Château Brane-Cantenac
My first-ever visit to Château Brane-Cantenac was not one blessed with glorious weather. Despite having spent the previous day tasting and photographing châteaux in Sauternes under beautiful blue skies and unseasonably warm temperatures, what I found a day later in Margaux was much more what I would expect from Bordeaux as autumn advanced. The sky above was grey and heavy, the raindrops just starting to fall as I made my way inside the tasting room, ready to check out the latest from this estate.
Château Brane-Cantenac is one of a number of Bordeaux estates that has seen great changes during the last three decades, an accelerated evolution rather than a revolution, but still a huge shift from its under-performing wines of the 1970s. The man ultimately responsible for these developments is Henri Lurton who writes, in a tasting booklet I carried away with me after a much more recent visit to the property in 2025;
“I wanted to deeply understand Brane’s terroir – to explore it, refine it, and evolve without ever rushing it.”
By his side throughout this evolution has been Christophe Capdeville, the maître de chai when Henri received the keys to the château from his father Lucien Lurton in 1992, and since promoted twice, first to technical director in 2000, and then to estate manager in 2004. But before we wade into this more recent history and the estate’s standing today, and what roles these key figures have played in its story, it makes sense to first look at how Château Brane-Cantenac itself originated.
Early History
The story of Château Brane-Cantenac may be traced as far back as at least the early 18th century, when the property was in the possession of Guilhem Hosten. This was already an extensive estate, with many hectares planted up, all within the seigneurie of Issan. Sometime after 1757 it was acquired by the Gorse family, and from 1760 onwards the property was known as Château Gorse (sometimes spelled Gorce, or even Gorsse) and, for a while (following a marriage between the Gorse and Guy families), as Château Gorse-Guy.
