Copy and Improve Upon: Wine Classification in St. Emilion

In class a couple weeks ago we talked about how rigid the classification system is for the Official Bordeaux Classification (and compared our reliance on it as a centuries old document to that of the US constitution).  Over 150 years there have been a whopping three changes to the classification: one due to lobbying to promote Mouton Rothschild into the highest tier, one due to a winery having to close and the last due to a winery's owner dying and not having a next of kin willing to run the operation.

If this is on one side of the rigidity spectrum, the classification of nearby St. Emilion is on the opposite side.  St. Emilion, probably the next biggest wine growing region in Bordeaux and a very short drive over the river away from Medoc, created its own classification system 100 years after the Official Bordeaux Classification (that's 1955 for those of you who don't remember the numbers like me).  But unlike the Official classification, the St. Emilion classification system is revised and updated every 10 years by rule.  Not surprisingly, this puts quite a bit of onus on St. Emilion wine producers to consistently produce top tier wines, as a set of poor vintages could result in a wine being dropped down a tier, which would have similar results to what we learned in the Chateau Pontet-Canet case.

On the other hand, having this sort of system encourages higher quality wine-making, as the promise of being promoted a tier during the next reclassification provides wineries with both pride and financial motivations to consistently produce higher quality vintages.  A great example of this is Chateau Angelus, which I had the opportunity to visit in 2016.  In 2012, Angelus was promoted to Premier Class A, the highest tier on the St. Emilion classification, after years of producing very high quality wine.  Upon their promotion, the Chateau renovated their winery and added a large bell-tower to celebrate the good news for the winery:







Given the various pros and cons we discussed in regards to the Official Bordeaux Classification never changing, I think studying it in comparison to the St. Emilion classification system and how that impacts both quality and price of wines produced in both regions would be a very interesting study to dig into in greater depth.