The modern ranking of Bordeaux left-bank wines

A few weeks ago, I looked at what various modern commentators have written about how modern Bordeaux wines compare to the official 1855 Bordeaux Classification of the Médoc châteaux (Making modern sense of the 1855 Bordeaux classification). In that post, I looked only at the five groupings of the châteaux — Premier Crus Classés through to Cinquièmes Crus Classés (First to Fifth Growths),

However, classifications are artificial, because they usually have arbitrary boundaries between the groups. In this case, wine quality varies continuously, and the best wines in one group are therefore not all that different from the worst wines in the next higher group. As I noted in the previous post, no-one wants to be the top château in class 3 instead of the bottom château in class 2.

This issue can easily be circumvented for the Médoc wines, because the original assessment, by the Bordeaux Brokers’ Association, actually ranked the top Haut-Médoc châteaux (as well as putting them into groups). This ranking was intended to be based on quality, as determined by the long-term prices achieved by the various wines.

Obviously, this process can be repeated in the modern world; and so it comes as no surprise that various people have done so. I will be looking at their results here.

Modern ranking schemes

I have compiled the data from a number of modern rankings. These are attempts to rank the châteaux anew, in their modern context, without direct reference to the ranking of 1855. However, it is worth noting that this procedure is somewhat confounded by the fact that the current prices are influenced by the 1855 ranking in the first place.

In all cases, these rankings are derived from a calculated score of some sort.

1. Gary M. Thompson and Stephen A. Mutkoski (2011) Reconsidering the 1855 Bordeaux classification of the Médoc and Graves using wine ratings from 1970-2005. Journal of Wine Economics 6: 15-36. The list was based on the quality scores from three expert wine ratings (Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, International Wine Cellar). The châteaux ranking was then derived from a regression analysis incorporating a number of relevant factors.
2. Albert Di Vittorio and Victor Ginsburgh (1996) Pricing red wines of Médoc vintages from 1949 to 1989 at Christie's auctions. Journal de la Société Statistique de Paris 137: 19-49. Based on auction sales prices from 1980–1992. The châteaux ranking was derived from a regression analysis incorporating a number of relevant factors.
3. (a) Orley Ashenfelter (1988) A new and objective ranking of the chateaux of Bordeaux (based on auction prices, of course!). Liquid Assets 5: 1–9. (b) Orley Ashenfelter (1997) A new objective ranking of the chateaux of Bordeaux. Liquid Assets 13: 1-6. These two lists were based on average auction sale prices from 1985–1988 and 1994–1996, respectively. I averaged the two listed scores for each château.
4. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 Index tracks the trading-exchange prices of 100 top wines (95% of which are from Bordeaux). Rankings of the Bordeaux châteaux, based on average prices over the previous 2-5 years, were produced in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. I have taken the average of these list prices. Sadly, the 2017 list has only 48 châteaux, not 60, with only five 5th growths listed — the text says “5eme – £250 to £312” but the list has nothing < £274.

This provides us with nine separate rankings of the wines, based on:

1. auction prices 1980–1992 2. auction prices 1985–1988 3. auction prices 1994–1996 4. wine-exchange prices 2003–2007 5. wine-exchange prices 2005–2009

6. wine-exchange prices 2007–2011 7. wine-exchange prices 2009–2013 8. wine-exchange prices 2016–2017 9. wine-quality ratings 1970–2005

Obviously some of these price periods overlap, which will give extra weight to data from the duplicated years. Also, the ninth ranking is based on expertly assessed quality, which is only loosely related to price. Nevertheless, combining these rankings still seems like a worthwhile exercise; and so this is what I will do below.

Another issue is: exactly which châteaux were included in each ranking. For my purposes here, the number varies from 58–68, out of a total list of 70 châteaux. The differences stem from the slightly different purposes of the authors, and what data were available to them. There were 61 châteaux from the original 1855 list (it started at 58, in 1855, but some estates have been sub-divided and others combined), plus nine extra châteaux that make it into the rankings of various of the researchers, based on the modern quality of the wines.

Comparing the rankings

So, when comparing these nine modern rankings, the number of times each château has been ranked varies. Two-thirds of the châteaux (46 / 70) appear in all of the rankings, and 65 / 70 appear in more than half of the rankings, but some château appear only rarely (eg. the small estate Château Desmirail appears only twice, even though it was included in 1855).

