Okay, so just to add another level of confusion to Saint Emilion (see previous blog entries, last week), the government has just come out with a stop-gap measure, released on July 9 2008, that allows chateaux to write « grand cru classé » and « premier grand cru classé » on their labels for harvests from 2006 and up to 2009, as long as they had those classifications in the previous, 1996 classification.
This will hold true (apparently) until a new classification can be done, expected in 2009 or 2010.
For me, this again punishes those who worked hard and were promoted in 2006, and allows those ones who lost their classification to keep using the label.
But I guess it's a step forward for the majority of chateaux, and lessens the negative impact of last week's decision from a commercial point of view.
Good old Bordeaux (France)... never happier than when turning a simple decision into a mass of bureaucracy...
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