Château Cantemerle

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A bottle of 2003 vintage Château Cantemerle

The Château Cantemerle 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. His actual rank, however, has always given ample room for discussion. The winery was missing from the first official documents published in April 1855 for the classification created on the occasion of the World Exhibition in 1855. In the autumn of 1855, however, the château was added to the list of fifth-classified goods in small print. This addendum is due to the intensive work of Caroline de Villeneuve-Durfort , who was able to convince the then commission of Bordeaux wine merchants about the actual rank of the estate. The criterion for the classification was the sales price averaged over many years. The energetic woman thus succeeded in the first modification of the classification. Something similar was repeated only once, 110 years later: Château Mouton-Rothschild was raised to the rank of Premier Grand Cru Classé in 1973.

The estate is located in Macau in the Haut-Médoc appellation , directly on the famous “Route du Vin” and opposite the Château La Lagune, which is also classified, on the border with the Margaux appellation. With around 90 hectares, it is a comparatively large estate.

Since 2004 there have been plans by the French government to build a major bypass around Bordeaux . This project, known as Grand Contournement, would run through the Cantemerle vineyards. Philippe Dambrine, the estate manager, even speaks of the possible end of the estate.

The wine

The estate has almost 190 hectares of land. 90 hectares of which are cultivated with vines. The estate also has a 28 hectare park designed by Louis Fischer, which is worth seeing. 50% of the vineyards are planted with Cabernet Sauvignon , 40% with Merlot and 5% each with Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc . In the middle years the estate produces almost 500,000 bottles of wine , of which almost 300,000 bottles go into the Grand Vin . Approx. 150,000 bottles are dedicated to the second wine, and the remaining 50,000 bottles are marketed as third wine. There are almost 2000 barriques in the wine cellars , in which the wine usually matures for twelve months. The barriques are renewed 50 percent annually. After maturing in barriques, the wines are stored for four months in large containers. In this way, the wines are standardized, and the longer rest phase means that the wine does not need to be filtered.

The 1983, 1985 and 1989 vintages deserve special mention as excellent wines. In the bottle, the wines can improve for 8-15 years.

The second wine of the winery was originally called Villeneuve de Cantemerle . For several years now, the second wine has been called Les Allées de Cantemerle . On the official website (see below) only this name is mentioned for the second wine of the estate with the following accompanying text:

“This second wine comes mainly from the chateau's young vines, and is made like its elder brother. Les Allées de Cantemerle has the same personality as the grand vin, but a shorter aging potential. As it ages more quickly, Les Allées de Cantemerle is generally ready to be consumed within several years of the vintage. "

In addition to the second wine, a third wine with the name Baronne Caroline is also produced.

history

The property was first mentioned in writing in 1147. In the archives of the Abbaye de la Sauve Majeure Abbey, it is reported that Arnaud de Blanquefort bequeathed land to the monastery prior to his departure for the Wendekreuzzug . Pons de Cantemerle was noted as the assessor of the act of donation .

A century later there is again a Seigneur de Cantemerle in the history books, who was on the side of Henry III. took part in the battle of Taillebourg .

The lords of Cantemerle remained attached to the land. A document from 1354 reports that Ponset de Cantemerle paid his tithe in the form of a barrel of Clairet . This note is the first written evidence of viticulture in the Cantemerle district.

In 1422, the Cantemerle family became part of the Caupène family. The exact circumstances that led to this are not known. In any case, on February 1, 1422, Jean de Caupène (also called Jehan de Caupène) received the title of Seigneur de Cantemerle. His son Médard de Caupène inherited the title and carried it until the end of the 15th century.

Jeanne de Caupène married Henry de la Roque, and their son Charles de la Roque was the seigneur from 1510. The Cantemerle property remained in the hands of the de la Roque family until August 20, 1579. On that day, the 2nd President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, Jean de Villeneuve, acquired the Cantemerle house. He married Antoinette de Durfort. The winery remained in the possession of the Villeneuve-Durfort family until the late 19th century.

During this long period, conditions in Bordeaux changed fundamentally. The influence of the church waned, and from the 16th century onwards, viticulture predominated over other agricultural activities in the region. The establishments whose main activity was viticulture were called Bourdieu .

From 1643 the family moved into a building at the location that is still known today and concentrated their activities on this property. The building known today, however, dates from the 19th century.

In 1852, Jean Baptiste Fleuret carried out his attempts to control powdery mildew mainly in the vineyards of Château Cantemerle. At that time Cantemerle mainly sold its wines directly to dealers from Holland, bypassing the local wine dealers in Bordeaux. But when these same dealers were asked at the world exhibition of 1855 to classify the Bordeaux goods on the basis of the sales prices, the corresponding information from Cantemerle was missing. The name of the château was therefore not included in the first draft of the classification. The castle's owner at the time, Caroline de Villeneuve-Durfort, was finally able to prove, based on the invoices of her sales, that Cantemerle deserved the rank of Cinquième Grand Cru.

A. d'Armailhacq reports in his work La culture des vignes , published in 1858 . La vinification dans le Médoc , that Château Cantemerle had 91 hectares of vineyards and that the average yield was 19 hectoliters per hectare. In 1866 110 hectares of vineyards were raised on the almost 400 hectare estate; the yield was a low 18 hectoliters / hectare. However, the upswing of the estate was suddenly interrupted by the phylloxera disaster and the downy mildew that appeared shortly afterwards . The yields fell below 50 percent of a normal average year. Since the area around Margaux , Cantenac and Macau was less affected by powdery mildew than, for example, Pauillac , the paradox arose in 1884 that Cantemerle and also Château Dauzac were able to obtain higher prices for the wine than the first-class Château Lafite-Rothschild .

However, the damage caused by the diseases imported from America was so great that the Baronne d'Abbadie decided in 1892 to sell the property to the Dubos family. With this sale, the era of the family-owned Villeneuve-Durfort ended.

The buyer Théophile-Jean Dubos ran the estate together with his wife Charlotte and their two sons Pierre and Bernard. After their father's death in 1905, the sons took over the management and ushered in a long period of recession. During the crisis years during the First World War and the 1930s, lots had to be sold again and again. After the Second World War, Pierre Dubos, the sole owner since 1923, only managed 25 hectares of vineyards, a fact that was not to change for 35 years. When Pierre Dubos died in 1962, his nephew Bertrand Clauzel took over the management until the estate was sold in 1981.

The winery today

In 1981 the Société mutuelle d'assurance du bâtiment et des travaux publics (SMABTP for short) took over the winery, which was on the verge of ruin, for 25 million francs. The wine cellar has been thoroughly renovated and the vineyards newly laid out. In addition to the 20 hectares of vineyards that were still in yield at the time of purchase, 70 hectares were planted. In total, in addition to the purchase price, SMABTP invested almost 60 million francs in the reconstruction of the property. The investments also concerned the cellar technology used and the partial mechanization of the grape harvest .

The renovation of the vineyard took an unusual approach. Mexican workers with experience in California viticulture were entrusted with the task. In addition to renovation and expansion, it was also decided to convert the grape variety list away from Cabernet Franc to Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot .

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ J. Morgan: California sends skilled vineyard workers to Europe to help with vineyard conversions . In: The Wine Spectator , September 30, 1997