Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion

The château

The land was part of Château Haut-Brion until 1584, when Jean de Pontac gave meadows, vines and a water mill to the Carmelite friars. They held it until the Revolution, which confiscated it and sold it off as national property. The négociant (a merchant who buys from the châteaux and sells on) Léon Colin bought it in 1840 and gave it the name it still carries. Édouard Féret, in the 1893 edition of Bordeaux et ses vins, the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, gives it a footnote: 10 hectares, 4 of them under vine, planted to the Cabernets, Malbec and Merlot, with Colin making 10 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) of a wine with finesse, bouquet and color enough to come close to the first growths of the Graves. Colin’s descendants, the Chantecaille family, built the château and laid out the park around it, and in November 2010 Didier Chantecaille-Furt and his daughter Pénélope sold to Patrice Pichet, of the Bordeaux property group that bears his name.

The property stands where Bordeaux, Pessac and Mérignac meet, walled in by the city that grew around it, and the Peugue runs through the middle of it: the Cabernets are planted on either side of the stream and the Merlot apart from them. The grand vin (the estate’s first wine) came off 7.6 hectares at the 2023 vintage, on gravel, clay and sand planted at 10,000 vines a hectare to 40% Cabernet Franc, 40% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Sauvignon, with vines of 41 years on average at the 2024 vintage and Cabernet Franc gaining share as the rows are replanted. The work is by hand, and some of the plowing is done by horse. Pichet has kept buying, vines at Château Le Thil in 2011 and 17 hectares at Château Haut Nouchet in 2013, in Martillac and the communes beside it, and those vines make Le C des Carmes Haut-Brion, since 2011: in the estate's view not a second wine but another signature, with a very different blend, from parcels about 20 minutes from the walled vineyard in the city. Guillaume Pouthier, who came from the Rhône, has directed the estate since 2012, and Stéphane Derenoncourt consults.

The cellar was drawn by Philippe Starck with the Bordeaux architect Luc Arsène-Henry and opened on June 24, 2016, Starck’s first building for wine. It is a blade, or the prow of a ship, clad in metal that gives back the vines around it, and it is set into the bed of the Peugue: the barrel hall lies 4 meters under the water, held down against its own buoyancy by piles driven 42 meters into the earth, with 300 barrels beneath the stream. Whole bunches go into the vats, 60% of them at the 2023 vintage, and the extraction is a slow infusion with the cap held under, in wood, stainless steel and concrete by variety. The 2023 was raised in 70% new barrels, 20% new casks of 18 hectoliters and 10% amphora.

Les Carmes has a voice of its own in Pessac-Léognan, built on perfume and the lift of Cabernet Franc, and it had it before the new cellar. The 2012, which I tasted in December 2025, already shows it: silky, spiced, with a gently smoky echo of the Graves soils, the kind of wine that feels like someone turned the volume down and the detail up. The 2010, tasted in November 2025, is the bigger statement, with black fruit, flowers, graphite and a cool, energetic core, its structure still impressive at 15 years old and plenty of life ahead of it.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Commune

Bordeaux, where it meets Pessac and Mérignac, with the Peugue running through the vines

Classification

Michelin Guide, 2 grapes (2026)

Owner

Patrice Pichet, since November 2010; the Colin and Chantecaille family before him, from 1840

Direction

Guillaume Pouthier, since 2012

Consultant

Stéphane Derenoncourt

Vineyard

7.6 hectares for the grand vin at the 2023 vintage; 10,000 vines a hectare; vines of 41 years on average

Soil

Gravel, clay and sand Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

Cabernet Franc 40%, Merlot 40%, Cabernet Sauvignon 20%

Cellar

Philippe Starck and Luc Arsène-Henry, opened June 24, 2016; the barrel hall 4 meters below the Peugue, on piles 42 meters deep; whole bunches, 60% at the 2023 vintage

Wines

Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion; Le C des Carmes Haut-Brion, another signature from other parcels, since 2011

In history

Given to the Carmelite friars by Jean de Pontac of Haut-Brion in 1584; 4 hectares under vine in 1893