Château Cantemerle

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A Bottle of Château Cantemerle

Château Cantemerle is a winery in the Haut-Médoc appellation of the Bordeaux region of France. The wine produced here was classified as one of eighteen Cinquièmes Crus (Fifth Growths) in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855.

[edit] Listing Controversy

The status of Château Cantemerle as an original 1855 classification wine may be questioned as it was not included in the first publication of the classification, nor was it shown on the map that was displayed at the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris. It has been included on all listings dated 1856 and later. This was the result of an intense lobbying effort by Caroline de Villeneuve-Durfort who had supplied documentation to the brokers originally responsible for the price-based 1855 classification. Hence, its entry in the classification today is often accompanied by an asterisk denoting the only change in the classification that had occurred in more than 110 years. The second, and so far only other change, occurred in 1973 with the elevation of Château Mouton Rothschild from Second Growth to First Growth status.

[edit] History

The property has a long pedigree, with the first mention as early as 1147, of the Pons de Cantemerle. Mention of viticulture dates back to 1354 with the Ponset de Cantemerle recorded as paying debts in wine. Subsequently, the property passed to the Caupène and later the La Roque families.

In 1579 it passed to Jean de Villeneuve, who married into the Durfort Family. The Durforts controlled this and other wineries for many centuries.

In 1892, the Villeneuve-Durfort family sold the property to Théophile-Jean Dubos, and in 1981 was sold by the Dubos family to la Groupe SMABTP (Les Mutuelles d'Assurance du Bâtiment et des Travaux Public).