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Featured Wine
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The vineyard of Château Margaux is one
of four wines to achieve First Growth status in the 1855 Bordeaux
Classification because of its high price. A bottle of Château Margaux
1787 holds the record as the most expensive bottle of wine ever
broken, insured at $225,000. Chateau Margaux usually consists of
approximately 75% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, 5% Petit verdot and
Cabernet Franc grapes. It is one of the most expensive wines in the
world costing over $1750 a bottle even whilst still in the barrel
before it is released. The château lies in the commune of Margaux in the Médoc region in the département of Gironde. The vineyard is planted in gravelly terrain on the left bank of the Garonne estuary. It is in the Margaux Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée. History The estate has been occupied since at least the 12th century, but it was only with the arrival of the Lestonnac family in the 16th century that wine production became of particular importance, and in the 1570s Pierre de Lestonnac cleared many of the grain fields to make way for grapes. By 1700 the estate covered its present area of 265 hectares, and the 78 hectares devoted to vines has remained essentially unchanged since then. As with most of Médoc's châteaux, the 18th century saw the wine develop from a pale watery drink that faded within only a few years, to the dark, complex liquid that has been stored in cellars ever since. At Château Margaux this transformation was largely due to a manager named Berlon, who revolutionised techniques of wine-making by introducing novel ideas such as forbidding harvesting in the early morning to avoid dew-covered grapes, and acknowledging for the first time the importance of soil quality. |
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estate's wine was well known. Thomas Jefferson placed it number one in
his personal classification. The 1855 classification ordered by Napoleon
III confirmed its status. The estate's château itself was completely rebuilt in 1810 when Bertrand Douat, marquis de la Colonilla, commissioned one of Bordeaux' foremost architects, Guy-Louis Combes,[2] to create a building worthy of the wines that were made on the site. The result was Combes' masterpiece, a four-square palace with a columned portico in neo-Palladian style that has been called the "Versailles of the Médoc", familiar from its appearance on the Château Margaux label. It sits in its own park, at the end of a cobbled drive. In the 1970s, after a series of low-quality vintages, the owners of the estate since 1950 were forced to sell Château Margaux. The successful buyer was French grocery and finance group Félix Potin, headed by Greek André Mentzelopoulos. Mentzelopoulos transformed the vineyard through well-chosen investment in the wine-making process and by his death in 1980 Château Margaux was back among the region's finest wines. At the beginning of the 1990s, an exchange of shares was negotiated with the Agnelli family but the management remained in the hands of Mentzelopoulos' daughter Corinne Mentzelopoulos. In 2003, Corinne Mentzelopoulos bought back the majority stake and became the sole shareholder of Château Margaux. |
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