In the first of a three-part analysis, db’s Bordeaux correspondent, Colin Hay, looks back at the history of the cru bourgeois classification before turning his attention to the latest reclassification, which was unveiled last week at Vinexpo.
The recent history of competitive systems of classification in Bordeaux has not been a happy one, as avid readers of
the drinks business will know only too well. But since 2020 the cru bourgeois classification has offered some comfort for classification aficionados and enthusiasts, for this appears to be that very rare creature indeed – a competitive system of classification that works, that is capable of renewing itself over time and that, above all, seems now to have overcome some of the problems that once plagued it.
With the unveiling of the second official classification since its relaunch in 2020, now seems to be a good time to ask if all is still as hunky dory as it seemed.
In the first part of this three-part analysis, I return to the troubled history of the classification to contextualise its renaissance before part 2 examines in detail the results of the newly completed reclassification exercise by comparing it to those of 2020 and 2003. The third article will tackle the question more empirically, sharing my tasting notes on a reasonably representative sample of the new cru bourgeoisie, comparing my own evaluation of these wines with the judgement of L’Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc’s distinguished evaluation panel.
The history of the cru bourgeoisie
The very idea of a tier of wines of the Médoc, sitting between the more aristocratic wines of the nobility (those that would later feature in the 1855 classification) and the ‘artisan’ wines of the traditional vigneron-fermier (winemaker-farmer) is almost as old as the class structure that it reflects. It certainly long predates any official system of classification in Bordeaux.
But with the arrival and subsequent consolidation of the official 1855 classification of the nobility of the Médoc it became more important, with the term ‘crus bourgeois’ coming to denote a wine of quality that was neither classified officially nor merely a cru artisan.
Yet it was not until 1932 that any of this was codified. In that year the first cru bourgeois classification was introduced, with the négociants of Bordeaux, acting under the authority of the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce, designating 444 estates as crus bourgeois. At this stage, however, no ministerial approval was sought – so the classification remained informal.
In 1962 a cru bourgeois syndicat was established making the classification essentially self-governing and in 1979 the European Community itself approved for the first time the use of the term cru bourgeois on wine labels (under the regulation and authority of French law).
Appropriately enough, then, the next significant step in the evolution of the cru bourgeois system came from the French state.
In November 2000, a three-tier system of classification (renewable ever 12 years) was introduced by ministerial decree. This established the parameters and criteria of a new competitive evaluation, introducing for the first time the categories cru bourgeois supérieur and cru bourgeois exceptionnel.
It took almost a further three years before the 18-member jury’s deliberations were enshrined in the ministerial order establishing the first official classification of the cru bourgeoisie of the Médoc. 490 estates had submitted applications (and with them samples from the vintages 1994 to 1999 inclusive); a mere 247 were classified. Only nine were designated crus bourgeois exceptionnels, a further 87 crus bourgeois supérieurs.
Predictably enough, not everyone was best pleased (notably the 77 members of the 1932 cru bourgeoisie that had, in effect, been declassified). Anticipating more recent developments in Saint-Emilion, a flurry of legal processes were launched. These questioned, above all, the integrity and genuine independence of certain members of the jury (notably their links to four of the properties awarded cru bourgeois exceptionnel status).
Sparing the gory details, suffice it to note that the Bordeaux Court of Appeal annulled the entire classification in 2007, with the office for fraud banning shortly thereafter the use of the term cru bourgeois altogether.
But, just when it seemed that the cru bourgeoisie had finally been consigned to a place in history, a mini-revolution saw it rise again from the ashes. For in 2009, L’Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc (the body established to oversee the classification) sought to recast the label cru bourgeois as a mark of quality rather than a classificatory system per se.
So was born a relatively short-lived annual evaluation, judging the wines of each successive vintage against a simple quality threshold. By 2016, just under a third of the Médoc’s total production, some 270 estates, were judged to meet the necessary standard. In the process they gained the right to display, more or less proudly, their ‘cru bourgeois’ status on the labels of their wines.
The one-tier system worked well and was better than nothing. But it had the inadvertent, if unsurprising, effect of intensifying price competition, which in turn, produced a downward convergence in prices amongst the new cru bourgeoisie. It served, above all, to reduce the price dispersion between the former crus bourgeois exceptionnels and their new peers.
Those who suffered most were, of course, those who had previously gained most from the existence of a multi-tier and competitive system; and some of them - those who hadn’t already left - wanted it restored.
It should then come as no great surprise that, in 2018, under the direction of its new President, Olivier Cuvelier (of Chateau Le Crock in St-Estèphe), L’Alliance proposed a restoration of the three-tier system. This was to come into effect in 2020 and to be renewed, competitively, on a much shorter five year cycle.
