Château La Rame

The château

La Rame has a long paper trail. The edition of 1874 of Bordeaux et ses vins, the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, lists vines at La Rame under Vignial, at 12 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) of white. By 1893 Picard and Demarquais held it, and they won gold medals for its white at the Bordeaux exhibition of 1895 and at Paris in 1900; a supplement published by Édouard Féret in 1901, recording the Paris medal, is the first to print the name Château de La Rame. In 1922 it belonged to the widow Dufillot. Claude Armand, who already owned Château La Caussade, bought La Rame in 1956; his son Yves followed him, then Angélique and Grégoire Armand, and Angélique Armand now manages both estates.

The vines grow on clay and limestone over a subsoil of fossilized oysters, every task in the vineyard is done by hand, and the estate has held Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) at level 3 since 2018. The Tradition is 100% Sémillon from vines 50 years old on average, picked by hand in successive passes to gather the botrytized grapes, pressed within 2 hours of picking and kept 2 years before bottling. The Réserve du Château La Rame, made only in the best years from the most botrytized grapes, spends 18 to 24 months in oak barrels. The estate also makes a sweet Cadillac, and a red, a dry white and a rosé Bordeaux.

At a glance

Appellation

Sainte-Croix-du-Mont

Commune

Sainte-Croix-du-Mont

Classification

No classification

Owners

The Armand family, since 1956

Direction

Angélique Armand

Soil

Clay and limestone over fossilized oysters Terroir of Sainte-Croix-du-Mont →

Grapes

Sainte-Croix-du-Mont: Sémillon 100%

Farming

Haute Valeur Environnementale, level 3, since 2018; all vineyard work by hand

Cellar

Tradition: kept 2 years before bottling; Réserve: 18 to 24 months in oak barrels

Wines

Château La Rame, Tradition and Réserve; a sweet Cadillac; Bordeaux red, dry white and rosé

The house

Also Château La Caussade

In history

12 tonneaux of white in 1874; gold medals at Bordeaux in 1895 and Paris in 1900