Château Barde-Haut winery
"If you could invent an exceptional terroir, you might create something like Château Barde-Haut."
Hélène Garcin and Patrice Lévèque
Hélène Garcin and Patrice Lévèque took over Château Barde-Haut in 2000. Major investments and a great deal of dedication have given the Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Classé an enormous boost.
If you want to achieve something extraordinary in Bordeaux today, you have to invest a lot: Passion, time and also money; because true class is a combination of various factors. In addition to an excellent terroir, this also includes extensive soil analysis and the selection of the right vines and rootstocks in the vineyard. A cellar in which work is carried out as gently as possible is also essential. Hélène Garcin and Patrice Lévèque focussed on precisely these factors when they took over the winery in 2000. They were not investors who bought a winery to have it run by others. They did it themselves and have lived in the small château, around which the 17 hectares of plots are grouped, ever since. Patrice is a trained oenologist from the Chantegrive vineyard in Graves, and what he likes doing even more than looking after the wines in the cellar is working in the vineyard. There you can usually find him among the vines or on the tractor.
The 17 hectares of vines are located in an amphitheatre-like area to the east of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Saint-Émilion and close to the Château Troplong-Mondot. The soil consists of limestone covered by a very robust layer of clay. Around 80% Merlot and 20% Cabernet Franc are used. The wine is fermented in 50 to 150 hectolitre cement and stainless steel fermenters and matured in 300 and 500 litre barrels with a new wood content of between 50% and 80%, depending on the vintage. They only produce the Grand Cru Classé and no second wines, but also own Château d'Arche, Château Poesia and Clos L'Eglise Pomerol, other wine estates in Bordeaux.
photos: Château Barde-Haut