In order to address these inequalities, each ranking scheme was converted to a proportion from 0 to 1, before being compared to the other rankings. The ranking schemes can then be compared most easily using the standard Correlation coefficient.

First, the correlations among repeat rankings by the same people are all >80%, and actually go up to 97% (Liv-ex 2013 versus Liv-ex 2015). So, at least we can say that the researchers are consistent through time — once they get a ranking they pretty much stick to it!

Second, in most cases the correlations between people are much lower, in the range 50–70%. This is still quite high, as a half to two-thirds of the variation in rankings is shared between the researchers. The cause of the variation that is not shared is not discernible in any detail, other than to say that the different sources of prices clearly have some effect.

The main exceptions to this point are the correlations between the ranking of Di Vittorio & Ginsburgh and the two rankings by Ashenfelter, which are 91-93%. These are based on auction prices covering the years 1980 to 1996, and so it is perhaps no surprise that they produce very similar rankings of the châteaux. Oddly, though, the correlation between the rankings of Ashenfelter 1988 and 1997 is only 83%, indicating that there are numerous small changes in the rankings over the decade separating the two.

Of these modern rankings, we might expect that the Ashenfelter and Di Vittorio & Ginsburgh rankings would most closely match the procedure allegedly used by the Bordeaux Brokers’ Association to produce the 1855 ranking. However, this does not mean that they closely match that ranking. Indeed, the correlations of the modern rankings with the 1855 ranking are mostly 30–40% (actual range 29–47%). That is, only about one-third of the variation in today's rankings matches the situation in 1855 — there is much more difference than there is similarity.

The modern ranking

So, what might a new ranking look like? Given that there is more similarity than difference among the modern rankings, we could simply combine them, by calculating the average rank for each château across the nine rankings. I have included the final list at the bottom of this post.

We can get a feel for this combined ranking by using a simple stripe plot, as show next. Each vertical stripe represents one of the 70 châteaux, with the average-rank scores increasing from left (best) to right (last).

Based on what we see here, we could, if we wanted, group the châteaux, although it would not be into five classes, as was done in 1855. Three main groups would be practical, although the second and third of these could then be further sub-divided.

There would be 13 châteaux in the top class, with no distinction between First Growth and Second Growth, as there was in 1855 (five First and 14 Second). This seems to accord with modern opinion, that the best of the Seconds are not less than the Firsts.

There are also three châteaux at the bottom of the ranking that probably should not be included in the list, as being consistently inferior these days: Château Cos Labory, Château Belgrave, and Château Lynch-Moussas.

Finally, we can visually compare this modern ranking with that of 1855. The dots at the left represent the châteaux ranks in 1855 (from bottom to top), and these are connected by lines to their position in the 2019 ranking. The gaps in the 2019 ranking represent those châteaux that were not ranked in 1855, while the groups of 2–3 dots in the 1855 ranking represent those properties that have since been sub-divided.

Note that at the top of the list (the bottom of the figure) there have been only local changes in the ordering. However, elsewhere there have been wholesale changes in rank order. As noted above, there is much more difference than there is similarity in the two lists.

Of course, who knows what will happen next, if global climate change has the expected effects on the wine industry. Check with your local wine blogger in 10 years’ time.

---

Ranking of the Médoc châteaux
based on the average ranks from the nine modern rankings

Château Latour
Château Lafite-Rothschild
Château Mouton Rothschild
Château Margaux
Château Haut-Brion
Château La Mission-Haut-Brion
Château Palmer
Château Léoville-Las Cases
Château Cos d'Estournel
Château Ducru-Beaucaillou
Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande
Château Montrose
Château Lynch-Bages
—————————————————————
Château Pichon Longueville Baron
Château Pape-Clément
Château Léoville-Barton
Château Beychevelle
Château Léoville-Poyferré
Château Haut-Bailly
Château Calon-Ségur
Château Gruaud-Larose
Château Grand-Puy-Lacoste
Château Pontet-Canet
Château Rauzan-Ségla
Château La Lagune
Domaine de Chevalier
Château Lascombes
Château Branaire-Ducru
Château Smith-Haut-Lafite
Château Duhart-Milon-Rothschild
Château Giscours
Château Saint-Pierre
Château Talbot
Château Malescot St. Exupéry
Château Brane-Cantenac
Château Langoa-Barton
Château Chasse-Spleen [doubtful position due to few data]
Château Clerc-Milon
Château d'Issan
Château Cantenac-Brown
Château d'Armailhac [aka Mouton Baronne Philippe]
—————————————————————
Château Lagrange
Château Cantemerle
Château Haut-Batailley
Château Boyd-Cantenac
Château Prieuré-Lichine
Château Batailley
Château Gloria
Château Kirwan
Château Rauzan-Gassies
Château Haut-Marbuzet
Château Durfort-Vivens
Château Ferrière
Château Malartic-Lagravière
Château Grand-Puy-Ducasse
Château Haut-Bages-Libéral
Château Marquis de Terme
Château Lafon-Rochet
Château Pédesclaux
Château Marquis d'Alesme Becker
Château Pouget
Château du Tertre
Château Croizet Bages
Château La Tour-Carnet
Château Desmirail [doubtful position due to few data]
Château Dauzac
Château de Camensac
—————————————————————
Château Cos Labory
Château Belgrave
Château Lynch-Moussas

