Château La Tour-Carnet

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The Château La Tour Carnet is a known vineyard of Bordeaux . Since the classification of 1855 , the winery has been classified as Quatrième Grand Cru Classé (fourth level of classification).

The estate is located in Saint-Laurent-Médoc in the Haut-Médoc appellation and is medium-sized with around 48  hectares . 50% of the area is planted with the Cabernet Sauvignon grape variety , 39% with Merlot and 11% with Cabernet Franc . The farm produces about 180,000 bottles of middle-aged wines of first quality.

The younger vintages 2000 and 2001 deserve special mention , which after a long break in quality due to a change of ownership and new planting, are now showing good red wine again .

The second wine of the estate is called Les Douves de Carnet .

The wine

Winemaking

The quality standards of the great Bordeaux apply to the Château La Tour-Carnet. The mean age of the vines is 24 years, the yield fluctuates around 40 - 45 hl / ha. The grapes are picked by hand, destemmed and re-sorted several times in the cellar. The fermentation takes place again today to 70 percent in 18 oak vats of 70 hl per place. Fermentation takes 8 to 9 days at a controlled temperature. To increase the concentration of the method is Saignée used. During the mash fermentation, the cap is dipped in and loosened several times. Even if the maceration time has been extended to 25 to 30 days, the aim is still more finesse than concentration.

expansion

The wine is transferred quickly and without filtering to barrique barrels , where it remains for 18 months. 50 percent new wood is used annually. The wine is drawn off every three months. It is refined with egg white and the bottle is bottled with a gentle filter. The bottle cellar, which was redesigned in 2001, was designed so that the wine can only be bottled using gravity. A total of around 180,000 bottles of Château La Tour- Carnet and 110,000 bottles of the second wine Les Douves de Carnet are produced annually .

history

Originally the estate was called Château de Saint-Laurent. Bordeaux received a big boost in 1152: through the marriage of Henry Plantagenet , later King Henry II of England, with Eleanor , the heiress of Aquitaine , a large part of western France came under British rule. The fortified property belonged to the English from the 12th century. As early as the 13th century, the municipality of Saint-Laurent was under the influence of the House of Foix . When Bordeaux was subjugated by the French crown in 1451, Jean de Foix and his Rittmeister Carnet refused to submit. After the death of Jean de Foix, the Rittmeister Carnet administered the property from 1486, but could not prevent its destruction.

Château de Saint-Laurent then belonged to a large number of owners, including Thibault de Carmaing, Michel de Montaigne's brother-in-law .

The Luetkens family

The German merchant Heinrich Luetkens, who immigrated in 1685, began acquiring agricultural land in the Médoc region barely 10 years later. After the French Revolution, his grandson Charles Luetkens (1744–1801) acquired Château de Saint-Laurent. Charles was already a conseiller du Roi (royal councilor) and Rittmeister and gained the title of Seigneurs de Tour-Carnet through the acquisition. He already owned parts of today's Château Saint-Pierre . At the time of the Bordeaux classification, Château La Tour-Carnet was under the direction of Angélique Raymond, the wife of Jean-Jacques Luetkens. Jean-Jacques, son of Charles, was considered the richest of the Germans in Bordeaux. From 1861 Charles-Oscar de Luetkens led the fortunes of the winery. As a result of the phylloxera disaster , powdery mildew and the two world wars, the estate fell into a deep crisis.

In 1962, Louis Lipschitz acquired the Château La Tour-Carnet. At that time, the run-down property only had 5 hectares of crop area. Lipschitz dedicated himself to the renovation of the buildings and the new planting of abandoned vineyards. From 1978 his daughter Marie-Claire Pelegrin continued the work.

In 1999, Bernard Magrez took over the winery.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Klaus Weber: German merchants in the Atlantic trade, 1680-1830 , pp. 212-214
  2. ^ Clive Coates: The Wines of Bordeaux: Vintages and Tasting Notes 1952–2003 . University of California Press, ISBN 978-0-520-23573-1 , p. 96