As almost everyone knows, the wines of the Medoc were officially classified in 1855 into five categories, and the classification has remained more or less unaltered. Since 1855, Graves, St Emilion and Pomerol have also been awarded ranks, while to the list of classed growths has been added the long coda of crus bourgeois. Thus the French wine trade perpetuates the leading myth of French culture - the myth of the bourgeois as the second-class citizen, the dull, small-minded foil to the flamboyant sensibility of the aristocrat and the artist. Wine snobbery has added its force to Flaubert, Sartre and Foucault, in the great effort to make the ordinary Frenchman look small.
This presents us bourgeoisie with a familiar problem. How do we sneak into the upper echelons without looking ridiculous? How do we grab some of the rewards appropriated by the landowning and brain-owning classes, while holding on to our hard-won cash and our attitude of honest self-sufficiency?
I used to know of only one answer to that question, which was to become an Oxbridge don. For two years, I worked day and night at my fellowship dissertation, reading illiterate crap in philosophy journals and drinking excoriating plonk, in order to enjoy, for a brief period, access to the Fellows' Cellar in Peterhouse. For a few shillings more than I had spent on vin ordinaire, I could obtain Chateau Palmer, Chateau Leoville-Las-Cases and Chateau Ducru-Beaucaillou - rewards that almost made up for the privations of college life.
Since those grim days, another answer to the problem has presented itself. The classed growths of Bordeaux now issue "second wines", allegedly taken from younger vines, or matured in a more "forward" style - but serving in any case to maintain the ludicrously inflated prices of their siblings. Many of these wines are indistinguishable from the official article, and sold at less than half the price - indeed, at a price that matches their quality, sometimes as little as £10 a bottle, compared with £30 or £40 for the bottle with the title.
Two enterprising merchants have done the hard work of selecting these wines and relaying them to the bourgeoisie: Majestic and Lea & Sandeman. The first has the unbeatable second wine of Chateau La Lagune, from the commune of Ludon. This (Le Moulin de Lagune 1999) is a snip at £10.99, and has all the finesse and melody of the third-growth wine whose terroir it shares. Among the bargains at Lea & Sandeman, I would recommend the second wines of Chateau Branaire Ducru (£13.95 by the case) and Chateau Mazeyres (£12.95 by the case) - the latter offering stunning and affordable proof that Pomerol is, at its best, the greatest of all the clarets.