The Len Evans effect

Some of you will know who Len Evans was, but most of you will not. In a very practical sense, he almost single-handedly kick-started modern wine culture in Australia.

Wikipedia has this to say:

He became the first regular wine columnist in Australia (1962) [under the byline Cellarmaster], he was the founding director of the Australian Wine Bureau (1965), and he wrote the first major encyclopedia of Australian wine (1973) [Australia and New Zealand Complete Book of Wine]. He was one of the first leaders to recognise that the future of Australian wine lay in table wines rather than in the sweet fortified wines in which the country then specialized.

Len Evans (1930–2006) rose through the ranks of the hospitality industry in the early 1960s at the Chevron-Hilton hotel in Sydney, which at that time was the largest accommodation / dining complex in Australia. Having become the Chevron’s Executive Assistant Manager, on 1 January 1965 he moved over to work for what was then called the Australian Wine Board (in 1981 it became Wine Australia). This was (and is) the government authority over-seeing the Australian wine industry.

Evans was the first National Promotions Executive, tasked with making wine public relations a proactive affair. His response to his appointment was to establish the Wine Information Bureau, with himself as Director, which promoted Australian wine in all forms of the media, as well as conducting tastings and wine classes throughout the country.

The Bureau didn't just promote wine, it helped change the face of of the Australian wine industry, because the time was ripe. Wine was starting to rise in popularity elsewhere in the English-speaking world, in Europe and North America; and new immigrants brought their table-wine culture with them, as did locals taking part in the rise of international tourism. In mid-1960s Australia, fortified wines (locally called “sherry”) outsold table wines 6:1, and still out-sold wine even into the mid-1970s; but those days are now long gone. This was the Len Evans effect, which we can officially date from the beginning of 1965.

The following graph shows the annual consumption of alcohol in Australia per adult (the data are from the Annual Database of Global Wine Markets). Note that the data do not refer to the volume of the drinks themselves, since beer has much less alcohol than does wine, while spirits has much more.

Very little changed regarding Australian beer and wine consumption during the century before World War II (ie. 1845–1945). Wine alcohol consumption averaged c. 1.1 liters per adult across the century, with beer at c. 3.7 liters per adult. Spirits consumption, on the other hand, had a huge mid-1800s boom, followed by a steady decline all the way until the War, after dropping below beer at the turn of the century.

Immediately after the war-time disruption, Australia rapidly became a beer-drinking nation; and its international reputation probably still reflects that (eg. Crocodile Dundee). However, beer consumption has shown a steady decline since 1975, and it is now back to the pre-War levels.

Wine consumption, on the other hand, showed a steady rise from 1965, reaching its zenith in 2006 (rising from 1.5 to 5 liters of alcohol per adult). It is not a coincidence that Len Evans started his promotional work in 1965, but it presumably is a coincidence that he died in 2006 — he was spared seeing the following slump to the current level (c. 3.5 liters per adult).

Anyway, the Len Evans effect could not be clearer. He was the catalyst that turned a previously esoteric interest in wine into a national pastime.

Len Evans

If you want to know more about the man himself, then there is a published biography, Evans on Earth: the Story of Len Evans’ Affair with Wine (Jeremy Oliver, 1992), although the author calls it “a chronicle of stories told by Evans and others”. More stories are told in the posthumously published Not My Memoirs (Len Evans, 2012). As well as Wikipedia (linked above), Kim Bresach has also provided a neat summary of the various facets of Evans’ complex life (writer, retailer, restauranter, winery owner).

