordeaux.