Château Lascombes
Château Lascombes is a Deuxième Cru Classé classified winery in the municipality of Margaux in Bordeaux . The estate has a size of 100 hectares , of which 84 hectares are planted with vines.
The average age of the vines is 35 years. The tillering is quite classic with the grape varieties Merlot (50%), Cabernet Sauvignon (45%) and Petit Verdot (5%). The wines mature in barriques for around 20 months , 80 percent of which are renewed annually. The wines have made a significant leap in quality since they were taken over by Colony Capital in 2001. The 2002 vintage received 93 points from wine critic Robert Parker , the 2003 vintage 92 points and the 2005 even 95 points. Michel Rolland is an oenological consultant .
Every year around 250,000 bottles of the first wine and 70,000 of the second wine Chevalier de Lascombes are bottled.
history
The first owners were members of the Durfort de Duras family, who lived in Margaux from the 12th century. The family ran the winery for centuries after the first vineyards were laid out in the 15th century, leading it to the top of Bordeaux wineries. The family also owned Château Durfort-Vivens at that time ; the Lascombes area originally belonged to Durfort-Vivens.
It is not known how Antoine de Lascombes, born in 1625, came into possession of the vineyards. The winery later passed to Jean-François de Lascombes, advisor to the Parlement de Bordeaux and member of the Académie de Bordeaux, and shortly afterwards to his sister Anne. In particular, Jean-François led it to the head of the Bordeaux wineries. In the April 4, 1838 issue of Le Producteur magazine, you can read that the wines are on a par with those of Château Margaux .
Since Anne died childless, the family lost control of the estate and, following the French Revolution, the estate became state property. At first the wine merchant Nathaniel Johnston took over the estate, but shortly afterwards left it to Fabre. Fabre sold it to the Loraique family, who in 1844 sold the estate to Mademoiselle Hué for 90,000 francs. After several decades, the Hué family was able to give the estate new impetus through small investments.
In the evaluation of the Bordeaux wineries on the occasion of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1855 , Lascombes' outstanding position was crowned with the rank of Deuxième Cru Classé.
Ms. Hué's son-in-law sold the estate to the well-known Parisian lawyer Gustave Chaix-d'Est-Ange. He was temporarily chairman of the Paris Bar Association and could not take care of the fortunes of the estate directly. This was due to his children Jean-François Théophile and Jeanne-Marie, who were supported by the winemaker Valbord Hugen.
The manor building known today was built in 1867. Jean-François also took over the neighboring Château Marquis d'Alesme-Becker . After his death in 1923, his adoptive son Alesme-Becker sold to the English family WH Chaplin and in 1926 founded a company to manage the Lascombes estate. The majority owner of the company was the Ginestet family of wine merchants from Bordeaux. Due to the chaos of war, the estate deteriorated. In 1952, Alexis Lichine took over the winery just one year after purchasing Château Prieuré-Lichine . Its activities were financed by a consortium of American owners. The financial means enabled substantial investments in the vineyard and wine cellar. Much to his displeasure, the consortium sold the estate to the English brewing group Bass Charrington in 1971 . The estate was well known in English-speaking countries from that time.
In April 2001, the American company Colony Capital ( Groupe Lucien Barrière ) took over the estate and carried out an extensive investment program. In 2011, the property was taken over by MACSF, an insurance company for the healthcare sector, for around € 200m
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 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ decanter.com
- ↑ chateau-lascombes.com ( Memento of the original from September 6, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
