2022 · Saint-Émilion

The Saint-Émilion Wine Classification — 2022

Authority

The Institut national de l'origine et de la qualité (INAO), on the proposal of a classification commission made up of professionals and outside experts, at the request of the appellation's wine-growers' syndicate (Conseil des Vins de Saint-Émilion). The INAO's Comité national des appellations d'origine relatives aux vins approved the list on 8 September 2022, and the minister for agriculture homologated it by order on 15 December 2022.

Methodology

Unlike the 1855 classification, Saint-Émilion's rests on a voluntary application renewed roughly every ten years rather than a price hierarchy transcribed once and for all: any estate that wants to enter the classification, or keep its rank, files a dossier examined by a tasting and inspection panel appointed by the INAO. Since the 2012 reform, blind tasting and inspections have been entrusted to bodies independent of the wine-growers' own syndicate (an audit by Bureau Veritas Certification France for the 2022 edition), answering the impartiality complaints that had the 2006 classification struck down by the administrative courts — the 1996 classification then had to be reapplied while the process was overhauled. The 2022 edition, approved by the Comité national des appellations d'origine relatives aux vins on 8 September 2022 and homologated by the arrêté of 15 December 2022, weighs four criteria, with tasted quality and consistency worth half of the final score and the rest covering the estate's reputation and its own characterisation (terroir, production facilities). Unlike 1855: four of the appellation's most prestigious estates did not apply for this edition and so do not appear on the list below: Château Ausone, Château Cheval Blanc and Château Angélus, together with Château La Gaffelière — a Premier Grand Cru Classé B since 1955 — whose owner Alexandre de Malet Roquefort announced its withdrawal in a press release dated 1 June 2022, complaining that the tasting panel was made up of amateurs. Nothing bars any of the four from applying again at the next revision.