(Wine-Searcher) - Three years after a new classification, the courts could send the chateaux back to square one.

The bloodletting is beginning all over again in Saint-Émilion, as a new episode of a saga that has been simmering – and occasionally boiling over – for years hits the courts.

The classification has been in dispute since at least 2006, when a group of chateaux – including such heavyweights as Château Figeac – contested the 10-year revision, claiming "inconsistencies", and much else beside.

After three years of legal wrangling, the 2006 classification was finally ditched in 2009, and a new one not approved until September 2012. In another three-year cycle, the rumblings of discontent that first surfaced in 2012, are just now coming to court.

Among others, Eric d'Aramon, then managing director of Château Figeac, expressed doubt in Decanter magazine in 2012 about the classification's being "entirely safe, legally". This was nothing new. Back in 2006, Figeac's owner, the late Thierry de Manoncourt, was extremely unhappy that his property had not been promoted to Premier Grand Cru Classé A, the highest level.

Now the Administrative Tribunal in Bordeaux has just heard the complaint of three chateaux – Croque-Michotte, La Tour du Pin Figeac and Corbin-Michotte – that there were inconsistencies in the process leading up to the revised 2012 classification.

These inconsistencies led to Croque-Michotte losing its Grand Cru Classé status while the other two missed out on promotion to Grand Cru.

If their suit is successful, one of the predicted outcomes would be that the classification is annulled, just as it was in 2006.

"We want to show the mistakes that were made over these three chateaux," Pierre Carle, owner of Château Croque-Michotte, told Wine-Searcher. "There are two options: either they reinstate us or they have to annul the entire classification. Either the 2006 classification was right, or there are mistakes, in which case they have no choice but to annul."