Trouble in Paradise

As charming European wine towns go, Saint-Emilion is near the top. We remember with pleasure a rainy February afternoon spent wandering the cobblestoned streets here, drinking in the handsomely turreted architecture and stopping now and then for a bite of the delicious little pastries known as cannelés.

But there's trouble on Bordeaux's right bank. The commission responsible for determining which properties will be permitted to refer to themselves as Grand Cru Classé meets just once every ten years, and in 2006, as generally happens, some properties were promoted to this level and others demoted from it.

But this time a handful of disgruntled demotees sued the commission. Their lawsuit threw the whole reclassification into confusion - to the point where the a decision was made to revert back to the 1996 classification for the next three years.

You can imagine how the folks who were saw their properties promoted in the new classification felt. Many had already spent money creating labels that described their newly-won noble status. They're ripped.

The suit is based on a number of technical issues, some having to do with the composition of the commission and the objectivity of its members. But there are larger issues at stake. Every wine region struggles to create rules that are both apprehendable by consumers and faithful to conditions on the ground. They don't always get it right.

In this case one has to take the phrase "on the ground" quite literally, since it is normally the quality of the vineyard, its situation and soils that makes one wine better than another. While the skills of a vineyard manager and winemaker play a role, a classification should faithfully correspond to terrain.

For more, see Edward Lewine's account of the sorrows of Saint-Emilion in this week's New York Times Magazine.