Château Camensac
The Château Camensac is a known vineyard of Bordeaux . Since the classification of 1855 , the winery has been classified as Cinquieme Grand Cru Classé , the fifth level of the classification.
The estate is located in Saint-Laurent-Médoc on the border with Saint-Julien-Beychevelle in the Haut-Médoc appellation , with around 75 hectares it is a large estate. 60% of the area is with the grape Cabernet Sauvignon , 40% Merlot planted. The average age of the vines is 35 years. The planting density is a high 10,000 vines / hectare and the average yield is 40 - 45 hectoliters / hectare. In the middle years the estate produces around 360,000 bottles of wine , around two thirds of which are sold as Grand Vin .
The alcoholic fermentation takes 15–21 days, depending on the vintage. The red wine then spends 16 to 24 months in barriques . The barriques are exchanged between 35 and 75% annually; the percentage is determined depending on the year .
The second wine of the estate is called La Closerie de Camensac .
The well-known oenologist Michel Rolland worked as a consultant for the winery until 2007 .
history
Little is known about the history of the estate. At first the estate belonged to the English-born Popp family. The estate still belonged to this family in 1855, when the classification of Bordeaux wineries was officially presented at the World Exhibition in Paris.
The Tournade family owned Château Camensac until 1913, but that year they sold it to wine merchant Paul Cuvelier. Only seven years later, Cuvelier took over the well-known Château Léoville-Poyferré winery . Overall, the Cuvelier era on Camensac was not very successful.
In 1964 the brothers Enrique and Elysée Forner took over the run-down estate. The Forner family, of Spanish descent, had to leave their homeland during the Spanish Civil War and were unable to return to the country during the Franco era . After the Forners had built up a flourishing wine trade in Bordeaux, they were able to acquire the château barely ten years later by selling their trade.
In addition to a complete renovation of the buildings, the vineyards were also laid out. From the beginning, the brothers relied on the services of Émile Peynaud . In 1968 Enrique considered returning to Spain and from 1970 built up an internationally successful cooperative winery with the help of Peynaud with the Marqués de Cacerès brand. However, his brother Elysée stayed in France. In 2005, at the age of 76, he sold the property to the Taillan Group headed by Jacques Merlaut. Merlaut had already acquired a 25% stake in the operating company of the chateau many years earlier and supported the Forners' quality efforts.
Today Jean Merlaut, the son of Jacques, owns 50% of the shares. The remaining 50% went to Jacques' niece Celine Villars-Foubet. Together with her husband Jean-Pierre Foubet, Céline runs the business at Château Camensac and also at Château Chasse-Spleen .
literature
- Charles Cocks, Edouard Féret, Bruno Boidron: Bordeaux et ses vins . 18th edition. Èdition Féret et Fils, Bordeaux 2007, ISBN 978-2-35156-013-6 .
- Horst Dippel : The wine lexicon . 3. Edition. Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 1999, ISBN 3-596-13826-4 .
- Robert Parker : Parker's Wine Guide (= Collection Rolf Heyne ). Heyne, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-453-16305-2 .