Producer Profile
Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion
Château Les Carmes Haut-Brion is a 10.3-hectare wine estate in Pessac-Léognan on the Left Bank of Bordeaux. The property was established over 400 years ago. It takes its name from the Carmelites, the order of monks that tended it for almost 200 years. Once a little-known neighbour of the world-famous Châteaux Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion, things have changed rapidly here in recent years and it is today one of Bordeaux’s most exciting names.
Investment from owner Patrice Pichet over the past decade alongside winemaker, Guillaume Pouthier, who formerly worked with Michel Chapoutier in the Rhône, has allowed for quality at the property to reach new levels. A brand new, state-of-the-art winery was built in 2016, several new parcels of vines were added to increase the size of the estate, and a range of work from replanting to slope correcting undertaken. Pouthier employs conscientious vineyard management, everything from hand-harvesting to using horses to plough between the vines.
Guillaume Pouthier is also a serial innovator. He is a proponent of whole-bunch fermentation, which is virtually unheard of in Bordeaux. Extraction, an important winemaking process, is handled differently here too: Guillaume uses a very gentle method of infusion rather than the more typical pumping-over or punching-down. The wines are matured in a combination of new French oak barrels, large oak casks and amphorae.
The wine here is stylistically unique within Bordeaux. This is in part due to the vineyard: the estate sits just outside the city of Bordeaux, with some limestone soils to complement the more typical gravel and clay. There is a high proportion of old-vine Cabernet Franc, rarely seen to any great extent on the Left Bank. Their top wine is the pride of the estate, it creates a synthesis between power, finesse, radiance and depth. Among the classics of Pessac-Leognan, Carmes Haut-Brion has carved out its own niche.
At the heart of their ambition, is one sole objective: to give the land and the terroir the attention they deserved. Plot-by-plot work paired with reduced yields enables concentration in the grapes. This new era for the estate embodies a pursuit of excellence.
