Château Cantemerle

The château

Cantemerle’s story is old. A lord of Cantemerle paid his tithe with a cask of clairet in 1354, and Jehan de Villeneuve, president of the Parlement of Bordeaux, bought the estate in 1579; the Villeneuves were still there in 1855. Their wine was famous in the wrong place. Every cask of the grand vin (the estate’s first wine) went to Holland, sold by the owner directly, and the Bordeaux market from which the brokers drew their ranking had never bought one. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, gives it no rank in 1824 or in 1845: his classifications stop at the fourth growths and Macau has no cru in them, though his table of proprietors prints Cantemerle under the Baron de Villeneuve at 100 to 120 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) in 1824 and 120 to 130 in 1845, and he names it with distinction while putting the commune’s other growths, La Houringue, Lassus, La Pelouse and Préban, below the fourth class. In the 5 years before the classification 2 books made it a fifth growth: Charles Cocks in 1850, and Franck in 1853, at 1,000 to 1,200 francs the tonneau.

When the classification went to Paris without the estate, the Baronne de Villeneuve-Durfort took her sale records to the brokers, and in September the estate’s name was added below the last of the Fifths. I told that appeal in Case File 06. Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, called it in 1868 the well deserved honor of entering the fifth classified growths of the Médoc, and their directory of 1922 was still printing that the wine reached the price of the second growths almost every year. The estate went by licitation (a court-ordered sale among co-owners) in June 1892 to the father of the Dubos brothers, and in 1981 to the SMABTP group; Laure Canu has been director since 2021.

The property at Macau runs to 200 hectares, about half of it forest, park and meadow, with 98 hectares of vines on silica and gravel that the Garonne carried down from the Pyrenees: 71% Cabernet Sauvignon, 18% Merlot, 7% Petit Verdot and 4% Cabernet Franc, the vines 40 years old on average and some of the Cabernet past 60. The grand vin spends 12 months in French oak, 35% new, and Les Allées de Cantemerle comes from the younger vines. A new vat house of 3,500 square meters, with 114 steel tanks and an underground cellar for 2,000 barrels, opened in 2025.

I tasted a run of Cantemerle vintages in March 2026, and what they teach is proportion. In 2005 it does not compete on scale: the structure is firm but never rigid, the fruit stays in balance, and the year reads as a controlled expansion of the house style rather than a display of power. The 1996, 30 years on, has aged along a straight line, carried by acidity and tannin rather than weight, which is what this gravel does in a great Cabernet year. And the 2019, tasted beside Les Allées of the same year, shows what selection means here: the grand vin is tighter, its Cabernet Sauvignon more assertive, with lift and a graphite line, where the second wine is softer and more immediate.

At a glance

Appellation

Haut-Médoc

Commune

Macau

Classification

Cinquième Cru Classé 1855, added on September 16, 1855

Owner

The SMABTP group, since 1981

Direction

Laure Canu, since 2021

Vineyard

98 hectares on a property of 200; vines 40 years old on average

Soil

Silica and gravel from the Pyrenees, carried by the Garonne Terroir of Haut-Médoc →

Grapes

Cabernet Sauvignon 71%, Merlot 18%, Petit Verdot 7%, Cabernet Franc 4%

Cellar

12 months in French oak, 35% new; a vat house of 114 steel tanks and a cellar for 2,000 barrels, 2025

Wines

Château Cantemerle; Les Allées de Cantemerle

In history

Unranked by Franck in 1824 and 1845; a fifth growth in Cocks 1850 and Franck 1853