Conseil des Grands Crus Classés en 1855

The house

The list it defends was made by brokers, and quickly. For Napoleon III’s Exposition Universelle, the world’s fair in Paris, the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce asked the brokers’ association, the Chambre syndicale des courtiers, to rank the best estates of the Gironde. On April 18, 1855 the brokers delivered their list, drawn from the sale prices of many years. No wine was tasted and no estate visited. Édouard Féret, the Bordeaux publisher who carried on Charles Cocks’s directory of the trade, printed the list from its edition of 1868. He told his readers that it was not the brokers’ own judgment but the confirmation of long custom, set by average prices.

For 94 years the list had no force in law. In 1949 the French legislature regulated the grands crus of Bordeaux by reference to it, and from then on a change of rank needed the state. Baron Philippe de Rothschild revived the Syndicat des Crus Classés, the classed growths’ association, in 1959 and carried a vote for revision by 2 votes. In 1973 Jacques Chirac, then Minister of Agriculture, signed the decree that made Château Mouton Rothschild a First Growth. Mouton is the only estate ever to move up.

The association of the classed growths is more than 100 years old, and it took its present form, as the Conseil des Grands Crus Classés en 1855, on December 13, 2004. Much of its work is the protection of the name. On May 4, 2012 the French decree on labels made the word Grand official for the growths of 1855. In January 2015 the Conseil recovered the domain names and bought every trademark built on 1855. On August 22 that year Cru classé 1855 became a traditional term protected across the European Union, and on October 28 Grand Cru Classé en 1855 was registered as a trademark in China. In 2016 it set up a Pôle d’Excellence for the environment. By 2021, 63 châteaux of the Classification were certified at level 3 of Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms).

It also brings the estates to visitors and to the trade. Since 2017 it has met the travel trade at the Rendez-vous 1855. Its contest of food and wine pairings reached its 10th edition at the Campus du Lac in Bordeaux on January 14, 2025, marking 170 years of the list. On February 8, 2026, on the eve of Wine Paris, it brought 54 of its growths to the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris for a trade tasting, each showing its grand vin of 2020. The list itself had been made for a fair in Paris, in 1855.

At a glance

Kind

Institution

Based in

Bordeaux

Founded

December 13, 2004, in its present form; the association of the classed growths is more than 100 years old

Owner

Its members, the growths of the Médoc and Sauternes classed in 1855

Direction

Philippe Castéja, president; Sylvain Boivert, director

In the record

The brokers’ list, April 18, 1855; Mouton Rothschild a First Growth, 1973; Cru classé 1855 protected in the European Union, 2015