In 1855 Napoleon III wanted a display of French agricultural achievement for the Exposition Universelle in Paris, and asked Bordeaux to produce a ranking of its wines. The Chamber of Commerce had no interest in convening a tasting panel, so it handed the job to the brokers, the men who sat between the chateaux and the merchants and knew what everything had been selling for. They went to their price books and sorted around sixty properties into five bands by the money those wines had been fetching over the preceding decades.
It took a few weeks. It was meant to describe a trade fair exhibit. It has now governed the price of Bordeaux for a hundred and seventy years and has been changed exactly once, when Mouton was moved up in 1973 after fifty years of campaigning.
What the list measured
This is worth being precise about, because the classification is neither a fraud nor a quality guarantee, and both of those readings are common.
What it measured was market price, sustained over time. That is not nothing. A property that consistently sold at the top for decades was doing so because merchants kept paying, and merchants tasted the wine. Price was a reasonable proxy for reputation, and reputation was built on the wine being reliably good on ground that was reliably suited to it.
What it did not measure is anything about today. It did not measure the soil directly, so where a property has since bought or sold land, the ranking follows the name rather than the field. It did not measure winemaking, which has changed beyond recognition. It did not measure the owner, and estates have been bought, neglected, restored and transformed several times over since. A property that has been run carefully for thirty years and one that has coasted are still wearing the same badge.
The other structural point people miss: the bands are narrow and the field was tiny. Bordeaux had thousands of properties. Sixty made the list. A fifth growth is not near the bottom of Bordeaux; it is in the top fraction of one percent, sorted by what merchants were paying in the 1840s.
Which brings us to Cantemerle
Chateau Cantemerle is a fifth growth in the southern Haut-Medoc, in the commune of Macau, which is a genuine coincidence and worth knowing about in this city. It sits on gravel a little inland from the estuary, with a large park around it.
Its relationship with the 1855 list is characteristic of how the whole thing was assembled. Cantemerle was left off the original document entirely, because it had been selling its wine directly into the Dutch market rather than through the Bordeaux brokers, so it did not appear in their price books. The owner objected, produced the sales records, and the property was added by hand to the bottom of the list weeks later. Its position reflects an administrative gap, not a verdict.
What we have
The Chateau Cantemerle range divides in two, and both halves are stocked across a long run of years, which makes it one of the more useful places to learn what age does to claret without paying for the privilege.
The second wine is Les Allees de Cantemerle, made from younger vines and softer lots, and it sits between roughly HK$170 and HK$200 depending on the year: 2016 at around HK$170, 2015 at around HK$185.
The grand vin runs from the mid-2000s onward, mostly between HK$230 and HK$310. The mature end includes 2007 at around HK$260, 2008 at around HK$310 and 2012 at around HK$280, while 2015 at around HK$250 is a younger and more structured year.
What we would pick, and why
The 2012, first, and it is not the most expensive bottle here. 2012 was a middling year on the Left Bank, which is precisely why it is ready. Cabernet from a moderate vintage does not need fifteen years; it needs about ten, and it has had them. What you get is claret doing the thing claret is for, which is tasting of cedar, tobacco and dried fruit rather than of fresh blackcurrant, and doing it at a price that does not require a decision.
The 2008, second, for anyone who wants to see further along the curve. Another quiet vintage, now seventeen years old, and at around HK$310 it is one of the cheaper ways to drink genuinely mature classified-growth Bordeaux anywhere. Mature Bordeaux is a specific taste and not everyone wants it, but nobody should form an opinion without trying one.
Les Allees 2015, third, as the case-buying option. If you need six bottles for a table rather than one for a discussion, a second wine from a good year is the sensible purchase, and the 2015 has enough fruit to survive being drunk alongside strongly flavoured food.
Who this is not for
Cantemerle makes a medium-bodied, restrained, slightly old-fashioned wine. It is not concentrated, not high in alcohol, and not designed to impress in the first sip. Anyone who wants power, sweetness of fruit and a thick texture will find it thin, and will be right about the description and wrong to expect otherwise. Ripe modern Bordeaux exists, it just is not made here.
It is also worth being blunt about the gifting question. A fifth growth is a real classified growth, but the number is the first thing a recipient in Hong Kong will look at, and five reads as low even though the reality is the opposite. If the bottle needs to carry status on its own, the classification will work against you, and no vintage choice fixes that.
Where it earns its place is at a table where the wine is going to be drunk rather than assessed. Across a long dinner it stays in balance, does not tire, and does not fight the food. That is worth more on the night than a bigger wine that peaks in the first glass.