Bordeaux 2017 Cru Bourgeois
It is now ten years since the Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, at that time bruised and battered by the recent collapse of the decades-old Cru Bourgeois classification, picked itself up, dusted itself down, and began the slow process of rebuilding and restoring what once they had. Now, after several years of consolidation and confidence-building, they are ready to take the next steps towards the creation of a new, more informative and hopefully more robust system.
In this report I reflect on what the Alliance has achieved so far and set out their plans for the future under the direction of current president Olivier Cuvelier, of Château Le Crock, before moving on in my tasting report to look at 32 wines from 2017, the most recently classified vintage, followed by a tasting of other select vintages.
The Cru Bourgeois Classification
It is worth reflecting, albeit briefly, on the story of the Cru Bourgeois classification. Created in 1932 by a team of Bordeaux négociants, working under the authority of the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce and the Gironde Chamber of Agriculture, the initial classification included 444 châteaux from the Médoc peninsula. Its most useful feature for consumers was arguably the internal ranking system, the system having allocated the châteaux to one of three levels, Cru Bourgeois, Cru Bourgeois Supérieur and Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel and which thus served as a pointer towards the best properties and the best wines. Having spent many of my early forays into Bordeaux drinking at this sort of level, I can testify that the status of Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel certainly bore some correlation with the quality of the wine in the bottle, having helped me to discover estates such as Château Poujeaux and Château Chasse-Spleen (pictured), to name just two.
