Vineyards with rank
France: AOC and Cru systems
In Bordeaux, "Grand Cru" refers to an estate; in Champagne, to an entire village. In Burgundy, however, it means a single parcel, sometimes barely larger than a football pitch. France doesn't have just one Cru system, but many, all grown up side by side.
The pyramid: Vin de France, IGP, AOC
Above all regional peculiarities in France lies a shared three-tier pyramid. At the very bottom sits Vin de France, with virtually no rules on origin. In the middle comes IGP, the Indication Géographique Protégée, covering a larger region with looser rules. At the top stands AOC, the Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée, with strict requirements on grape varieties, maximum yields, and growing area. Since 1935, a dedicated authority, INAO, has overseen this system, founded specifically to protect these place names from misuse after fraudsters had spent decades selling cheap wine under famous labels.
The narrower the region stated on the label, the stricter the rules behind it usually are. A broad appellation like "Bordeaux" allows higher yields and more flexibility than a small, precise commune appellation like "Margaux". This narrowing from broad to specific is really the common thread running through the entire French system. It holds true in Champagne just as much as in Alsace or the Rhône Valley.
Cru simply means: a named, especially good vineyard site
The word Cru literally just means "grown" and originally referred to a particular vineyard or estate with its own character. That's exactly why there's no single national Cru ranking, but rather each major region has its own version that grew historically. What counts as Premier Cru in one region doesn't necessarily mean the same rank elsewhere, the terms aren't interchangeable.
This variety confuses almost everyone at first, but it makes sense once you realize that each region developed its system independently, often over centuries and without consulting its neighbors. Bordeaux ranks entire estates, Champagne used to rank whole villages, and Burgundy ranks individual parcels. So anyone reading a Cru label must always ask first: which region does this term actually come from? And what did people there mean by it when the system was first created?
Bordeaux 1855: a ranking that almost never changed
For the 1855 World's Fair in Paris, Bordeaux was meant to showcase its finest estates, and merchant houses drew up a ranking based on sale prices from recent decades. This gave rise to the famous classification of the Médoc, five tiers from Premier to Cinquième Cru Classé, 61 estates in total. It was based purely on market observation, not on tasting, and that's exactly what later made it so hard to change.
Since 1855, there has been only one official correction. In 1973, Château Mouton-Rothschild rose from second to first growth, after decades of pressure from its owner. Every other rank remains exactly as it was over 170 years ago. Yet soils, owners, and winemaking styles have often changed multiple times since then. Other Bordeaux regions like Saint-Émilion, by contrast, reclassify regularly, with the ranking there changing roughly every ten years, which has already led to several bitter legal disputes between estates that moved down or up.
Burgundy: thousands of parcels, four ranks
Burgundy took a completely different path from Bordeaux: what's ranked isn't the estate, but the individual parcel, called a Climat there. Over centuries, monks and later winegrowers observed which tiny patch of hillside consistently delivered the best grapes, recording it in maps and contracts. UNESCO recognized this tightly woven patchwork of Climats as a World Heritage Site in 2015.
In Burgundy, above the general regional appellation come the village appellation, then Premier Cru, and at the very top Grand Cru, the smallest and most expensive category of all. Two neighboring parcels, often separated by nothing more than a narrow path, can be classified completely differently. Anyone reading a label with a single vineyard name like "Chambertin" holds one of the most tightly defined promises of origin in the entire wine world. Often it comes from an area barely larger than a few football pitches.