Visit the Château La Tour Carnet
In the heart of the Médoc vineyards , Château La Tour Carnet invites you to an unforgettable experience. Visiting Château La Tour Carnet will allow you to enter the rooms of the Château and discover its exceptional vineyards. Depending on the experience chosen, you can then taste the wines alone or paired with chocolate or cheese. Blend your own wine? It is also possible with the B-winemaker workshop which offers you to leave with your bottle of your assembly and personalized. And yes, to satisfy the most curious among you, the estate organizes workshops that will allow you to blend your favorite wines and leave with a bottle of a unique wine.
The history of Château La Tour Carnet
To understand what makes the richness and unique personality of the wines of La Tour Carnet, it is necessary to understand both what makes the originality of its terroir and what makes excellence in its viticulture and winemaking techniques. It is the diversity of the terroir of Saint-Laurent en Médoc that makes it original. It is a mosaic composed in the extreme west of sandy-gravelly land, becoming in the west and in the center silico-gravelly, silico-clayey and clay-limestone. To the east, on the gravelly hillsides on which the best vineyards are located, including that of La Tour Carnet, the structure of the soils, composed mainly of Gunzian gravel, is very similar to that of the bordering appellations of Pauillac and of Saint Julien. Facing south-southwest, a large part of the hillsides with limestone clay subsoil are covered with a thick layer of Garonne and Pyrenean gravel. It is on this wide border of gravelly hillsides that the best vineyards are located. The 1855 classification endorsed this reality by specifically distinguishing Château La Tour Carnet as a Grand Cru Classé. The western part of the domain is occupied by a hilltop of starfish limestone whose slopes are covered with Sannoisian clays. It is the “Butte de La Tour Carnet”, a geological curiosity that specialists are still wondering about today. The eastern part of the terroir extends, for its part, on hillsides, facing south / south-west, with a gravelly hilltop, a hill typical of the great wines of the Médoc. The limestone clay subsoil is covered with a thick layer of Garonne and Pyrenean gravel. The last entity, located north of the castle, is made up of a large plateau of fine gravel. Numerous experiments carried out relentlessly over the years, the latest being the acquisition of a drone to analyze the plots, have made it possible to optimize the virtues of these plots by assigning them the most suitable grape varieties: the Butte is a terroir favorable to Merlots, the slopes, rather to Cabernets. Under the impetus of Bernard Magrez, Château La Tour Carnet has returned for several years to traditional methods which rely heavily on manual work. At the end of the harvest, the contents of the crates are carefully poured onto a sorting table. Undesirable elements (petioles, pieces of leaves, etc.) and green or damaged clusters are then eliminated. The harvest is then destemmed to separate the berries from the stalks. The berries are again selected on a new sorting table. Most of the plant matter likely to bring "herbaceous" tastes will then be removed in favor of the roundness sought in Château La Tour Carnet. The grapes will be deposited in a vat which will be transported and emptied above the fermentation tanks, this gravity filling avoids pumping the harvest. Most of the great wine is vinified in wooden vats, which are regularly renewed, and in new generation cement vats that promote the aromatic expression of the wines. For several years, there has been a return to traditional methods used in the past in the Médoc, such as transporting the harvest by gravity, the use of wooden vats and trapping. return to traditional methods used in the past in the Médoc. The aim of these techniques is to obtain a complex, silky wine with powerful but harmonious tannins and great aromatic persistence. The barrels will welcome the new vintage and will be grouped together in the impressive cellars of Château La Tour Carnet. The duration of the stay in barrels is 18 months for the Grand Vin. One month before bottling, the wine is put back into vats to proceed with the blending and thus perfect its homogeneity, the final stage which will reveal the vintage of Château La Tour Carnet and will continue to elevate it to the rank of Grand Cru Classé Haut. Medoc.The best cuvées of the Château La Tour Carnet estate
- Château La Tour Carnet, Haut-Médoc red
- Château La Tour Carnet, Voluntary Servitude Haut-Médoc red
- Château La Tour Notebook, white Bordeaux
If you are lucky enough to be able to taste a Château la Tour Carnet wine, you will have a very rich choice. Indeed, all their vintages are more exceptional than each other. In addition, they offer both white and red cuvées, including the illustrious Grand Cru Classé, but also an exceptional second wine, known as “Les Douves Château la Tour Carnet”.
A stay at Château La Tour Carnet
A stay at La Tour Carnet offers an incredible journey through time. Its authentic medieval heritage has been restored by Bernard Magrez through the two surprising suites “Michel de Montaigne” and “La Boétie”.
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