The Infinite Variety of Bordeaux

"Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety." 

That’s what Shakespeare said about Cleopatra and while I never knew Cleopatra, you could say pretty much the same about the wines of Bordeaux.  There are a lot of them.  In fact, the infinite variety can be downright confusing.  How to sort out all the subregions of Bordeaux into some sensible framework would confuse Einstein, who concerned himself with simpler stuff like the theory of relativity.  But that didn’t stop the French.

Let’s go way back.  All the way back to France in 1855.  Napoleon III was running France in those days, if you can imagine anyone running France.  For some reason, he got the bright idea (probably after a second bottle of wine) to have the winemakers of Bordeaux rate their wines from top to bottom.  Think of this.  The winemakers have to meet, decide amongst themselves whose wines were best, second best, and so on.  Those meetings must have been insane.  And since they all were winemakers, I’m pretty certain they were drinking during the meetings, too.  There must have been a more sensible way to accomplish wine rankings, but history tells us they never found it.

What did they come up with?  You will be incredibly sorry you asked that question because there is no straightforward, logical way to explain the whole mess.  But we’re going to try anyway.