I never met the man, but he intersected with my own early personal experiences in the world of wine, which I will mention here.

His 1973 Australia and New Zealand Complete Book of Wine went through five editions, ending in 1990 as Len Evans’ Complete Book of Australian Wine. My first wine book was the 1984 edition, all 791 pages of it.

Inevitably, among many other things, Evans established a winery, called the Rothbury Estate (see Rothbury Estate: the Evans years) — the vineyards started in 1968 and the winery finished in 1971. Being Len Evans, this was not done by half measures — this was to be the major icon of the Hunter Valley wine region (now a couple of hours north of Sydney), and the winery is still spectacular. For example, the winery has a massive Great Cask Hall, where celebrations for 200 people could be held by candlelight. Indeed, my own cousins, the jazz musicians John and James Morrison, recorded an album at one of these winery events, way back in 1985.

There was a Rothbury Estate Society, which attracted thousands of members (including myself), many of whom attended these riotous events (not myself), always led by Evans himself. There were ribbons issued for attaining various levels of vinous expertise, the fourth (and highest) being notoriously hard to achieve. Annual wine-tasting packs were also available for mail order, along with a cassette-tape of comments from The Master — indeed, the first tasting I ever organized was based around one of these packs. Why do not more wineries try this educational marketing ploy?

The white wines, in particular, were excellent; but, sadly, like many Evans schemes, this one was simply too grand. The winery was massively over-capitalized; the vineyards were principally planted to red varieties just when Australian wine tastes were changing strongly to white; many of the vines were planted in the wrong places; the Estate was too big to be boutique but not big enough to be a major winery; and the Hunter Valley had a series of drought years. After many attempts to salvage something from the scheme, the public company was eventually bought by one of the wine conglomerates, and the label eventually disappeared. The winery is still a major icon within the Hunter Valley, however, now part of Hope Estate (and, yes, Elton John will play there next January, as part of his final tour).

Indeed, I have always considered the Hunter Valley to be Evans’ major blind spot. Yes, the region produces some excellent wines, in certain styles and in certain years, and it is probably the world’s premier region for Sémillon (certain parts of France notwithstanding). But is was never going to be The Major Grape-Growing Region of Australia, because it is simply too warm and too erratically dry. In Evans' old age, the up-and-coming regions were all in much cooler locations, either way down south or up in the hills; and this trend has continued unabated since then. The Hunter Valley remains as a major tourist destination from Sydney, but it is not a major wine-making region (and climate change is only making the dryness worse, and the future more bleak).

Finally, those people who do know of Len Evans often know him through his Theory of Consumption:

You have only so many bottles in your life, never drink a bad one.

There are a number of copies reprinted from the original 1979 explanatory text, scattered around the web (eg. here and here). It is worth reading.

Also, Evans is widely credited with inventing the Options Game. This is a (dinner-party) entertainment in which the assembled guests are confronted by the host with a series of multiple-choice questions about a mystery glass of wine. If they give a wrong answer, the guests are progressively eliminated, to yield a winner. At the end of the game, the wine’s identity is, of course, revealed.

Can we trust between-country or between-state comparisons of wine costs?

There are lots of organizations who like to make comparisons between groups of people, whether they are in different states of the USA or different countries in Europe. The prices of this or that are compared, or we are told about health and behavior. Some of these organizations are governmental or semi-governmental, and have access to official information, while others are motivated more by profit.

In this post, I point out that even semi-governmental data are sometimes apparently rubbish. And my investigation of this also shows that the cheapest place to buy United States wine is not always in the USA itself.

Sometimes, the results of these comparisons surprise people. For example, a recent Wine-Searcher between-state comparison of wine prices within the USA (The price of state control for wine) showed that the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board does very well, price-wise, in spite of having a government-mandated retail monopoly. Some people hate monopolies on principle, but this does not mean that the customers are hard done-by.

This type of situation is one that I have discussed before, in terms of the retail price of wine in Sweden (Why is wine often cheaper in Sweden than elsewhere?). In that previous post, I pointed out that Sweden's sole wine retailer (called Systembolaget) essentially has a fixed mark-up percentage on all wine, rather than having the mark-up vary from cut-to-the-bone loss leaders (at the bottom end of wine prices) to complete rip-offs at the top end of the scale.

