Bordeaux 2018 Cru Bourgeois at Four Years
The 2018 vintage in Bordeaux was noteworthy not only for its warm weather, and for the cohort of successful if rather atypically styled wines it produced, it was also notable for the revival of the Cru Bourgeois classification.
During the course of more than a decade in limbo, following the 2007 collapse of the classification which was consequent upon legal challenges to the 2003 iteration, keen Cru Bourgeois proprietors had to make do with the Annual Mark of Quality instead. This was effectively a pat on the head from a local tasting committee which effectively said “well done, your wine would be good enough for the Cru Bourgeois classification, if it still existed. You can write Cru Bourgeois on the label this year”.
On a good day, one might say the Annual Mark of Quality was a useful stop gap, one which kept the Cru Bourgeois concept alive. In a less constructive frame of mind you could also argue the annual award was close to meaningless. It was easy to pick holes in both the process and the results.
Please log in to continue reading: