History
In the Middle Ages, the château of Cantemerle, seat of the jurisdiction of the same name, bordered the Garonne River and made up part of the line of fortifications that defended the banks of the Médoc region, just over half a mile from the present château.
The oldest known masnuscript known which mentions the name of the Lords of Cantemerle is the "Grand Cartulaire" of La Sauve Majeur Abbey, dating to the twelfth century. The monks recorded there all transactions executed within the monastic community. In 1147, the Abbey received vast territories as a gift from Arnaud, Lord of Blanquefort, before he set out on crusade. This donation was made in the presence of Pons de Cantemerle. Did he follow Arnaud de Blanquefort on pilgrimage to Jerusalem ? No one knows for sure. If he did leave, he returned to France, because in 1151 he was witness to yet another donation - that of the Saint Croix Abbey by the priest of Bordeaux, Lord of L'Isle.
A century later, with Aquitaine under English rule, a Lord of Cantemerle is warring against Saint Louis, King of France.He was called in 1241 by Henri III, King of England, to fight at the battle of Taillebourg, which he lost. Fortunately, he kept his feudal domain, and his descendant, Ponset de Cantemerle was Lord of the estate in 1340.
The first traces of viticultural production on the property were found in 1354 - the Lord of Cantemerle paid his tithes on wine with a tonneau (tun or Bordeaux cask) of clairet (the pale red wine which inspired the English word 'claret').
2001–2010: A new vineyard approach
The beginning of the new century was marked by a change in emphasis. After two decades of focus on oenological progress winemakers’ attention shifted back to the vineyard, giving rise to some general reflections: recent developments on the Right Bank looked interesting, but the techniques employed there were adapted to that region’s smaller-sized properties and thus faced resistance from the Médoc‘s larger estates with higher-density plantings. Labor costs were projected to rise dramatically, bringing the possibility of financial problems. And a number of vineyard techniques such as de-budding and leaf thinning which worked wonderfully with Merlot (a grape variety which takes well to such handling when young) did not offer the same promise of success with Cabernet Sauvignon, which depends on longer-term factors such as the depth of its root system and the structure of the soil it penetrates.
In the Médoc, the complex relationship between Cabernet Sauvignon and the quality it produces calls for a greater management of the soil rather than the vine itself.
As it turned out, these reflections came at a time when Cantemerle’s vineyard had reached full maturity. Vines from the great replanting in the early 1980s were now 20 years old, and (besides the work of top-grafting the Cabernet Franc) the majority of the decisions that were made proved to be correct. Now it was necessary to redefine the property’s agronomic direction, and 2004 was the year that started this break with the past. During the winter of 2003–2004 the château’s team began an in-depth reflection of what they sought to achieve: a mineral and biological balance appropriate to the particle size of the soils, taking into account the water-retention profile of large areas of the vineyard. This ushered in a long period of analyses whose first objective was to break with the overall method of vineyard management which had been in use. The definition of vineyard parcels would now be based on a multitude of independent “quality projects”.
During this same year, the reception of the harvest was entirely redesigned to incorporate a system for “berry-by-berry“ sorting between the destemmer and the crusher to eliminate vegetal debris after destemming. There had always been an insurmountable obstacle in Cantemerle’s plans for this: the size of the vineyard (90 hectares) and the need to pick each grape variety when fully ripe required a system which could process a minimum of 8 tons per hour, but the existing technology could only handle 2 tons—it was simply impossible to sort an entire harvest of Cantemerle’s size on a berry-by-berry basis! Since make believe can’t make wine, the idea had to be shelved until it could be done right. Happily, the team only had to wait until spring 2004. German engineers had been working for several years on a new-generation destemming machine capable of processing a harvest as large as Cantermerle’s while effectively eliminating vegetal debris. They had developed a single prototype and sought to test it under actual harvest conditions; Cantemerle decided to give it a try, reassured by the machine’s resemblance to a classic destemmer. (Still, the old equipment was kept on standby in the event of problems.) The results were convincing: the entire 2004 harvest was processed by the new machine, followed by an automatic triage of the berries and a final hand-sorting. This additional precision in the processing line brought greater definition to Cantemerle’s wines.
There are defining stages in the life of all winemaking properties; the conjunction of vineyard maturity and management evolution was probably the turning point for Cantemerle. Today, the property’s quality has firmly established it in the pack of the Médoc’s classed growths, and its continued presence there will always be due to the intrinsic quality of its terroir and how successfully it finds expression in each year’s wine. At decade’s end, the pursuit of excellence driving the people at Cantemerle at every level, every day, remains as strong as ever.