This means that mid-price and high-price wines are cheaper in Sweden than they are elsewhere, often much cheaper. This situation potentially disadvantages the inexpensive wines, since their prices cannot be discounted, but this can be off-set by negotiating the producer’s or importer’s price based on the sheer volume of sales — Systembolaget is reportedly the third largest alcohol retail chain in the world.

Anyway, you can imagine my surprise when I read the recent Eurostat report called: How alcohol prices vary across the EU. This report is backed by the European Commission, so it carries considerable official weight. What it tries to tell me is that Sweden is the third most expensive country for alcohol, among the 28 countries in the European Union (EU), with a pretty big drop to fourth place (as shown in the graph).

Click to enlarge

The numbers in the graph are called Price Level Indices, and are relative measures of cost — the EU average is set at 100. For further comparison, there are another four European countries that are not (yet) part of the EU but are members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), whose scores are: Iceland (268), Norway (252), Switzerland (118), and Liechtenstein (n/a). Including these countries, Sweden drops from third to fifth.

Needless to say, I am not going to take this claim lying down. I cannot accept a set of data that flatly contradicts my own personal experience; at least, not without some investigation. Since I cannot investigate the Eurostat data, the only thing I can do is investigate my own subjective experience, by putting it on a quantitative footing.

To do this, I have chosen a set of wines, covering the range of possible prices and origins, and compared their prices between Sweden and elsewhere in the EU, and in some cases elsewhere in the world, as well. Below, I have included a few figures and tables reporting my results. In all cases, the objective data completely support my own subjective experience.

The data

The wine prices all come from Wine-Searcher. I do not subscribe to this service, so the only prices I have included are those made freely available. Sometimes the prices reported by Wine-Searcher include sales tax, and sometimes they don’t.

The following graphs are all stripe plots, in which the horizontal axis is the bottle price in Swedish kronor (10 SEK ≈ $US1), and each vertical stripe represents one retail store. In each case, the arrow highlights the Systembolaget price.

I chose six wines for my main comparison — an EU wine and an imported wine for each of three prices classes.

Trying to do this exercise for cheap wines from Europe is a bit tricky, because they usually come from wine co-operatives, and they are either: available in only a few countries, or are marketed under different names in different countries. So, to start, I simply chose the cheapest bottled white wine in Systembolaget that is also available elsewhere:

Casal Garcia Branco, Vinho Verde, Portugal

The graph shows that there are data for 61 stores (from 19 countries) in the EU, plus 7 stores (from 2 countries) in the EFTA. The Systembolaget price is ranked 26th, a long way from the most expensive price.

An imported cheap wine is a bit easier to find. I simply chose the Australian red wine that I had purchased most recently:

Jacob's Creek Classic Shiraz - Cabernet Sauvignon, South Eastern Australia

There are data for 59 stores (from 17 countries) in the EU, plus 5 stores (from 3 countries) in the EFTA. The Systembolaget price is ranked 33rd, much less than the most expensive prices..

Moving on to a higher priced wine from Europe, I once again simply chose the one that I had purchased most recently:

2006 R. Lopez de Heredia Viña Tondonia 'Viña Bosconia' Reserva, Rioja DOCa, Spain

Here, there are data for 21 stores (from 14 countries) in the EU, plus 2 stores (from 1 country) in the EFTA. The Systembolaget price ranks 2nd, behind a store in Spain itself. This is exactly what I described above for mis-priced wines.

Similarly, for a higher priced imported wine, I simply chose the United States wine that I had purchased most recently:

2016 Michael David Winery 'The Seven Deadly Zins' Zinfandel, Lodi, USA

The issue with this choice of wine is that only two other European countries import it, Denmark and Norway. So, in the top half of the graph I have included prices from all other countries except the USA, which comprises 12 prices (from 7 countries), including Canada, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore. Note that Systembolaget has the cheapest price of all of these countries.

In this case, we should also compare this wine to the prices in its homeland. The bottom half of the graph shows the prices from 62 stores within the USA itself (there are only 12 distinct prices). In this case, the Systembolaget price is raked 26th. That is, this wine is cheaper in Sweden than half of the US prices! And note, the Systembolaget price includes delivery to my nearest shop, whereas the US prices often exclude delivery — that's not bad, considering the cost of transporting the wine across the Atlantic Ocean. Systembolaget really does sell alcohol without regard to profit motive.

