Château Léoville-las-Cases

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Léoville-las-Cases 1975
Clos du Marquis 2004, the second wine

The Château Léoville-Las Cases is one of the most famous wineries of Bordeaux . Since 1855 the winery has been classified as "Deuxième" Grand Cru Classé , the second highest level of the Bordeaux classification .

location

It is located in Saint-Julien , in the immediate vicinity of the town of Pauillac and its more famous neighbor Château Latour , on the "Route du Vin", the D2 departmental road.

Wines

The largest of the several vineyards of Las Cases is striking: as one of the very few in Bordeaux, it is a Clos , a vineyard completely surrounded by walls. On the archway to the garden stands the large stone lion that gives it its name and which also adorns the wine label.

The vines cover an area of ​​97 hectares, so the estate is very large. The areas are divided into 65% Cabernet Sauvignon , 19% Merlot , 13% Cabernet Franc and 3% with Petit Verdot . The vines are on average 30 years old. Only the best 40% of the wines go to the Grand Vin ; the greater part goes into the second wine. In normal years around 450,000 bottles of wine are filled together.

The best wines ever produced so far are those from the 1982, 1986, 1990, 1996, 2000 and 2005 vintages . The 1986 wine is rated as perfect wine by the internationally recognized wine critic Robert Parker with 100 Parker points . A bottle of this vintage can rarely be bought for less than 300 euros (as of 2013). The 1982 wine was also awarded 100 Parker points for a long time, but was downgraded to 95+ points in June 2009.

The second wine of the château has been bottled under the "Petit Lion" brand since 2007. Until then it was marketed as “Clos du Marquis”. It often achieved cru-classé quality itself and has also achieved corresponding prices since the 1990s at the latest. Since 2007 the vines for "Clos du Marquis" have only come from the vineyard of the same name within the Las Cases property. The bottling is no longer a second wine, but officially an independent, high-class St. Julien, which regularly receives the highest ratings in the specialist press (2016 vintage: 94 Parker points). For several years now, “La Petite Marquise” has even been available as its own second wine from “Clos du Marquis”.

Château Léoville-las-Cases is accompanied and advised by the oenologist Jacques Boissenot and his son Eric.

History and perspective

The vineyards of the Château are part of the former large estate of Léoville: At the beginning of the 17th century, the lands along the Gironde belonged to the Seigneurie de Lamarque , and it was thanks to the Dutch that they drained the wetlands along the river. The first usable areas were laid out in 1638 on an area that was drained early on a higher gravel knoll. From the second half of the 17th century, the de Moytié family laid out their first vineyards. The gravel dome was later named Mont Moytié. In 1707, the politician and President of Parliament took possession of Bordeaux and later bequeathed it to his two daughters. One of the women marries the influential Blaise Antoine Alexandre de Gasq, Seigneur von Léoville and also a member of the Parliament of Bordeaux. After an inheritance dispute between Moytié's daughters, de Gasq managed to reunite the separate estates. The areas ranged from Château Beychevelle in the south to Château Latour in Pauillac in the north.

De Gasq died childless in 1769, and the Léoville property passed into the inheritance of four nephews, chaired by the Marquis de Las Cases Beauvoir. The property was administered by Jean-Pierre d'Abbadie and Bernard and Jean-Joseph d'Alozier. During the turmoil of the French Revolution , the Marquis had to flee the country. However, he managed not to lose his property as a common good ( Bien national ). It only parted with just under a quarter of the areas that were later shaped by Hugh Barton to form Château Léoville-Barton .

The son of the Marquis, of Pierre-Jean de Las Cases, Maréchal de Camps directed the fortunes of the remaining estate from 1815. In 1840, however, the property was further divided as part of the success. While Pierre-Jean kept almost two thirds, the other third was transferred to his sister Jeanne de Las-Cases. The name Château Léoville-Poyferré came about through the marriage of Jeanne to Jean-Marie de Poyferré .

Las Cases is the largest of them and also produces the best wine. The estate is owned by the Delon family.

If the classification of the Bordelaiser Grand Crus should be re-rolled after 1973, when Mouton-Rothschild was upgraded to Premier Cru, then in all probability Léoville-las-Cases will cross the finish line as the next premier candidate.

Trivia

In the film Breast or Club , the actor Louis de Funès embodies the restaurant critic Charles Duchemin. Duchemin recognizes a Château Léoville-las-Cases from the 1953 vintage in the film solely through the visual aspects of the wine in the glass. Before that, the gourmet had lost his sense of taste.

literature