Chateau La Cardonne

Appellation : Medoc

Since time immemorial, Château La Cardonne, a former Lafite-Rothschild vineyard, has sat proudly on the highest plateau in the Médoc appellation. Our 51 hectares of vines are planted on a mosaic of different soil types: On the plateau, gravel soils are dominant, layered on different depths of clay. As we travel down the slope, we reach the parcels comprised of clay-limestone soils, layered on blue marl with limestone outcrops. There is such diversity in each parcel, each creating their own variety of wine. That’s we vinify each parcel separately, giving rise to complex and elegant wines.

Chateau La Cardonne

Appellation : Medoc

The owner's pitch.

“At Château La Cardonne, it’s not simply a marriage of soil and climate. It’s the gentle slopes offering themselves to the sun, the hare that leaps happily over the vines, the birds who nest in our trees, the bees who come to visit in search of wild flowers, and the sea of clouds that float past us in the early morning. It is our communion with these surroundings that allow us to compose our wines, embracing it all, and bottling it for others to love.”
Andrew Mc Innes

Focus on the Chateau.

Surface area

51 hectares

Wine types

Red

Grape varieties

Cabernet Sauvignon
Merlot
Petit Verdot

Open for tours

By appointment

Ageing

At Château La Cardonne, the best tools are used to achieve excellence and the patient work of maturing in oak barrels gives the wine structure, aromas and complexity. After bottling, our wines mature for many more years, ten metres under the vineyard in a huge cellar called “the Cathedral”. The bottles of Château La Cardonne only come out of this cellar when they are fully matured, so that wine lovers all over the world can enjoy each bottle as we dreamed it would be.

Environmental protection

We have been committed to sustainable viticulture for over twenty years. We joined the Terra Vitis association of Bordeaux in its early years and obtained the Sustainable Agriculture certification in 2006, the Terra Vitis label since 2017 and the High Environmental Values (HEV) level 3 certification since 2019.

Wines.

“We are only musicians playing to a loving audience, with mother nature the conductor, and our terroir being the composer producing a different arrangement year on year. There are vintages of chamber music and vintages of symphony music. We have an original score to play each year and our orchestra interprets it whilst respecting the work of the composer, and also contributing to create a style that can be associated uniquely to us.”