Wine of the Week
CLARET - LOVERS Will have been interested to read about Bordeaux's decision to re- classify the great clarets of the Medoc, but the revision, when it comes, will not mean. any sweeping changes. Everybody knows that the classification of 1855 is out of date, but the Mauriac country is so conservative that revision was only agreed to on condition.that none of the sixty-one named wines is dropped from the Debrett of clarets, and that none of the (many very good) bourgeois growths is admitted. All that will happen is that the five classes will become three, and that there will be some re- shuffling within them : Mouton, for instance, Will certainly go into the highest rank—from marqut- sate to dukedom, so to speak—and I expect that Beychevelle, a fourth growth, will get the promo- tion it deserves. The London-bottled 1953 BeY" chevelle at Harveys is soft, flavoury, and with the typical St. Julien fragrance, and is my wine of the week at 12s., for it is well up to drinking now.
The very notion of classifying clarets seems remote from English experience, but we could learn from the French system of appellations d'origine. The Institute controlling these will have the last word on the revision, as it does on what grapes a named wine is made from, grown in what soil, made by what process. The system depends upon, and fortifies, the Frenchman's respect for his belly and what he puts into it, and the reputa- tion of
same could be done here for loaves of bread
except those who profit by misleading the public' tion of the greatest French wines is bars:if:non:: and pots of jam, to the benefit of everybody
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