Château Lafite-Rothschild: Vineyards
The Lafite-Rothschild estate is spread across a remarkable 267 hectares, but clearly only a slice of this is planted to vines. As note on previous pages, 126 hectares is nature reserve, certified under the Natura 2000 charter. The land actually planted to vines accounts for 112 hectares of the land. The château and cellars sit on the northern border of the estate; the turret dates from the 16th century, but the rest of the property, a rather understated manor house, is more recent. Before it lies formal vegetable gardens, some pasture, and also some large ponds connected to the region’s network of drainage channels.
The estate is partially screened from the D2 by a line of willow trees, although there are several breaks in the line that afford passing motorists a good view of the buildings. As a consequence, when driving past Château Lafite-Rothschild more often than not its location is marked by a number of cars and motorhomes pulled over to the side of the road, their occupants having piled out for the obvious photo-opportunity (although there are, it has to be said, usually larger crowds admiring the exotic facade of Château Cos d’Estournel, which lies just a few hundred metres further up the road). Sadly, the trees they peer between suffered significant damage during the storms that buffeted Bordeaux during the summer of 2013, and a number required replanting. Naturally, this work was swiftly completed.
As for the vineyards, these are located in the northern part of the Pauillac appellation, on a huge expanse of Terrace 3 gravel. This gravel is deep – you have to dig down more than 10 metres before you hit the subsoil in places – and it makes for an obvious rise in the land, as we might expect from the inclusion of fite, meaning hill, in the name. It is not a sharp peak, but rather a broad, low-lying elevation, reaching up to 27 metres above sea level – for the Médoc, this is positively mountainous.
