Château Cantemerle: The Modern Era
In the latter years of the 19th century the domaine seemed at first to go from strength to strength. Alfred Danflou, writing in Les Grands Crus Bordelais (Librairie Goudin, 1867), reported that the trade regarded the wines as “très colorés, très corsés, et qu’ils ont un bouquet fin et prononcé”. The vineyard was expansive, and in the early 1880s there were about 110 hectares of vines planted, on an estate that covered 400 hectares all-told. The 1868 edition of Cocks et Féret put the production as high as 150 to 170 tonneaux per annum. This figure plummeted with the arrival of phylloxera though.
It is also worth noting that during this era the estate’s wines were already divided into first and second wines, both the 1883 and 1886 editions of Cocks et Féret indicating that there were 150 tonneaux of the former and 50 tonneaux of the latter. By 1897 the second wine had been christened Château Royal-Médoc, while the first wine remained Villeneuve Château Cantemerle-Médoc.
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