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  • Weather

    12° C Light rain
  • Time

    07:25 AM
  • Wine average?

    91 Tb
  • Country Ranking?

    609
  • Region Ranking?

    350
  • Popularity ranking?

    209

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.

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Vineyards

Cantemerle's vineyard is situated on fine and deep gravel in the Macau and Ludon villages of the Haut-Médoc appellation. A rich variety of factors produce complex, balanced, and refined wines which reflect the exceptional nature of Cantemerle's terroir.

Vine area : 94 ha, 91 ha under production

Geology : Silica-gravel soils of the quaternary era

Cantemerle soil is a mixture of silica and gravel. The gravels, which appeared as a result of thousand-year-old erosion of the Pyrenees by the river Garonne, form one of the fundamental elements of a quality vineyard. They form poor soils where the vines "struggle" to give rise to grapes with high concentration. Besides this, the small pebbles in the soil fulfil the role of a filter and actively contribute to grape maturity by reflecting the sun's rays and, during the night, retaining the heat soaked up in the day.

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Winemaking

The grapes are handpicked and sorted with the greatest of care. Grapes from each separate plot are fermented separately in large oak vats, allowing for slow, gentle extraction of the tannins. The wine is aged in barrels for twelve months and then fined before bottling at the château.

Post-destemming sorting : The grappes are hand-sorted

Substractive method. In the past, the destemming and the crushing were done at the same time and a non-negligible quantity of undesirable vegetal matter (pieces of stem, green berries, leaves) was mixed with the wine grapes.

Adding a sorting table between a top-of-the-line destemmer and the crusher has enabled removal by hand of all elements that can give a vegetal character to the free run wine. This is a decisive stage towards expressing the purity of free run wines.

 

Fermentations and macérations : 28 to 30 days

Type of vats : Wooden conical frustum vats

These allow intense, passive maceration of the cap of grape solids in the juice.

 

Running off and pressing : Décuvage sélectif par strate

Selective devatting by layer. Selective devatting by layer is a Château Cantemerle innovation. After the running off, the top of the cap (dry and oxidated skins) and the bottom (pips, sediments mixed with the marc) are removed. Only the heart of the cap, that contains the best phenolic compounds, is pressed.

 

Ageing : 16 months - 12 months in French oak casks (50% new oak) 4 months in vat after blending

The wine ages lot by lot for 12 months in French oak barrels (medium toast). Then the final blend rests in vats for another 4 months. An ultra-light fining is done during that period of time but no filtration occurs prior to bottling.

Production : 560 000 bottles

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