Themes

One Region, Four Rankings: Every Bordeaux Classification, Compared

1855, Graves, Saint-Émilion, Crus Bourgeois: what each Bordeaux classification ranks, how it revises, and why the revisable ones keep ending up in court.

Bordeaux has four classifications, plus one appellation, Pomerol, that has never ranked its estates at all. The two that do not change, the 1855 ranking of the Médoc and Sauternes and the Graves list of 1953–1959, have never been struck down by a court. The two that are revised, Saint-Émilion and the Crus Bourgeois of the Médoc, have each had an entire edition annulled.

All four were built to say which estates are the best. They differ on what is being ranked (a market price, a piece of land, an estate, a wine in the bottle), on who does the ranking, and on whether the answer may ever change. That last choice matches the court record exactly.

1855: one change in 170 years

The 1855 classification has an article of its own, so a short summary is enough here. It was commissioned for the Exposition Universelle of 1855 at the request of Napoleon III's administration and drawn up by Bordeaux's wine brokers from long-run market prices. The red wines of the Médoc, plus Haut-Brion in the Graves, went into five tiers of crus classés. The sweet whites of Sauternes and Barsac got a separate hierarchy, with Yquem at the top.

Two features matter for the comparison. The brokers ranked prices, decades of them, rather than soils or cellars. And the list has barely moved. It has admitted one substantive change: Château Mouton Rothschild's promotion from second to first growth in 1973, after four decades of lobbying. No court has ever struck the 1855 classification down. There is no revision procedure, so there is nothing to contest.

Graves, 1953–1959: classified, not ranked

Apart from Haut-Brion, the 1855 exercise left out the Graves, historically the cradle of Bordeaux's vineyard. Its own classification came a century later and made the opposite choice on almost every point. A jury appointed by the INAO, France's national appellations institute, drew it up in 1953. The Minister of Agriculture approved it that August, and a final decree in February 1959 completed it. It names sixteen estates, each classified for its red wine, its white wine or both, with no internal hierarchy. An estate is a cru classé de Graves or it is not. There are no firsts and no seconds. Haut-Brion appears here too, the only property ranked in two classifications at once.

The list has not been revised since 1959. In 1987 the northern Graves became a separate appellation, Pessac-Léognan, and all sixteen classified estates fell inside it. The appellation still named Graves is therefore left with a classification whose members all label their wines Pessac-Léognan today. Like the 1855 list, the Graves list has never been before a court, and for the same reason: it does not move.

Saint-Émilion: revision every decade

Saint-Émilion, on the right bank of the Dordogne, created its classification in 1955, a century after the Médoc's, and wrote in what the others lacked: planned revision, roughly every ten years. Editions followed in 1969, 1986, 1996, 2006, 2012 and 2022. It is also the only one of the four embedded in appellation law. It runs under the authority of the INAO, and its two mentions, grand cru classé and premier grand cru classé (the latter split into "A" and "B"), are attached to named estates and their vineyard parcels. On paper this is the most rational design of the four, a hierarchy the State re-examines at intervals. In practice, revision is where the lawsuits start.

The 2006 edition was the first case. Demoted châteaux sued. A Bordeaux administrative tribunal suspended the classification in March 2007, the Conseil d'État reinstated it that November, and on 1 July 2008 the tribunal annulled it outright, ruling that the tasting procedure had not been impartial. The government then extended the 1996 classification by emergency decree to cover the 2006–2009 vintages. In May 2009 parliament passed a law allowing the châteaux promoted in 2006 to keep their new rank. The official hierarchy now rested on a court ruling, a decree and a statute.

The 2012 edition was redesigned to withstand litigation, with independent commissioners from outside the region working under INAO oversight. It classified 82 estates: 64 grands crus classés and 18 premiers grands crus classés. Château Angélus and Château Pavie were promoted to rank "A", alongside Ausone and Cheval Blanc. Three demoted or refused properties (Croque-Michotte, Corbin-Michotte and La Tour du Pin Figeac) sued anyway. In December 2015 the Bordeaux administrative tribunal upheld the classification.

A parallel criminal case ran for years longer. In October 2021 the Bordeaux criminal court convicted Hubert de Boüard, co-owner of Angélus, of prise illégale d'intérêts (unlawful conflict of interest) in the 2012 process. At the time he was a member of the INAO's national committee and, simultaneously, a consultant to estates under review. He was fined €60,000, €20,000 of it suspended. His co-defendant, Philippe Castéja, was acquitted, and the court found no proof that the demotions themselves had resulted.

By then the estates at the top had started to leave. In July 2021 Cheval Blanc and Ausone, "A"-ranked since the beginning, withdrew from the forthcoming classification. They argued that its criteria, which weigh reputation, distribution and wine tourism alongside terroir and tasting, had strayed too far from the estate, the vineyard and the wine. Angélus followed in January 2022. The 2022 edition went ahead without them: 85 classified estates, 71 grands crus classés and 14 premiers, with Pavie and the newly promoted Figeac alone at rank "A". In ten years, the one Bordeaux classification designed to evolve had produced an annulment, a statute, a criminal conviction and the departure of three of its four "A"-ranked estates.

Crus Bourgeois: four formats in ninety years

Below the crus classés, the Médoc's broad middle tier has its own hierarchy, with the most unstable institutional history of the four. The first Crus Bourgeois list was drawn up in 1932 by Bordeaux's brokers under the aegis of the Chamber of Commerce and the Chamber of Agriculture. It named 444 estates and was never officially ratified.

An official classification finally came in 2003: 247 properties in three tiers (9 Exceptionnels, 87 Supérieurs, 151 Crus Bourgeois). Excluded estates sued. In February 2007 the Bordeaux administrative appeal court annulled the whole classification as "tainted with illegality": several jurors had judged a category in which they owned properties. For a time the words "cru bourgeois" were banned from labels.

The 2010 relaunch rebuilt the system on the opposite principle. It had a single level, awarded every year to a wine rather than a château, as a vintage-by-vintage quality mark verified by an independent body. It was first applied to the 2008 vintage (243 wines). The three-tier, estate-level classification returned only in 2020, now valid for five years at a time: 249 châteaux (179 Crus Bourgeois, 56 Supérieurs, 14 Exceptionnels). At the first renewal, in February 2025, the total fell to 170 estates while the top tier held at 14. Since 1932 the name has covered a brokers' list, an annulled classification, an annual label and a five-year ranking.

Pomerol: no ranking at all

Pomerol has never classified anything. The small right-bank appellation, whose rise is part of the wider Libournais story, has no tiers, no decree and no jury. Petrus, Le Pin, Lafleur and their neighbours sell at prices matching or exceeding those of the Médoc first growths, on reputation alone. Pomerol's international standing dates mostly from the second half of the twentieth century, after the classifying eras, and its producers have never sought to add a ranking. It works as the control case in this comparison: in a market this mature, the price list can carry the whole hierarchy.

Side by side

Revision and the courts

The classifications that never change have never been successfully challenged, but the 1855 list and the Graves list describe the Bordeaux of the 1850s and the 1950s. The ones that do change stay current, and every revision creates losers with a reason to sue, because in this region a line on a list moves land values. Saint-Émilion and the Crus Bourgeois have both lost an entire edition in court, and Saint-Émilion has added a criminal conviction and the withdrawal of its best-known names. Litigation is the structural cost of making a Bordeaux ranking revisable, rather than the failure of any one edition.

Under the procedure sits an older question: what a ranking measures in the first place. The brokers of 1855 said the market. Saint-Émilion's decrees say the land and the estate together. Pomerol says nothing. That is the terroir debate in institutional form, and it has an article of its own.