Château Tertre Rôteboeuf

The château

Tertre is an old place name of the côte: Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, already print a Le Tertre at Saint-Laurent-des-Combes in 1893, at 5 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), under Fatin. The Tertre Rôteboeuf of today is the work of one man. François Mitjavile took on the vines at the end of the 1970s, when they covered 3.70 hectares, named the wine in 1978 and rebuilt the terraces on the slope. The name means, loosely, the belching ox, after the oxen that once labored up that steep hillside; it sounds almost absurd for 1 of Bordeaux’s cult wines, which is part of the charm; Bordeaux can be wonderfully serious about wonderfully strange things.

Mitjavile has been plain about the classification: since he could not be classified, he said, he decided he did not care and would make a great bottle instead. So the estate stands outside the classification of 2022, sold as Saint-Émilion Grand Cru with no rank, and there is no second wine, and never has been. The Revue du Vin de France gave it 3 stars in its guide for 2020.

The vineyard is 6 hectares of clay and limestone, 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc, with vines 50 years old on average, cropped at 35 hectoliters a hectare for 25,000 bottles a year. The wine is fermented in concrete and aged entirely in new barrels. Mitjavile made its name by challenging the conventions of the Right Bank, as I wrote of the 2018 in May 2026: very late picking, low yields and a style built on texture and aromatic intensity rather than strict classical structure.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Émilion Grand Cru

Commune

Saint-Laurent-des-Combes, on the côte

Classification

No classification, by the owner’s choice

Owner

François Mitjavile, since the end of the 1970s

Vineyard

6 hectares, from 3.70 at the start; vines 50 years old on average

Soil

Clay and limestone Terroir of Saint-Émilion →

Grapes

Merlot 80%, Cabernet Franc 20%

Cellar

Concrete vats; new barrels, 100%

Production

25,000 bottles a year; 35 hectoliters a hectare

Wines

Château Tertre Rôteboeuf; no second wine