Classic French wines are popular with the festive season. But how do you make your way through the forest of terminology? WINELIFE throws you a lifeline. TEXT HUIB EDIXHOVEN
With the holidays in mind, wine lovers tend to go the extra mile. You soon find yourself in regions where labels display all kinds of impressive titles. This can be particularly confusing with classic French wines. Grand Cru, Cru Bourgeois, Premier Cru or even Premier Grand Cru Classé; even the most seasoned aficionado can be dizzy then. Rightly so, you might say, as the logic often seems far-fetched.
If you look at the whole thing from a historical context, it is easier to understand why it works the way it does. Classifications like Grand Cru - whether or not written with capital letters - were once created to rate wines, wineries or vineyards and to convey the perceived quality of the wine. Grand Cru therefore literally means 'great crop'. The tricky thing is just that quite a few different classifications have been created over the years. With this, even a term like Grand Cru has acquired multiple meanings. Moreover, many classifications do not assess the direct quality of the wine, but in most cases the quality potential of a winery, wine region or vineyard. For this reason, you cannot be sure that you have a wine of outstanding quality on your hands. Nevertheless, classifications can indeed help you make a choice in the bazaar of wines from which to choose these days. It is important to realise that classifications like Grand Cru are regional in nature. So on a bottle of Bordeaux, Grand Cru means something different than on a bottle of Bourgogne.
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