This list was seemingly innocuous and quite casual at the time. As Napoleon III was planning on hosting a Universal Exposition in Paris, the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce was solicited to create a list, in descending order, of the top wine producers in this very famous region. The most qualified candidates to fulfill the assignment happened to be the Bordeaux wine brokers, whose knowledge of all of the wine estates and markets buying from them, had been unofficially tracked for centuries. So the wine brokers created a list that ranked top estates from ?1^st Growth? through 5^th Growth?. The list was primarily based on price and, to a lesser extent, reputation and popularity. And just like our current-day system of economics, wine back then was priced according to demand and demand was established because of the quality of a wine. The list became known as the Classification of 1855. For more in-depth information about the Classification of 1855, please visit here: http://www.classof1855.com/The_Classification.html.

Or perhaps tastes are changing from elegant, balanced, superbly crafted wine with character, to huge over-ripe, over-extracted wine that you could drive a truck through for four-wheeling fun. In many cases it doesn?t change the fact that the trend in the past couple of years has seen many lower priced wines from enormous beverage corporations move up in score. Wine Spectator for example has been value oriented for the past eighteen months or more. This is fine for some people but I did not renew my subscription because of this. I would rather have their reviews save me from making a $500 mistake than a $10 mistake when I purchase wine. And because I have experienced very little (if any) drinkable $10 wine, I definitely don?t care to read about it ? sorry man, I?m just not impressed.