L’Aurage: Vineyards
As indicated in my introduction, the domaine is located on the very boundary between St Emilion and Castillon; the vines therefore run right up to the border with St Emilion, just as some of Jean-Luc Thunevin’s vines do at Château Valandraud which sites just down the road, next to Château Mangot and the aforementioned Château de Pressac. Thus the terroir here in Castillon is the classic limestone and clay of this part of Bordeaux, soils that can yield wines of the same quality as in its more famous neighbour, but made from land that costs a fraction of what you would need to acquire a few vines in St Emilion. As consumers we should all be looking for quality and value combined from this particular Bordeaux appellation.
There are 19 hectares all told here, planted at 5600 vines per hectare, with the vines on the whole approaching 30 years of age. These are 90% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc, although we are likely to see Merlot become more dominant with time as Louis is generally discontent with the ability of the Cabernet Franc to fully ripen here. There is no green harvesting, this being part of the Mitjavile philosophy and a practice that seems to be on the wane in some parts of Bordeaux as vineyard managers look for other ways, methods that are perhaps a little more sensitive to the vine, to control yields. Louis looks to harvest late in the search for ripe tannins (more difficult with Cabernet Franc than Merlot, naturally), and he also looks for the beginning of degradation in the fruit when deciding the time to pick. In short, it is all very Mitjavile in style, which is of course exactly what we should expect.
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