What are the 6 lists that rank Bordeaux?

The 6, side by side

List	Made by	Ranks	How it moves
Classification of 1855 (opens in a new tab)	Brokers, for the Paris exhibition	61 red growths of the Médoc (opens in a new tab) and Graves (opens in a new tab), 27 sweet whites	Formally changed 2 times since 1855
Classification of Saint-Émilion (opens in a new tab)	The state, through the INAO	85 estates in 3 ranks	Every 10 years, from scratch
Crus Classés de Graves (opens in a new tab)	An INAO jury, approved by the minister	14 estates, no tiers	Settled in 1959
Crus Bourgeois (opens in a new tab)	The Alliance, verified by an outside body	170 estates in 3 tiers	Every 5 years
Crus Artisans (opens in a new tab)	The association, verified by an outside body	32 estates, one rank	Every 5 years
Michelin Guide (opens in a new tab)	Michelin, from outside the wine trade	83 estates, rated 3 grapes down to none	As Michelin pleases

Half of them start again from a blank page every 5 or 10 years.

Two lists that were never built to move

The Classification of 1855 was drawn up from the brokers’ price records in April 1855. Only 2 changes have ever been made to it formally: Cantemerle (opens in a new tab) was added in September 1855, 5 months after the brokers delivered their list, and Mouton Rothschild (opens in a new tab) was raised to First Growth in 1973. Everything else, the growths that split into several and the one that disappeared, happened in print, without a decree. The list has no schedule of revision: a change needs a ministerial order, and only one has ever been signed.

An INAO jury drew up the Crus Classés de Graves in 1953, the minister of agriculture approved them, and a ministerial order settled the list in 1959. It has 14 names, 2 fewer than in 1959, because 2 estates were absorbed into a third, La Mission Haut-Brion (opens in a new tab). It has no ranks: an estate is classified for its red, its white, or both, and that is the only division in it.

Three lists that start again from scratch

The Classification of Saint-Émilion is the only list of crus classés in Bordeaux that an estate can lose. It is also the only one of the 3 crus classés lists where every estate must apply again each time, and one of the 2 that courts have struck down. The classification of 2006 was annulled; the list of 1996, and the 8 estates promoted in 2006, were kept in force by law until the 2011 harvest; and the 2012 revision started over. The revision approved in September 2022 runs to the 2031 harvest. In that round, 3 of the 4 estates holding the top rank refused to enter: Ausone (opens in a new tab), Cheval Blanc (opens in a new tab), and Angélus (opens in a new tab).

The Crus Bourgeois and the Crus Artisans both run on 5-year cycles, and both are verified by an independent body rather than by the trade alone. The Crus Bourgeois list was annulled by a court in 2007 because 4 members of the jury had a stake in it. What replaced it was not a classification of estates but a mention awarded to a specific lot of wine, vintage by vintage, and the tiers came back only in 2020. Its 2 upper tiers judge the estate as a business too, from the cellar to the shop.

The Crus Artisans are the smallest list, 32 estates on the list of 2023, valid for the 2022 to 2026 vintages: Médoc estates whose owner works the vines, makes the wine, and sells it. Its cahier des charges scores that work on a points system, alongside the wine. It scores the grower before it scores the wine.

The one that is not a classification at all

The Michelin Guide published its first Bordeaux selection on September 8, 2026. No decree homologates it, no appellation includes it, and no label may print it. It is an opinion, published by a body from outside the wine trade. It is the newest of the 6, and the only one that can put a Pomerol (opens in a new tab) and a Sauternes (opens in a new tab) in the same row.