Bordeaux wine lovers may credit the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris and Emperor Napoleon III's "Official Classification" with putting Bordeaux wine on the map. But, it turns out that his grandmother the Empress Josephine, first wife of Napoleon Bonaparte may have ignited French passion for the wine.
Prior to Josephine raising the status of Bordeaux to an elixer fit for nobility, it was seen as an inferior product suitable only for the English who had been stubborn lovers of claret, or red Bordeaux wine, for four centuries. At the time of the French Revolution, Burgundy and Champagne reigned supreme, in fact, not a single bottle of Bordeaux is known to have been kept in the
wine cellars of King Louis XVI.
Empress Josephine's Wine Cellar Continued