Now, we can move on to even higher price brackets. For an expensive European wine, I simply chose the most expensive wine from my local bottle shop (liquor store / off-licence):

2016 Marchesi Antinori Tignanello Toscana IGT, Tuscany, Italy

There are data for 61 stores (from 23 countries) in the EU, plus 7 stores (from 3 countries) in the EFTA. The Systembolaget price is the cheapest, as expected.

Finally, we come to an expensive imported wine. I chose a United States wine that is available in several European countries (many expensive US wines are available only in the United Kingdom). So, we have:

2016 Sine Qua Non 'Rätsel' Syrah, California, USA

There are data for 14 stores (from 7 countries) in the EU, plus 2 stores (from 3 countries) in the EFTA. The Systembolaget price is easily the cheapest (as shown in the top half of the graph).

In this case, we can also compare the wine to the prices in its homeland. The bottom half of the graph shows the prices from 31 stores in the USA. In this case, the Systembolaget price is ranked 13th. Once again, this wine is cheaper in Sweden than half of the US prices!

So, there you have it — the more expensive the wine then the better is the Systembolaget price compared to elsewhere in Europe, just as I have always believed.

Finally, I decided to go one better than this, and I also looked at 15 older wines that became available in Systembolaget during 2018–2019, which I defined as: >12 vintages old without being the current release. I have included a table of these results below. However, in summary:

• twice, Systembolaget is the only shop listed
• nine times, Systembolaget has the cheapest price
• once, a French wine is cheaper in France than in Systembolaget
• once, an Italian wine is cheaper in Italy than in Systembolaget
• twice, the competing wine prices reported do not include sales tax (usually 20-25%), whereas the Systembolaget price does — allowing for this, the Systembolaget price is cheapest
• the sole US wine is cheaper in Systembolaget than it is in the USA, after allowing for taxes.

Conclusion

So, I feel that I am right — Sweden is the place to be in Europe, if you like fine wines and care about your budget. You could also get your US wines here, even if happen to live in the USA.

How is it happening, then, that the authorities do not know this? I have read and re-read the description of how Eurostat produced their data (I have quoted it at the bottom of this post), and I cannot for the life of me see where they are going wrong. The only possibility that I can see is that beer and / or spirits are muddying the waters, since these are included in their calculations. However, it seems to me that Systembolaget does very well there, too, mainly due to its superior purchasing power.

---

Here are the extra 15 wines, listed in vintage order. In each case the store providing the price is listed, along with its location. The prices are in Swedish kronor, with the Systembolaget price highlighted. Those prices that exclude tax are noted.

---

Eurostat calculations

Price level indices (PLIs) as presented in this publication are the ratios of PPPs to exchange rates. They provide a measure of the differences in price levels between countries by indicating for a given product group the number of units of common currency needed to buy the same volume of the product group or aggregate in each country. The PLI for a given country is calculated as its purchasing power parity (PPP) divided by its annual average exchange rate to the euro. This implies that exchange rate movements have an impact on the PLIs.

Purchasing power parities (PPPs) are price relatives that show the ratio of the prices in national currencies of the same good or service in different countries. For example, if the price of a hamburger in France is EUR 2.84 and in the United Kingdom it is GBP 2.20, the PPP for hamburgers between France and the United Kingdom is EUR 2.84 to GBP 2.20, or EUR 1.29 to the pound. In other words, for every pound spent on hamburgers in the United Kingdom, EUR 1.29 would have to be spent in France in order to obtain the same quantity and quality – or volume – of hamburgers.

Making modern sense of the 1855 Bordeaux classification

Everyone who is anyone in the wine world has had something to say about the official 1855 Bordeaux Classification of the Médoc wines. Mainly, however, this classification is 165 years out of date, and it completely ignores the concept of terroir — it was the wineries (châteaux) that were classified, not the vineyards.

For most wine drinkers, the only current consequence of the 1855 classification is that it ensures that the châteaux wines are no longer affordable, even at the lower levels of the ranking. However, occasionally, some people have had a go at producing an updated version of this classification of the Châteaux, one that might have more relevance than the merely historical significance of the original document.

In this post, I want to draw a simple picture that shows how similar or dissimilar some of these modern classifications are to each other, as well as to the original of 1855.

Background

In 1855 the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce requested the Bordeaux Brokers’ Association to rank and classify the top Haut-Médoc châteaux according to quality, ranking them into five categories. This was done for use at the Exposition Universelle de Paris, the world’s fair of the day.

