Discover the Château Hauterive
Coming from the same estate, but from specific parcels, Château d’Argan is a Cru Bourgeois du Médoc appellation wine and Château Hauterive is a wine from the Médoc appellation. Their profiles are different.
Saint-Germain D’Esteuil
The history of Château Hauterive
Château Hauterive, dominating the township of Saint-Germain d’Esteuil, holds a high position on the Medoc peninsula and enjoys a breathtaking view over the Reysson marsh.
Historically, the land was owned by the neighbor Château Castera, a property from the 14th century.
In the mid-18th century, the Verthamont family became the owner for 166 years and created the modern winery. It’s under their dynasty that the property appears in the writings under the name of “Cru des Rives” or “Chalet d’Hauterive”.
There is also another presumption that a part of the land comes from neighboring Château Beaucaillou, thanks to the intimate story linking the two families through the marriage of Marc Antoine du Périer and Marie-Thérèse de Verthamont in 1749.
In the recent history and according to the people of the village, it seems that the De Gaulle family came regularly to Saint-Germain d’Esteuil.
The cottage would have hosted General De Gaulle for a few nights before leaving France for England on June 17, 1940, when Marshal Pétain asked the Armistice to Germany.
Since the 2018 vintage, Château Hauterive has been awarded HVE certification
Clay-limestone soil.
The vineyard
Appellation :
The terroir
Geographic location: North-West of Bordeaux vineyard
The property benefits from a clay-limestone terroir on soft slope, which allows having a natural drainage of the parcels and a good water input of the vine even with a dry weather, like it was for the vintage 2016.
It’s this particular terroir which allows to the grapes to have a complete maturity and to the wines to reach a great richness of aromas and tannins.
The vines of Château Hauterive
To this day, the production site is composed of 61 hectares in the Medoc appellation. Only Château D’Argan is classified Cru Bourgeois since 2009. The volume of wine dedicated to Château D’Argan comes from parcels of 22 hectares, on the property, which is in total around 58 hectares currently.
The average age of the vineyard is 40 years and shows a high proportion of old vines pruned with caution. The goal is to preserve their aptitudes to produce grapes with small yield, rich in aromas in order to obtain a unique aromatic complexity in the wines.
The works on the vines
The vine cultivation is supervised at each step of the production to preserve and optimize at the maximum the quality of the fruit. The pruning is supervised at each vine plant to sustain them at best, thus we conserved parcels of more than 50 years.
The debuddings are realized in a meticulous manner with two successive passages to reduce the proportion of the vegetative mass around the grapes and then limit the humidity around the clusters. In the same vein, we realize a leaf stripping in order to avoid as well the expansion of the botrytis (grey rot) around the clusters that could affect the aromas and the color of the wines.
A work of restructuration is ongoing in the vineyard in order to sustain it in the time. We replant between 5 and 6 hectares per year choosing rootstocks and grape varieties adapted to our high quality wine production. We focus on the plantation of vines with small berries and loose clusters in order to obtain wines concentrated with a lower risk of expansion of grey rot.
The property is engaged in an environmental action via the Interprofessional Council of Bordeaux Wines (CIVB) and the support association System of Environmental Management (SME) since 2017. Our engagement is going to be recognized at the second level of the SME in 2019.
The winemaking
The picking occurs at complete maturity. The harvest is scratched before entering the stainless steel tank in order to exclude all the vegetal compounds.
The winemaking is made in thermo-regulated tanks. A particular care is given to the regulation of the temperature along the alcoholic fermentation.
Regular devattings provide a maximum of structure, colors and aromas to our wines. The malolactic fermentation which follows is as well an important preoccupation.
It’s made in stainless steel tank where the temperature can be precisely controlled and allows to the wines to become smoother and to obtain rounder wines rich in mouth. The wines are aged then under wood during 12 months.