Château Tournefeuille

The château

The Belleyme map of 1783 already marks Tournefeuille, a farm with vines on the slopes, and the name speaks of a hill turned to the wind. In 1850 Victor Tastet, from the Landes, bought the land and built a wine estate in the classic Bordeaux château style; in 1874 Camille Decout, an industrialist from the Charente, took it over, and the Sautarel family, from Ussel in the Corrèze, owned it from 1939 to 1998. That year François Petit found here the vineyard he had been looking for for 20 years, and the Petit and Cambier families took it on. Emeric Petit runs it now. His wife Virginie opened the Maison de Tournefeuille, with guest rooms, in 2011, and the family has since added Château La Révérence in Saint-Émilion and Château Lécuyer in Pomerol.

The château sits at the top of the spur above the valley of the Barbanne, the stream between Néac and Pomerol, and the 18 hectares fall across 4 terroirs: a south-facing slope of swelling clay, a gravel outcrop, a north-facing slope of clay and gravel and a plateau of clay and loam. They are planted 62% Merlot, 33% Cabernet Franc, 3% Cabernet Sauvignon and 2% Malbec, and 50% of the vines are 50 years old or more. No chemical weedkiller or insecticide is used; the leaves are thinned, and the grapes are picked by hand, sorted on a table and fermented plot by plot in temperature-controlled concrete vats. The wine ages 18 months, 20% in vat and 80% in barrels, one third of them new, for 50,000 to 80,000 bottles. La Cure, from a plot near the old presbytery of Néac, is aged in new barrels, and Rosalcy comes from 3 hectares beside Tournefeuille.

At a glance

Appellation

Lalande-de-Pomerol

Commune

Néac, above the valley of the Barbanne

Classification

No classification

Owners

The Petit and Cambier families, since 1998

Direction

Emeric Petit

Vineyard

18 hectares on 4 terroirs; 50% of the vines 50 years old or more

Soil

Swelling clay, gravel, clay and gravel, clay and loam Terroir of Lalande-de-Pomerol →

Grapes

Merlot 62%, Cabernet Franc 33%, Cabernet Sauvignon 3%, Malbec 2%

Farming

No chemical weedkiller or insecticide; picked by hand

Cellar

Plot by plot in concrete vats; 18 months, 80% in barrel, one third new

Production

50,000 to 80,000 bottles

Wines

Château Tournefeuille; La Cure; Rosalcy

The house

Also Château La Révérence, Saint-Émilion, and Château Lécuyer, Pomerol