Château Soutard

The château

The place was a farm with a mill in 1513, and the house was built in the middle of the 18th century. Tradition has Soutard planting its vines in rows some 300 years ago, when the custom was otherwise. It was also big. Charles Cocks, in Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins of 1850, gave it 60 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) under Mme Barie, ahead of every other property in the first class of the Haut-Saint-Émilion. In 1851 the old Soutard estate was divided; this growth took the 1st lot, the château and the choicest vines on the plateau, and in 1899, when Cocks and Édouard Féret brought out the English edition of their guide, it ran to 22 hectares and 60 tonneaux and had kept two thirds of its old French vines.

The Baron du Foussat de Bogeron owned it from 1909, and the des Lignéris family ran it for most of the 20th century. AG2R La Mondiale, an insurance group, bought it in 2006; it also owns Château Larmande. The house was restored, and in 2011 a gravity cellar by the architect Fabien Pédelaborde opened, with truncated cone vats in stainless steel and wood, and glass lifts down to the barrels. Soutard was a Grand Cru Classé in the first Saint-Émilion classification of June 16, 1955 and has held the rank at every revision since, in 1969, 1986, 1996, 2006, 2012 and in the list approved in September 2022. The estate never moved; its neighbor did. Château Cadet-Piola, a Grand Cru Classé since 1955, was merged into Soutard and dropped out of the classification from 2012.

The vineyard lies largely on the clay and limestone plateau, with clay slopes and some sand below, planted mostly to Merlot with Cabernet Franc and smaller amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec. Petit Soutard has been the second wine since the 2016 vintage; Les Jardins de Soutard came before it, and Clos de la Tonnelle before that.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Émilion Grand Cru

Commune

Saint-Émilion, largely on the limestone plateau

Classification

Grand Cru Classé at every list, from 1955 to 2022; Michelin Guide, 1 grape (2026)

Owner

AG2R La Mondiale, since 2006

Soil

Clay and limestone on the plateau; clay slopes and some sand below Terroir of Saint-Émilion →

Grapes

Mostly Merlot, with Cabernet Franc and smaller amounts of Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec

Cellar

A gravity cellar by Fabien Pédelaborde, opened in 2011; truncated cone vats in stainless steel and wood

Wines

Château Soutard; Petit Soutard, since the 2016 vintage

The estate it absorbed

Château Cadet-Piola, a Grand Cru Classé from 1955, gone from the list from 2012

In history

A farm with a mill in 1513; 60 tonneaux in 1850, the most in the first class; the 1st lot of the partition of 1851