Separating the great from the not so great

More than any other country in the world, France loves to rate her vineyards and her wines. Several of the major French wine regions have their own powerful and often complex classification systems that rank vineyards and/or wine. Bordeaux alone has four separate regional classification systems. Though the classifications are controversial and the rankings are usually fiercely debated, no one in France, it seems, thinks of doing away with them.