At long last the Medoc Cru Bourgeois hiatus is over. Following the legal challenges that overthrew the controversial 2003 classification, Frederique de Lamothe, the director of the l’Alliance de Cru Bourgeois du Medoc [www.crus-bourgeois.com] announced last week, after three years of painstaking effort, the first new selection of wines entitled to the Cru Bourgeois name. It is not, in fact, a classification at all this time round, rather a list of those wines that have met a set of standards which entitles them to use the term. 243 Chateau have been selected from a total of 290 that applied for inclusion, a selection made following blind tastings based on the 2008 vintage conducted by a panel made up of professional tasters, this time with no chateau owners involved, one of the main gripes of those who felt unfairly treated in the 2003 classification.