Château Loudenne

The château

Loudenne stands at the edge of the Gironde estuary, 6 kilometers north of Saint-Estèphe: a pink chartreuse of the 17th century with a port of its own. Vines are recorded here from the 13th century, tended by the monks of the abbey of l’Isle, and the remains of a Gallo-Roman villa suggest a longer story still. In the 19th century it belonged to the Marcellus family. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, lists Château-Loudène at Saint-Yzans under de Marcellus fils in 1845, at 100 to 150 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), and Armand d’Armailhacq, in La culture des vignes, la vinification et les vins dans le Médoc of 1855, rated the wines of its gravel mound the best of the commune.

The turn came in 1875. Alfred and Walter Gilbey, merchants of London, bought Loudenne from the vicomtesse de Marcellus for 700,000 francs, when barely 50 of its 190 hectares were in vines, and made it their base in France. They built a port on the Gironde to ship the wine to London, chais for 10,000 barrels designed by the Bordeaux architect Minvielle, a Decauville tramway from the port to the château and an English park. By 1897 the vineyard covered nearly 100 hectares, and in 1887 the Ministry of Agriculture gave it a gold medal as the best-farmed vineyard of the Gironde. For 125 years the family, and then its company, made the name of Loudenne. Sophie and Christophe Gouache have owned it since 2022.

The property covers 132 hectares, 62 of them in vines and the rest salt meadows under the Natura 2000 charter, grazed by cattle and sheep. The red vineyard, 48 hectares on 2 buttes of gravel mixed with clay over a limestone plateau, is planted 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 46% Merlot, 2% Cabernet Franc and 2% young Petit Verdot. The white, 14 hectares of clay and limestone at the foot of the buttes, is 75% Sauvignon Blanc and 25% Sémillon, and Loudenne has made white wine since 1880. The estate has held Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) at level 3 since the 2017 vintage and began converting to organic farming in 2019, working the soil in place of weedkillers. The grand vin (the estate’s first wine) is sold as Loudenne Le Château, in red, white and rosé.

At a glance

Appellation

Médoc

Commune

Saint-Yzans-de-Médoc

Classification

No classification

Owners

Sophie and Christophe Gouache, since 2022

Vineyard

62 hectares of a property of 132: 48 red, 14 white

Soil

Gravel buttes over limestone; clay and limestone for the white Terroir of Médoc →

Grapes

Red: Cabernet Sauvignon 50%, Merlot 46%, Cabernet Franc 2%, Petit Verdot 2%. White: Sauvignon Blanc 75%, Sémillon 25%

Farming

Haute Valeur Environnementale, level 3, since 2017; organic conversion begun in 2019

Wines

Loudenne Le Château, red, white and rosé

In history

Bought by W. and A. Gilbey of London in 1875; nearly 100 hectares of vines by 1897