Château Cissac

The estate

Château Cissac is an 18th-century chartreuse built on the remains of a Roman villa. When Jacques Mondon bought it in 1895, wine was a sideline there. Even so, Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, printed Château Cissac for the first time in 1898, under J. Mondon, at 50 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), among the crus bourgeois and first artisans of the commune, and in 1922 under P. Mondon. In the middle of the 20th century Jacques Mondon’s grandson Louis Vialard made Cissac a serious wine estate, and moved to England as a wine merchant to sell it himself. His daughter Danielle Vialard worked beside him from 1968 to 2004, and Marie Vialard has run the estate since 2000. Cissac has been in the Crus Bourgeois since 1932, and the family’s motto sums up what that took: a Cru Bourgeois is not born but made.

The vineyard is planted 65% Cabernet Sauvignon, 24% Merlot, 9% Petit Verdot and 2% Malbec, and certified AREA, the environmental standard of the Aquitaine region, and Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms). Parcel selections go either to the stainless steel vat room of 1999, with truncated-cone tanks of 80 to 150 hectoliters, or to the wooden vat room modernized in 2012, with 10 wooden vats of 110 to 190 hectoliters. The wine is aged in oak barriques, 20 to 30% of them renewed each year, and the family is trying amphorae of 7.5 hectoliters and small wooden vats of 20. Cissac was a Cru Bourgeois Supérieur in the classification of 2020 and again in 2025.

At a glance

Appellation

Haut-Médoc

Commune

Cissac-Médoc

Classification

Cru Bourgeois Supérieur, 2020 and 2025; in the Crus Bourgeois since 1932

Owners

The Vialard family, descendants of Jacques Mondon, since 1895

Direction

Marie Vialard, since 2000

Grapes

Cabernet Sauvignon 65%, Merlot 24%, Petit Verdot 9%, Malbec 2%

Farming

AREA; Haute Valeur Environnementale

Cellar

Stainless steel vat room of 1999; wooden vat room of 2012; barriques, 20 to 30% renewed each year

The house

An 18th-century chartreuse on the remains of a Roman villa

In history

Château Cissac of J. Mondon, 50 tonneaux, in 1898

Sources: Château Cissac, the history · Château Cissac, the estate · Château Cissac, the savoir-faire · Château Cissac · Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, the classification of 2025 · Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, the classification of 2020