Château Cambon La Pelouse

The estate

Cambon La Pelouse takes its name from the hamlet beside the château where the first plot of the vineyard was planted, and the wine has a long commercial past: at the end of the 17th century it sold in England for 400 livres or more a tonneau (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels). A price list of 1745, reprinted by William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, puts Cambon among the seconds crus of Macau, at 150 to 250 livres, and Théophile Malvezin’s Histoire du commerce de Bordeaux, of 1892, counts Mme veuve Cambon of Macau among the growers of the 18th century. In 1845 Franck placed La Pelouse, then Cambon’s, among the Macau growths known in Holland.

Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, set Château Cambon in 1874, then Paul Betgé de Lagarde’s, between Cantemerle and Giscours on 1 of the highest points of Macau, on thick beds of large stones, with 35 hectares of vines in a domaine of 67. The double name Cambon-La-Pelouse appears in 1893, under E. Delaunay.

The modern turn came with Annick and Jean-Pierre Marie and their son Nicolas, who took over from M. de Cambon and, from 1996, changed much of the equipment and the whole approach to the winemaking; they installed an effluent treatment plant in 2001 and farmed 6 hectares organically from 2009. Their 2016 won the 9th Coupe des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, held in 2019 with the magazine Le Point among 166 wines, and in 2020 the estate was classed Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel; it is not in the list of 2025. Treasury Wine Estates, the group behind vineyards in Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Italy, now owns it.

At a glance

Appellation

Haut-Médoc

Commune

Macau

Classification

Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel in 2020; not in the list of 2025

Owner

Treasury Wine Estates; before them the Marie family

Farming

6 hectares organic from 2009; effluent treatment from 2001

The name

From the hamlet where the first plot was planted

In history

Among the seconds crus of Macau in 1745; 35 hectares of vines in a domaine of 67 in 1874

Sources: Château Cambon La Pelouse, the estate · Château Cambon La Pelouse, in French · Château Cambon La Pelouse, the news · Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, the classification of 2020