A Bordeaux court yesterday ruled that the 2006 St Emilion classification is invalid and can no longer be used.
Chateaux must now remove the classifications of Premier Grand Cru Classé A or B, or Grand Cru Classé - which should have applied from the 2006 vintage up to 2016 - from labels on wines dating from the 2006 vintage.
'The commission decided that the wine tasting mechanism was not an impartial system,' said Philippe Thévenin, the lawyer who acted for the châteaux that fought the new classification.
At the heart of the ruling is the interpretation that by tasting one group of already classified wines, and then another group of wines that were hoping to be classified, a taster could not remain impartial. 'The judge did not say the tasters were at fault, rather the mechanism,' Thévenin said.
A spokesperson for the St Emilion Wine Union (Conseil des Vins de St Emilion) described the situation as 'grave'.
The Union is currently awaiting a decision from INAO (Institut National des Appellations d'Origine), the body that manages French wine classifications, and the French Agriculture Minister, as to whether an appeal will be launched within the next two months.
Legal sources say an appeal would take about two years.
Wine producers have described the ruling as a catastrophe. 'We are in shock,' said Christine Valette of Château Troplong-Mondot, which was awarded Premier Grand Cru Classé status in 2006
Valette said the chateau had spent 20 years working to achieve the classification. 'And now, just as we are about to start the 2006 bottling, we have to cancel all the labels and all the cases and redo them.'
Valette said she didn't know what clients would think, but hoped they would be understanding. 'The wine in the bottle is still Troplong-Mondot,' she said.
Chateaux Cheval Blanc and Ausone were the only two Premiers Grands Crus Classés A.
Chateau Figeac's application to be promoted from Premier Grand Cru Classé
B to Premier Grand Cru Classé A was rejected on the specific grounds 'that Figeac does not sell at the same level of price as Cheval Blanc or Ausone'.
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This is all water under the bridge: every one in the know realises that an estate's classification is no substitute for quality in the bottle. The Bordeaux classification system has long been known to be marred by bureaucracy and the most recent ruling should not impact the buying decisions of anyone who knows the difference between their St Emilion from a Bordeaux.
Cheuk-Yin Cheung, UAE
This is insane and only possible in France. A lower instance court put classification on hold in March last year, overthrowing a decree from Ministry of Agriculture and INAO. Then in December 2007, France's HIGHEST ADMINISTRATIVE court abandoned the suspension of classification, saying that the rules were followed. It's simply beyond my imagination, how it's possible for a lower instance court in Bx, to suspend this classification again. If it was in Denmark, I believe it's not possible to overthrown a ruling from ministry/higher court by a lower court.
Conseil d'État (From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
In France, the Conseil d'État (English: Council of State) is an organ of the French national government. Its functions include assisting the executive with legal advice and being the supreme court for administrative justice. Its members are (for the most part) high level jurists.
I underline two words - SUPREME COURT!! And it's for adfministrative justice - so for my understanding the lower court verdict is not valid, because it overturns goverment's legal organ's decision. Why telling us now that injustice was done and not before? The procedure of tastings has always been the same, the only changes were which people participated in commission. I think St.Emilion people shoud hire one of the best lawyers in France to go on with this idiotic case and get INAO and the French Agricultural minister to act very quickly.
Izak Litwar, Copenhagen, Denmark
Trying to keep up with all the legal turns surrounding the Bordeaux classification is starting to be somewhat confusing. So for the moment, it looks like we will have some sort of Cru Bourgeois, but no Saint-Émilion classification, while a few months ago it was the other way around? It seems that printed wine labels are too static to keep up with Bordeaux development - it's a bit like trying to remember who was Soviet premier and who was a corpse in the early 1980s. Perhaps Bordeaux would need to put wireless electronic labels on their bottles, which are able to display the latest version of the classification that is allowed to be shown on each bottle. Each wine could then be given a different classification each day of the week, to add more excitement.
Tomas Eriksson, Brussels, Belgium
Although I find the legal wrangles in the St Emilion case greatly disappointing from the vigneron part of the Wine Trade, causing great uncertainty, increased costs and potentially denting revenues (depending upon market reaction).
The one thing that comes over to me from your article is the fact that the ten-yearly tasting event appears to be conducted in a sequence whereby the "expert tasters" have full knowledge of the wines' existing status'. Surely such classifications, from a wine consumer's point of view, need to be conducted blind: consumers like me want to know a wine's genuine quality classification from it's taste, nothing more.
Furthermore, to hear that Figeac was refused entry to Premier Grand Cru Classe A simply due to its market price being well below Ausone and Cheval Blanc can only appear bonkers to the public...again, is it not about quality of taste here?? Regretably, as a lover of French wines, it seems this whole episode has opened up many cans of worms: cans that seem to me to have brought the whole classification process into disrepute.
An appeal spanning over two years is not the solution: re-organising how tasting classifications are carried out, admitting previous faults and doing it all 'pronto' (is that word in the French dictionary?) is clearly the best way forward. Bonne Chance, les vignerons de St Emilion!
Edward Mills, Buckinghamshire, England
What a load of nonsense!
Taste the wines and buy to drink what you like, if like me you find Figeac is a better wine than Cheval Blanc, whos' the winner, I am happy and couldn't care less about a bunch of bureaucrats in Bordeaux.
George Biswas, Surrey, England
As I understand it the earlier decision by the Conseil d'État was to lift a temporary or interlocutory suspension which had been granted pending a full hearing on this matter. The recent decision is the result of that full hearing so that it is within the province of the lower Court to make it; not as some of those who have commented above an attempt to over rule the higher Court's decision. This latest decision may well go to appeal as well — that is a matter for the Agriculture and Finance Ministers amd their advisers. The whole process of litiagion and appeal has left uncertainty as to the classification with growers not knowing what may lawfully be shown on their bottles and advertisements.
Whilst many of those who comment on these pages will have their own detailed knowledge upon which to rely, and clear views of the wines which they prefer from the Jurisdiction and may therefore regard the classification as irrelevant to their choices, others, who are new to the Jurisidiction's wines or whose knowledge or confidence is less great than many Decanter readers, seem to welcome the help which classification gives. If it were not so, other areas of France would not have systems which try, albeit in a rather different way, to identify for potential consumers some of their particularly good wines — by, for example, Tastevineage in Burgundy or the Sigille de Saint-Etienne in Alsace or classification of terroir in Champagne and Burgundy. It also needs to be remembered that subjective tasting
alone is not the only criterion for classification in Saint-Émilion. That fact may provoke legitimate concerns about the balance between that aspect and others, well demonstrated by the, to my mind, anti-competitive decision in relation to Chx. Figeac and Grand-Mayne, refused promotion because they do not charge enough, but it does not necessarily mean that good and accurate classification has no purpose. If anyone is interested the rules as they are at the moment they are set out briefly on the British Association of the Jurade's website and more fully on the Conseil de Vin's own website: www.Jurade.org.uk and www.vins-saint-emilion.com respectively.
Tim Hartley
What an embarrassment the French are. Only their arrogance protects them from this knowledge.
Lee Hammack, Rockville, Virginia, USA
The classification system is hardly necessary these days. There are enough wine pundits and gurus around who regularly review the new wines and each year you look for comments on the wines you normally like. Trust one's wine merchant and ifone is really sophisticated taste the en primeur.
Anthony Rogers
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This is all water under the bridge: every one in the know realises that an estate's classification is no substitute for quality in the bottle. The Bordeaux classification system has long been known to be marred by bureaucracy and the most recent ruling should not impact the buying decisions of anyone who knows the difference between their St Emilion from a Bordeaux.
