Château de Rochemorin

The château

In 1520 Jean de Amelin, a gentleman of the Périgord and lord of a stronghold called Rochemorin, bought the Maison Noble de Beaubois in the parish of Martillac and cleared its forest for vines: the Rochemorin vineyard was born. Early in the 17th century it passed to the de Pesnel family, lords of La Brède, and in 1686 the last de Pesnel heiress married Jacques de Montesquieu. Their son Charles Louis de Secondat, born at La Brède on January 18, 1689, became the baron de Montesquieu, the philosopher of the Enlightenment; he learned winegrowing from his father at Rochemorin and carried its wine across Europe.

The family kept it until the early 20th century. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, list Rochemorin among the crus bourgeois of Martillac under Charles de Montesquieu in 1874, at 40 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels); their English edition of 1883 calls it one of the most ancient vineyards of Martillac and the most important after Smith, partly on clay and limestone and partly on fine gravel rises, and the baron won a gold medal at Bordeaux in 1882 and a silver at Antwerp in 1885. In 1893, 1898 and 1908 it is under the baronne de Montesquieu, at 18 tonneaux. Then the vines went. In 1919 Établissements Armand Beaumartin, foresters, bought it and let the trees take over, and from 1940 the Blancan family left it to decline. André Lurton bought it in 1973, cleared the trees and replanted the original vineyard.

The château stands 56 meters up, on a high gravel rise, with a modern winery built like a bodega with a tower. The vineyard is 56 hectares: 42 of red on deep gravel over clay, planted 48% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 5% Petit Verdot, 5% Cabernet Franc and 2% Malbec, and 14 of white on shelly sand and gravel over clay, 90% Sauvignon Blanc and 10% Sémillon. The red of 2019 was fermented in temperature-controlled steel tanks and aged 12 months in oak, 30% to 40% new, racked every 3 months. The family’s estates have held ISO 14001 since 2010 and Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) at level 3 since 2017, and 3 hectares of Rochemorin are under biocontrol. Noroît, a Petit Verdot from the most northwesterly plot, is made at 1,200 bottles a year.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Commune

Martillac

Classification

No classification

Owners

The André Lurton family, since 1973

Vineyard

56 hectares, 42 red and 14 white; the château at 56 meters

Soil

Deep gravel over clay for the red; shelly sand and gravel over clay for the white Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

Red: Merlot 48%, Cabernet Sauvignon 40%, Petit Verdot 5%, Cabernet Franc 5%, Malbec 2%. White: Sauvignon Blanc 90%, Sémillon 10%

Farming

Haute Valeur Environnementale, level 3, since 2017; ISO 14001 since 2010; 3 hectares under biocontrol

Cellar

Steel tanks; the red of 2019, 12 months in oak, 30% to 40% new

Wines

Château de Rochemorin, red and white; Noroît, 1,200 bottles

The house

Also Château Couhins-Lurton, Château La Louvière and Château de Cruzeau, Pessac-Léognan; Château de Barbe Blanche, Lussac-Saint-Émilion; Château Bonnet, Entre-deux-Mers

In history

Cleared for vines in 1520; the Montesquieu family, a cru bourgeois of Martillac from 1874 to 1908