So was born, or more precisely re-born, the competitive cru bourgeois system of classification that we have today.
The rebirth and renewal of the classification
The first competitive re-classification was published in 2020 and is still operative today. It conferred and continues to confer the right to use the label cru bourgeois, cru bourgeois supérieur or cru bourgeois exceptionnel on a wine’s labels for five consecutive vintages (from 2018 until 2022).
The newly published 2025 reclassification works in a similar way, conferring on classified properties the right to use either the label cru bourgeois, cru bourgeois supérieur or cru bourgeois exceptionnel (depending on the level of classification) on a wine’s label for the vintages 2023 to 2027 inclusive.
The competitive evaluation process is essentially a stricter version of the 2020 exercise, involving the submission of a written dossier, a visitation of the property and a compulsory blind tasting of five consecutive vintages by a panel of 5 of the 30 professional tasters involved.
In addition, all crus bourgeois needed to be able to demonstrate that they had already sought and secured HVE (haut valeur environmental) accreditation at level 2. Candidates for the two higher levels of classification need to show HVE3 accreditation and to submit for evaluation a 50-page written dossier documenting ‘the quality and character of the cru’ and the property’s strategy for ‘enhancing the cru’. This is studied and evaluated by a committee of 10 following a visit of the property.
The final classification is determined by a jury of six considering the written recommendations and evaluations of the panel.
The jury’s President for the 2025 exercise was Philippe Faure-Brac, chef sommelier and the World’s Best Sommelier in 1992.
Finally, it is perhaps important to note that a certain stroke of genius from the 2020 reclassification exercise has been retained. Properties that do not receive the classification level they seek are at liberty to exit the classification before it is announced and, crucially, guaranteed anonymity should they choose to do so. No one need know, in other words. that they were unsuccessful in their attempt to attain exceptionnel status! This is a very clever piece of institutional engineering presumably designed to reduce drastically the chances of the classification being pored over in the courts!
But successful though it has undoubtedly been in such terms, what it has not achieved is to provide a route back to the classification for those who left it from the top – the former crus bourgeois exceptionnels that were effectively thrown from the classification when its three-tier structure collapsed under legal challenge in 2007.
The brutal reality is that not a single wine classified cru bourgeois exceptionnel in 2003 appeared in the 2020 classification (at any of the three levels). None of that has changed with the publication of the 2025 reclassification.
It can only be a massive disappointment both to L’Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc (the guardians of the classification) and, no less so, to all those properties today classified as crus bourgeois exceptionnels who would undoubtedly benefit from association with the likes of Chasse-Spleen, Siran, de Pez, Phélan-Ségur and Haut Marbuzet.
It is, of course, just about possible to argue that none of these properties are classified today because at least some of them were not judged to reach the quality level required to regain the cru bourgeois exceptionnel status they (might have) sought. But that is to stretch credulity. Infinitely more likely is that they simply didn’t enter the competition in the first place.
It is not difficult to understand why that might be the case – and herein lies the principal problem of the classification today. In 2007, at the time of its demise, the three-tiered classification system was mirrored by a clear price banding. The crus bourgeois exceptionnels were in a price bracket all of their own and there was quite significant price differentiation between the crus bourgeois supérieurs on the one hand and the residual crus bourgeois on the other.
Such price stratification has never returned; and because it has never returned neither have the former crus bourgeois exceptionnels. Understandable at it was at the time, the reconstruction of the cru bourgeois label from the ashes of the classification in 2009 sealed the fate of the classification for those whose prices rested on being something more than ‘just’ cru bourgeois. They needed a second adjective (‘bourgeois’ alone wasn’t going to cut it) and the un-tiered classification that persisted until 2020 was unable to provide one.
That was then. Surely, with the return of a competitive and banded classification from 2020, things have changed? Well, yes – but also no. Yes, tiering was back. But, by the time that it returned a decade of intense price competition between the (un-tiered) crus bourgeoisie had both driven average prices down and, more importantly still, produced significant price convergence between them. The restoration of a robust, competitive and banded classification was not going to change that radically nor instantly. And so it has proved.
Today’s crus bourgeois supérieurs and exceptionnels may well command a marginally higher price than the rest of the crus bourgeoisie. But, with one or two notable exceptions, the difference really is marginal. Indeed, in extraordinarily challenging market conditions, what is probably more important to them is that they might stand a greater chance of selling more of what they produce. But, as that suggests, the classification offers little to those under whose weight it collapsed in 2007. For these wines today are typically at least twice as expensive as their ostensible peers. There is little or no rationale for their return to the fold.
For the second part of this analysis, see
here.