So, the châteaux were listed in rank order, based on the long-term prices achieved by the various wines, plus some local politicking (the prestige of the wine and the owner, etc). Château Cantemerle was then added to the end of the list in 1856. These wine producers are collectively referred to as the Cru Classé. They were grouped into these five classes:

Premier Crus Classés
Deuxièmes Crus Classés
Troisièmes Crus Classés
Quatrièmes Crus Classés
Cinquièmes Crus Classés

These are usually referred to in English as the First to Fifth Growths, respectively.

If you want to read more about all of this, then Dewey Markham has written a book on the subject, with every conceivable detail of the Bordeaux classifications of wine both before and after 1855 (1855: a History of the Bordeaux Classification. John Wiley & Sons, 1997). See also this review: The 1855 Bordeaux Classification: genius or inertia?

The topic is obviously of some importance to the vignerons of Bordeaux; and indeed “1855” has recently been copyrighted under European law. The classification continues to play a large part in contemporary wine lore, and it seems to be a big determinant of wine prices — eg. the five First Growths sell for 3-6 times the price of the best-regarded Second Growths, even though it is widely acknowledged by wine critics that today they are not much better in quality.

However, it is preposterous to imagine that this ancient ranking could still apply unchanged today. For example, at the time the wines were first classified, the total amount of cultivated land owned by the 61 chateaux was 2,650 hectares — today, they cumulatively own almost 3,500 hectares of vines (a 30% increase). Much of this land has changed hands over the past century, often several times. Notably, Château Gloria is not a Cru Classé (ie. it was not included on the 1855 list), but today its vineyards all come from plots of lands that were originally part of Cru Classé estates.

Similarly, since 1855 the original list has actually increased, from 58 to 61. Three estates, “Léoville”, “Pichon” and “Batailley”, have been split into several châteaux (3, 2 and 2, resspectively), while two originally separate names, “Pouget” and “Pouget-Lassale”, have since been combined into one. Also, the “Dubignon” estate has disappeared, with its vineyards now part of other properties. Château Mouton-Rothschild was moved from Second Growth to First Growth, by presidential decree in 1973.

As a result, modern prices sometimes deviate greatly from the 1855 status. For example, the Fifth Growth Château Pontet-Canet now charges as much as many of the Second Growth châteaux (eg. Punching above its weight class: Chateau Pontet Canet), and Third Growth Château Palmer is more expensive than most Second Growths.

Re-assessing the classification

Naturally, some people have not taken this situation lying down, and they have done something about developing a ranking and classification that has a bit more contemporary relevance.

To re-assess the classification, in the modern world, the simplest thing to do would be to throw the whole thing out and start again. The obvious way to do this would be to create a new classification based on current wine prices, since this was the method originally used by the Bordeaux wine brokers in 1855. However, this is confounded by the fact that the current prices are influenced by the 1855 classification in the first place! So, many modern wine commentators have not done this — they have simply modified the old classification in some subjective way of their own.

One important point to keep in mind is that classifications usually have arbitrary boundaries between the groups. In this case, wine quality varies continuously, and yet the châteaux have been arranged into discrete groups. To a great extent this is arbitrary, because the best wines in one group are not all that different from the worst wines in the next higher group. This has always been the fundamental limitation of any classification system. No-one wants to be the top château in class 3 instead of the bottom château in class 2!

Anyway, I have compiled the data from a number of modern rankings and classifications. These first ones are subjective re-classifications by wine experts (the list in intended to be exhaustive).

1. Alexis Lichine (1979) Guide to the Wines and Vineyards of France. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Lichine’s classification was first published in 1962, and revised in 1966. Later revisions followed, until the last version was published in 1985, although the final classification was actually dated to 1978.
2. Patrick Dussert-Gerber (1988) Guide des Vins de France 1989. Paris: Albin Michel.
3. Robert M. Parker (1990) Les Vins de Bordeaux. Paris: Solar.
4. Clive Coates (1995) Grands Vins: the Finest Châteaux of Bordeaux and their Wines. University of California Press, Berkeley. This classification has only four groups, not five, and first appeared in 1982. A later classification has only three groups.

The next group consists of attempts to rank the châteaux anew, in their modern context, without direct reference to 1855. In all cases, the rankings are derived from a calculated score of some sort. In each case I have grouped the rankings into five classes, based on gaps in the scores at appropriate spots.

