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Wine Royalty: First Growth Bordeaux

Bordeaux produces an incredible amount of wine on its hallowed ground, but the five reds that have been designated as the "First Growths" are truly revered by wine lovers around the world. If you're not familiar with the term First Growth or if you couldn't name one of them if your life depended on it, just know that they represent many of the wines that you might see on a fine dining establishment's wine list with pricetags in the thousands. Purchasing a younger bottle in a store will only set you back several hundred dollars.

Before discussing the wine in detail, let's quickly cover how these five wines became the First Growths. Remarkably, these wines were given this prestigeous title back in the 19th Century by the famous Classification of 1855. If you want to learn more about this, here's the Wikipedia article on it, but the classification basically ranked the wines of Bordeaux in terms of reputation, price and quality. By the end of the classification, four wines were placed in the top tier, the First Growths. The others were then ranked second, third, fourth and fifth growths.

I know you're saying to yourself, why are there five First Growths today if only four earned the rank back in 1855? Well, in 1973, after years of lobbying the fifth was added.

Here are the First Growths by name:
In case you're wondering, Haut-Médoc and Graves are two famous districts in the "left bank" of Bordeaux, i.e. to the west of the Garonne River and the Gironde Estuary.

So, what do these wines actually smell and taste like to command the First Growth classification and the subsequent pricetag? All Bordeaux are made of a combination of five grapes: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot. Since the five First Growths are from the left bank, their primary grape is Cabernet Sauvignon. But don't expect these wines to taste like the California Cab you're used to.

First, these wines are made for aging, packing enough tannin when it's bottled to make it very difficult to drink without waiting at least several years. When they're ready, the First Growths are all built to be massive, complex and packed with a plethora of flavors and aromas. Without a doubt they're all full-bodied, ultra-rich and tremendously luxurious. If we were looking for differences, Lafite-Rothschild and Margaux are more delicate, Latour and Mouton-Rothschild more powerful and Haut-Brion more earthy. But, no matter what, in the end each is more than worthy of their title, and every wine lover must commit to trying all five before they die.

And, on that note, the biggest wine events in the country will many times feature all five First Growths. We were lucky enough to attend one of these events in the Summer of 2007, and the very intelligent attendees went straight for them once the doors opened. And the wines went fast, so remember that if you have a chance to go to a tasting featuring these legends.

Buy 1998 Château Latour or 2004 Chateau Haut-Brion online.

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