Château Le Monteil d’Arsac

The estate

Château d’Arsac has records back to the 12th century, under the lords of Arsac, and in the 16th century the estate belonged to Thomas de Montaigne, brother of Michel de Montaigne. Le Monteil came much later. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, first list Château Le Monteil at Arsac in 1886, among the crus bourgeois supérieurs under Hostein-Fatou, as a growth of recent creation: the first wine of the domain of Château d’Arsac, from the highest point of the property and of the district, over a very lean ferruginous alios, with 40 hectares of vines making 30 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) and soon, they expected, 50 or 60. Under E. Dubosc, from 1893, the 2 wines were listed together, and in 1898 the guide gave the hill of Le Monteil alone more than 120 hectares of gravel, called the vineyard of 260 hectares in a single block the largest of the Médoc and 1 of the largest in France, and noted that the Monteil had often sold at the price of the third growths.

Then the estate fell into neglect. It lay abandoned when the Margaux appellation was drawn in 1954, and was left out of it. Philippe Raoux, a Bordeaux wine merchant, bought the ruins in 1986, replanted the vineyard and restored the buildings, and from 1990 set out to bring contemporary art into the vines: the estate now counts more than 40 works of sculpture.

Today it has 54 hectares in Margaux, 32 in Haut-Médoc and 4 of Sauvignon Blanc in the Bordeaux appellation, on sandy gravel, alluvium and gravel over clay, and Éric Boissenot is its oenologist. Le Monteil d’Arsac, the Haut-Médoc, runs to 15,000 bottles a year. The 2023 is 63% Cabernet Sauvignon and 37% Merlot, the Merlot picked from September 18 to 22 and the Cabernet Sauvignon from September 26 to October 5. It was a Cru Bourgeois in the classifications of 2020 and 2025.

At a glance

Appellation

Haut-Médoc

Commune

Arsac

Classification

Cru Bourgeois, 2020 and 2025

Oenologist

Éric Boissenot

Vineyard

The estate: 54 hectares of Margaux, 32 of Haut-Médoc, 4 of Sauvignon Blanc in the Bordeaux appellation

Ground

Sandy gravel: alluvium and gravel over clay

Grapes

The 2023: Cabernet Sauvignon 63%, Merlot 37%

Production

15,000 bottles a year

Wines

Château Le Monteil d’Arsac

The house

Also Château d’Arsac, Margaux; more than 40 works of sculpture in the vines

In history

A growth of recent creation in 1886; often sold at the price of the third growths, 1898

Sources: Château d’Arsac · Château d’Arsac, 1,000 years of history · Château d’Arsac, contemporary art in the vines · Château d’Arsac, Château Le Monteil d’Arsac · Château d’Arsac, Le Monteil d’Arsac 2023 · Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, Château le Monteil d’Arsac · Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, the classification of 2025 · Alliance des Crus Bourgeois du Médoc, the classification of 2020