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Bordeaux is the largest Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée in France and one of the largest fine-wine regions in the world (~290,350 acres across some sixty appellations), lying along the Gironde Estuary and its two feeder rivers, the Dordogne and the Garonne, an hour from the Atlantic.

Its maritime climate — tempered by the ocean, the Gulf Stream and the Landes pine forests — is milder and more stable than it would otherwise be, but can be difficult, which is why growing several varieties that ripen at different times spreads the agricultural risk.

Nearly 90 percent of the wine is red, and both red and white Bordeaux are almost always BLENDS of two or more varieties.

Cru Classé ("classified growth") refers to Bordeaux's chateau-level classification systems, the best known being the 1855 Classification commissioned by Napoleon III for the Exposition Universelle de Paris.

It ranked 61 Médoc red-wine chateaux (plus one Graves estate, Château Haut-Brion) into five tiers — First through Fifth Growth — based on the trading price of their wines at the time, and separately ranked Sauternes/Barsac sweet-wine estates into Premier Cru Supérieur (Château d'Yquem alone), Premier Cru, and Deuxième Cru.

The 1855 list has been amended only once (Mouton Rothschild's 1973 promotion to First Growth) and otherwise remains frozen.