The Case Files examination

Premier Cru Supérieur

In 1855 the brokers gave 1 wine, and 1 only, a rank above the Firsts. This is that level. 20 questions, every one of them answered somewhere in the Château Case Files and none of them anywhere else. It is open book: the cases are the book. Read them properly and you will pass. Skim them and you will not.

Sit it up to 3 times a day. The page tells you which numbers you got right and never shows an answer, so a miss sends you back to the case to read it again. Score 20 of 20 and I hear about it within the minute, and I will write to you. Anyone who reads this closely is someone I want to know.

2 old books come up again and again. Franck's handbook is the trade manual of the Médoc that the Bordeaux merchant William Franck published in 1824, 1845 and 1853. The Féret guide is the Bordeaux wine trade's reference book, Cocks et Féret, which listed every estate and reprinted the 1855 Classification edition after edition from 1868. "The Féret guide of 1893" means that edition.

1 Case 01
The Féret guide printed a table of what each class of the 1855 Classification had fetched, and in it Mouton Rothschild got a row of its own, between the First Growths and the other Second Growths. Which vintage does that price table cover?
The answer is a year.
2 Case 01
In which year did the jury of a Bordeaux exhibition give Mouton Rothschild the grand-prix diploma that was otherwise granted only to the 4 First Growths?
The answer is a year.
3 Case 01
In 1959 Baron Philippe de Rothschild revived the association of the classified growths and asked its members to vote on reopening the 1855 Classification. The motion passed. By how many votes?
The answer is a number.
4 Case 02
In 1843 a delegation from the French winegrowers' congress turned up at Cos d'Estournel unannounced and was shown a cellar lit by 5 chandeliers. Who wrote the report of that visit?
The answer is a surname.
5 Case 02
Louis-Gaspard d'Estournel lost Cos d'Estournel in 1852, when it was sold to a buyer from London. What was the buyer's surname?
The answer is a surname.
6 Case 02
Writing in 1855, the Médoc proprietor Armand d'Armailhacq said Cos d'Estournel's reputation had grown since a certain grape from the Rhône was planted there. Which grape?
The answer is a grape.
7 Case 03
Dubignon, the Margaux Third Growth that vanished from the printed list, had no château and no walled vineyard, only scattered plots. How many hectares did d'Armailhacq give it in 1855?
The answer is a number.
8 Case 03
The Féret guide of 1886 printed a short history of phylloxera in the Gironde, with the date and the place the insect was first found. What place?
The answer is a commune near Bordeaux.
9 Case 03
Dubignon was not the only Margaux Third Growth to drop out of the Féret guide's table of the Classification. Another one dropped out and came back in the 1922 edition, when its owner Marcel Laurent wanted the old name revived. Which estate?
The answer is an estate.
10 Case 04
In 1855 Château Ferrière belonged to a widow. Most books call her the widow J. Ferrière, but d'Armailhacq printed a different given name for her. What name did he print?
The answer is a given name.
11 Case 04
From 1952 to 1991 the vines of Château Ferrière were leased to a neighboring classified estate, and the wine sold as Ferrière was a token bottling made elsewhere to keep the name alive. Which estate held the lease?
The answer is an estate.
12 Case 05
Château Montrose was built out of cleared woodland by the Dumoulin family, who sold it over the winter of 1865 to 1866 to an industrialist from Paris. What was his surname?
The answer is a surname.
13 Case 05
In his rhymed tour of the Médoc of 1849, Pierre Biarnez wrote that if Montrose were always like one particular vintage it could fight the Second Growths with no disadvantage. Which vintage?
The answer is a year.
14 Case 06
Before the 1855 Classification, the whole crop of Château Cantemerle went to Holland, sold by the owner directly. According to Franck's handbook of 1845, which Amsterdam house had made the first sales of Cantemerle, back in the 18th century?
The answer is a merchant house.
15 Case 06
Cantemerle was added to the 1855 Classification in September of that year, after its owner showed the brokers her sale records. Another estate in the same commune of Macau had also sold its wine to Holland, stopped in 1854, and was never classified; it is known today by its later name, Cambon-La-Pelouse. What was it called in 1845?
The answer is an estate.
16 Case 07
In Franck's handbook of 1845, the hillside that is now Sociando-Mallet belonged to a man named Mallet, and the book gives his profession. What was it?
The answer is an occupation.
17 Case 07
The 2003 Cru Bourgeois classification of the Médoc, which Jean Gautreau refused to enter, was annulled by the Bordeaux administrative appeals court in 3 judgments on a single morning. What was the date?
The answer is a full date.
18 Case 08
Henri Martin registered the name Gloria in 1942 and the same year made his first serious purchase of vines, 6 hectares from a classified Fourth Growth of Pauillac. Which estate sold them?
The answer is an estate.
19 Case 08
The Féret guide printed, in 3 editions, that one Cantenac estate had been a classified Fourth before the Revolution and had left that rank only because it was divided among heirs. During its years of division the estate carried a very different name. What was it called then?
The answer is a name.
20 Case 09
Charles Palmer planted a second vineyard from nothing, 4 kilometers from the château, and gave it a name that has never appeared on a label. What did he call it?
The answer is a place name.

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