definition of first growth?

[Thomas]

Back in 1787 Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to a wine agent with which he worked. In it he listed his impression of the top Bordeaux wines. The prescient Jefferson's top four was dead-on exact what the French decided in 1855.

It likely wasn't just the price paid for the wines that gave the French the reasoning. It was their affection for Thomas Jefferson and the American Revolution that did it!!!