Cocks & Féret
book
Cocks & Féret, or simply Féret, is the colloquial name of a Bordeaux wine directory originally created by Charles Cocks and Michel-Édouard Féret in 1846, which was published under the name Bordeaux, its Wines and the Claret Country and translated into French and published as the first edition of Bordeaux et ses vins in 1850. It is regarded as the classic reference work on Bordeaux wines, and is to date considered the most comprehensive information source on Bordeaux' wineries.
History
Jean-Baptiste Féret founded the publishing house La Librairie Féret in Bordeaux in 1812, which became Féret et fils in 1841. In 1846 Michel-Édouard Féret approached Charles Cocks, an English schoolmaster and wine enthusiast living in Bordeaux since 1840, to publish a directory of wine aimed at his compatriots. At 84 pages containing historical observations and assessment of Bordeaux wine, Bordeaux, its Wines and the Claret Country was published in London that year.
It was not the first publication dealing solely with Bordeaux wines however, in many ways its forerunner is cited as Traite sur les vins du Medoc (1824) by William Franck.
A French translation was proposed by Féret, which led to Guide de l'étranger à Bordeaux et dans la Gironde. Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite published in 1850, with further emphasis on classifying wines in order of merit. This directory would be considered the first edition of Bordeaux et ses Vins.
Charles Cocks died in 1854, while the second edition, Bordeaux et ses Vins 2ème édition, appeared in 1868, and the succession of publications provide a useful historical record of the evolution of different properties' and districts' reputations.
“Cocks & Féret” enters the record as book. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Cocks, Féret and book can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 15, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q391021. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1846, 1850, 1812 and 1841.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Cocks & Féret” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.