Definition: Bordeaux château

The birth of the Château concept

Since ancient times, the idea of designating wines by their geographical origin has seemed natural, as it is obvious, at least to those of Latin culture, that the terroir gives wine its main characteristics. In the Middle Ages, certain Burgundy wines were already designated by the names of vineyards, often linked to abbeys. In Bordeaux, which shipped the equivalent of 100 million bottles to London each year during the Middle Ages, "Bordeaux" wine was simply wine that had been loaded onto a ship in the port of Bordeaux.

The first mention of a Bordeaux wine under a specific terroir name can be found in 1654 in Samuel Pepys' diary. It refers to Haut Brion, which he wrote as "Ho Bryan", thinking it was a man's name and not a place. We can already see the Anglo-Saxon attitude emerging, which favours human factors, the "winemaker", over natural factors, the "terroir". The word château is not used, even though there was a beautiful mansion at Haut Brion at the time.

Haut Brion is undoubtedly the first example of a Bordeaux wine château.
Its owner, Arnaud de Pontac, became the first president of the Bordeaux Parliament in 1653. He was very representative of the nobility who found in quality viticulture an activity compatible with their noble status (in France, nobles were not allowed to work!) and with their business acumen. He opened a chic restaurant in London called "Chez Pontac" where he promoted his Haut Brion wine.

Throughout the 18th century, the Bordeaux nobility created, mainly in the Médoc, then a "solitary and wild" region, as La Boétie, a friend of Montaigne, wrote, Montaigne's friend, large modern vineyards, run by highly competent men, equipped with the most modern winemaking techniques available at the time and dedicated to the production of very high quality wines for export markets, especially British ones. Thus appeared in Bordeaux high-quality wines from an identified property whose vines were cultivated and wines vinified under the responsibility of a single person, the owner, an enlightened and refined man. But the term Château would appear much later. In the original 1855 classification document, only five of the 55 classified growths bear the name "château". (Margaux, Lafite, Latour, Beychevelle and Issan). The other wines are designated either by the name of their owner: Lynch, Rauzan, by the name of a locality: Léoville, Mouton, or by a combination of the owner's name and the name of a locality: Cos-D'Estournel, Ducru-Beaucaillou. Even today, the label of Château Léoville Las Cases bears the old designation: Grand Vin de Léoville du Marquis de Lascases.
Châteaux in the architectural sense of the word were very rare in the Médoc.
The fortress of Blanquefort, built by Pope Clement V, never produced wine. Château d'Agassac and Château de Lamarque are the only remaining examples of châteaux dating from before the 15th century. Their vineyards are recent. Before the construction of the beautiful current château, Margaux had a fortified castle called La Mothe Margaux. The wine has been called Château Margaux since its inception. The fortress of the Saint Mambert tower was built around 1331. Nothing remained of it when the Latour vineyard was planted in the 17th century. The word Château, used to refer to Latour wine, appeared around 1820.
Until Louis XIV, the kings of France lived in a palace, the Louvre.
With Versailles, the château became synonymous with power, to the point that the Élysée, officially called the Palais de l'Élysée, is still referred to in political circles today as "the château". It was in fact the French Revolution, by razing feudal castles and beheading nobles, that gave the French their nostalgia for the château. The word became synonymous with fine wine. Château wine became a symbol of the "château lifestyle". This lifestyle of wealth, elegance, refinement and leisure no longer exists. It was this lifestyle that led Casanova to say, "Those who have not experienced France under the Ancien Régime do not know what the good life is."
Curiously, it was not the existence of a building with the architectural character of a château that gave the wine its name. On the contrary, châteaux were built to affirm the nobility of the wine. In Margaux, in 1806, the Marquis de La Colonilla "had the old castle demolished to build a modern-style building" (according to his contemporary Biarnez). At Latour, the construction of a very modest dwelling house was the subject of lengthy debates between the owners between 1862 and 1864. At Mouton, the dwelling house is so modest that Philippe de Rothschild calls it "Petit Mouton" and has the former outbuildings converted into a residence. Around 1830, Louis Joseph Gaspard d'Estournel built not a dwelling house but wine cellars at Cos, whose sumptuousness and architectural originality well deserve the name of Château.

It was in Bordeaux that the idea of symbolising the grandeur of wine through architecture was born. This idea has become so widespread that many new investors in New World vineyards hire an architect before hiring an oenologist. But it is not the building that makes the Château wine, it is the property.
The strength of the Château wine concept
I said in the introduction that designating a wine by its geographical origin was natural for people of Latin culture. Clos Vougeot is a clearly defined geographical entity, but what is a Clos Vougeot wine? There are as many as there are winegrowers within the Clos, plus the wines that merchants blend by buying from several winegrowers.

On the contrary, a Bordeaux château is unique; over the years, we find a typicality that comes from its terroir but also from the expertise of its owner. What defines the château is the uniqueness of the property, the signature of the wine.
Bordeaux châteaux have been widely criticised for not having strictly defined terroirs. But châteaux are not appellations contrôlées. If Château Margaux sells a plot (an unlikely scenario), it loses the right to produce Château Margaux. If Château Margaux buys a plot (which does happen), it acquires the right to produce Château Margaux. It is up to the owner to decide, based on the quality of the terroir, whether the wine will be Château Margaux or only a second wine.
I know of parcels that have belonged to Château Margaux since the Middle Ages and have never produced Château Margaux. I know of some that have been acquired recently and almost always produce great wine.

The strength of the Bordeaux château concept lies in the combination of a terroir and a single person responsible for viticulture and winemaking.
In modern viticulture, two philosophies clash on a global scale: a traditional approach, perfectly represented by the French appellation d'origine contrôlée system, where wines are designated by their terroir and production conditions are governed by precise regulations. In historic AOCs such as Burgundy, where long-standing practice has divided the terroirs down to the plot level, the origin is very precise. It is much less so in Bordeaux, where AOC boundaries often follow the administrative boundaries of the communes. Cos d'Estournel, Saint Estèphe is closer to Lafite, Pauillac than Lafite is to Latour, Pauillac.
The major drawback of the AOC system is that it allows those who do not work well to hide behind those who do, since they all sell under the same appellation.
In contrast, New World viticulture considers grapes to be a raw material that the art of the winemaker will transform into wine enhanced by a commercial brand. On the one hand, there are the farmers who grow grapes without any real concern for terroir, and on the other, there are the wineries that rely on technology to make good wines. In Chile, I saw wineries move their vineyards 200 km without changing the label.
The concept of the château is a happy synthesis of these two philosophies: there is a stylistic continuity imposed by the terroir. There is a signature, that of the château owner, who can of course delegate this responsibility to a director, who in turn heads a technical team. The building, surrounded by its cellars, symbolises the unity between the vineyard and the winery, between viticulture and vinification, which for me is the great strength of Bordeaux châteaux.

Conclusion:
At a time when a global wine crisis is unfolding, with a worldwide production surplus approaching eight billion bottles each year, the only future for traditional vineyards lies in quality and personalisation.
The wine châteaux of the canton of Vaud are an opportunity to be seized, as they give wine that extra soul that sets it apart from any other drink.