1. Gary M. Thompson and Stephen A. Mutkoski (2011) Reconsidering the 1855 Bordeaux classification of the Médoc and Graves using wine ratings from 1970-2005. Journal of Wine Economics 6: 15-36. The list was based on the quality scores from three expert wine ratings (Wine Advocate, Wine Spectator, International Wine Cellar). The châteaux ranking was then derived from a regression analysis incorporating a number of relevant factors.
2. Albert Di Vittorio and Victor Ginsburgh (1996) Pricing red wines of Médoc vintages from 1949 to 1989 at Christie's auctions. Journal de la Société Statistique de Paris 137: 19-49. Based on auction sales prices from 1980–1992. The châteaux ranking was derived from a regression analysis incorporating a number of relevant factors.
3. (a) Orley Ashenfelter (1988) A new and objective ranking of the chateaux of Bordeaux (based on auction prices, of course!). Liquid Assets 5: 1–9. (b) Orley Ashenfelter (1997) A new objective ranking of the chateaux of Bordeaux. Liquid Assets 13: 1-6. These two lists were based on average auction sale prices from 1985–1988 and 1994–1996, respectively. I averaged the two listed scores for each château.
4. The Liv-ex Fine Wine 100 Index tracks the trading-exchange prices of 100 top wines (95% of which are from Bordeaux). Rankings of the Bordeaux châteaux, based on average prices over the previous 2-5 years, were produced in 2009, 2011, 2013, 2015, and 2017. I have taken the average of these list prices. Sadly, the 2017 list has only 48 châteaux, not 60, with only five 5th growths listed — the text says “5eme – £250 to £312” but the list has nothing < £274.

A comparison of these classifications

For my data analysis in this post, I have restricted myself to the 5-class classification rather than the châteaux rankings, so that the scale for each château is 1-5 for each of the eight new classifications. There are missing data, because not all of the châteaux were classified by all of the authors.

As I have done for previous posts of this type, I have used a network to visualize the data, with the network being used as a form of exploratory data analysis. This is intended to provide a quick visual overview of the relationships among the classifications.

Technical note. I first used the gower similarity to calculate the similarity of the different classification systems, based on the châteaux classes. This was followed by a neighbor-net analysis to display the between-classification similarities as a phylogenetic network. More information about interpreting these networks can be found at my post: How to interpret splits graphs.

The network for the eight classifications is shown in the graph. Each classification scheme is represented by a dot in the network. Schemes that are closely connected in the network are similar to each other based on their grouping of the various châteaux, and those that are further apart (as measured along the lines) are progressively more different from each other.

The first thing to note is that there are long terminal lines for most of the classifications, with only relatively small edges connecting to each other in the center of the network. This emphasizes that each classification has its own unique features, and that they actually share relatively little in common. Indeed, even a quick look at the data shows that the classifications really only agree on the First and Second Growth châteaux — below that in the ranking, it is a bit of a free-for-all. This lack of uniformity between the classifications makes wine classification look distinctly more like an art than a science.

Anyway, the “spider-web” of lines in the center of the network does, indeed, tell us some things.

First, the Ashenfelter and Vittorio classifications are the most similar in the network. This is not unexpected, because they were based on auction prices over roughly the same periods of time.

The Dussert-Gerber classification has some things in common with both the Parker and the Coates classifications, but apparently somewhat different things. These are subjective classifications, remember.

The Thompson and Liv-ex classifications also share some things in common, which may seem a bit odd, since they are based on different criteria (quality scores versus prices, respectively). However, the other auction-price-based classifications (Ashenfelter and Vittorio) come from a couple of decades earlier than the Liv-ex prices, which presumably accounts for its distinction from them.

Finally, all of the classifications are very different from them 1855 one, but the two classifications that share the most with it are the ones from Lichine and Liv-ex, with Lichine’s actually being slightly closer. This was Lichine’s stated objective: a marriage of the old and the new. He seems to have achieved that; but more recent classifiers think that the Bordeaux classification needs more radical re-arrangement.

Conclusion

In this post, I have restricted myself to the classification — that is, the five groups. However, the original 1855 list was also a ranking, and many of the modern re-assessments also provide ranks. This may actually be more relevant to modern wine drinkers than are the groupings, and so I will look at these rankings in a future post.