Château Belgrave

The Château Belgrave is a vineyard of Bordeaux . In the classification of 1855 , the winery was classified as Cinquième Grand Cru Classé , i.e. in the fifth category.

Vineyards and wine

Château Belgrave is located in the commune of Saint-Laurent-Médoc in the Haut-Médoc appellation . Immediate neighboring goods are La Tour-Carnet and Camensac of the same appellation as well as the Château Lagrange in Saint-Julien. The estate covers 60 hectares and forms a single contiguous plot. The soil consists of a thick layer of colored gravel sand on a loamy sub-soil. 49% of the area with the grape variety Cabernet Sauvignon , 40% Merlot and 8% with Cabernet Franc planted. New plantings added 3% Petit Verdot . 34 ha are very densely planted with 10,000 vines per hectare, 23 ha have a density of 6,500 vines. The vineyards are green. The harvest is done manually, and the grapes are sorted on conveyor belts before fermentation. Fermentation takes place in temperature-controlled containers made of stainless steel and recently also made of wood. The subsequent aging in oak barrels lasts 12-16 months. The estate produces around 360,000 bottles of wine in the middle years, of which 255,000 bottles are accounted for by the "Grand Vin" Château Belgrave and 105,000 by the second wine called Diane de Belgrave .

history

It seems that the building is older than the vineyards. The castle called Belgrave was built in 1740 by an Englishman who belonged to the royal family as a hunting pavilion. The name does not refer to the gravel floor (French graves ), but probably to London's Belgrave Square . The vineyards go back to the end of the 18th century. These initially had different names, at the time of the classification in 1855 the wine was called Coutenceau and belonged to a Bruno Devez . In 1902 Marcel Alibert acquired the Château Belgrave, which at the time enjoyed an excellent reputation. Towards the end of the 1920s it was bought by Albert Spée , under whose aegis, however, it was difficult to maintain the level due to the global economic crisis and World War II. In 1956 it came into the hands of a Monsieur Gugès . After his death, the wine suffered disputes from his heirs, who finally sold it to the UGF (Groupe Crédit Mutuel ) bank in 1979 . This converted the property into a company, whose shares were sold. Since then, Château Belgrave has been managed by the Bordelais wine trading company Dourthe . After considerable replanting and the involvement of well-known star oenologists (Professor Émile Peynaud (1912–2004), Michel Rolland (cellar) and Professor Alain Reynier (vineyards)), a clear improvement was perceived again in the early 1990s. In 1982 stainless steel fermentation tanks were used, and in 2004 a new, ultra-modern cellar was put into operation. Since at least 2000, Château Belgrave has regularly received very good ratings in the professional world. The second wine, whose name Diane de Belgrave alludes to the castle's past as a hunting pavilion, has been around since 1987 .

Literature and web link

Charles Cocks, Edouard Féret, Bruno Boidron: Bordeaux et ses vins . 18th edition. Èdition Féret et Fils, Bordeaux, 2007, ISBN 978-2-35156-013-6 .
Frédérique Crestin-Billet: The top wines and castles of the Médoc . Stürtz Verlag, Würzburg, 1989, ISBN 3-8003-0348-5 .
Michel Dovaz: Encyclopédie des crus classés du Bordelais . 2nd Edition. Julliard, Paris, 1995, ISBN 2-260-01376-7 .
Bettane & Desseauve, April / May 2005
La Revue du Vin de France, June 2005
Les Echos, June 2005
Guide GaultMillau 2006, August 2005.
Information on Château Belgrave at dourthe.com (PDF file; 836 kB)