What order are the cru's in french appelations?

Question

i.e is it vin de table or vin de pays that is lowest,
which is higher, 1er Cru or Grand Cru?

Answer 1

You really need to make 2 (or even perhaps 3) seperate questions from the one you have posted.

1. Answers to the first question would tell you that not all wine is destined for the table. It is either by design or accident during grape growing or wine making not going to be drunk in the initially finished state. It may be intended all along for Industrial use (distillation into alcohol) or several other uses. These wines are not table wines and are not 'Vins de Table'.

2. The French Wine regulations specify certain technical and quality requirements for table wines, and these themselves are classified according to strict requirements.

'Vin De Pays' comes in as the lower rank of table wines, but covers a wide range of products, some only specify one of 3 very large subdivisions of france such as Vin de pays D'Oc, whereas others would specify a location within " D'Oc" whereas others would specify a sub-location within that. The general rule (not always adhered to) is that the tighter you can pinpoint the actual location then the better quality wine you will be getting.
If a sub location gets regular rave reviews from the pundits many years running it may get promoted to the next level in the classification "Vin's Delimite Qualite Superieur" VDQS Which in term may get promoted to the Highest rank "Appelation Controlle" or AC.

There are many parts of France which have AC wines and many AC's overlap - so that ACs of lower status may cover the broad sweep of land, while inside that broad sweep are smaller pockets with more prestigous ACs. Inside this land the Wine Producer can label his wine according to either providing it meets all the technical requirements for the AC he chooses.

As years go by, the method of promoting or not can be handicapped by bureaucracy and jealousy, denying just promotion. Similarly standards in a VDQS or AC can drop with producers becoming lax, so it is not uncommon for pundits to rate wines from a lower tier as better than some or ,many wines from a higher tier.

3. As an early poster has pointed out, within an AC there may be a local system of prestige built into the local Appellation - but this only applies to that 1 AC.
Bordeaux and Burgundy being the 2 great ACs long written about and compared by British wine writers not only have different systems of classifying their wines internally, but a different structure of ownership, So that bordeaux is based on large estates - with a Chateau as the centre - producing generally a single wine of each type - and the classified status will apply to all. Burgundy on the other hand applies it's classification to large pieces of land now perhaps owned by several wine growers and made into wine by several winemakers - so the same classification will apply to a brilliant wine and a poor wine made in the same year by different winemakers.

The only way to get to grip with it is to keep on drinking it and keep reading reviews.

A final annoying point is that some Appelations have no legislation covering the terms used by Bordeax and Burgundy to express reputed excellence - so in these Appellations producers may use Premier or Grand Cru with absolutely no legal or classified meaning behind them.

Answer 2

Actually it depends from which region the wine is.
Only Bordeaux does the 1st to 5th rankings from 1855, other regions have different classes, but in general a Grand Cru is higher ranked (not necessarily better mind you) than a Premier Cru which is higher ranked than an AC wine.

Answer 3

Grands crus classés are classified in five categories to distinguish even more the best of the best :

Premiers grands crus classés (1st) - Deuxièmes grands crus classés (2nd) - Troisièmes grands crus classés (3rd) - Quatrièmes grands crus classés (4th) - Cinquièmes grands crus classés (5th)

Answer 4

I prefer the French Inhaler.

Answer 5

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