Château La Tour Carnet: Vineyards
As noted in my introduction, Château La Tour Carnet lies in the commune of St-Laurent du Médoc, just outside the appellation of St Julien. The estate covers several hundred hectares, so naturally it includes a wide diversity of soils. In the east of the commune, where Château La Tour Carnet is situated, rich gravel beds prevail, the same gravel that runs beneath vineyards of the more famous communes of Pauillac, St Julien and others. The vineyards have a gentle slope with an aspect facing south-south-west, and beneath the gravel underfoot there is also clay and limestone in parts. One part of the vineyard, to the west, is unusual in that the vines are planted on a limestone hillock, a geological curiosity known locally as the butte (hillock) or chapeau (hat) of La Tour Carnet.
Only ten years ago the vines covered approximately 75 hectares of the estate, but this has been a period of expansion and acquisition for the property, absorbing the vineyards of Château Lieujean, Château Caronne-Ste-Gemme and Château Labat, among others. As a consequence it has expanded greatly, and is currently in a state of flux as the team restructure this extensive vineyard. The best figure I have for the area currently under vine is 234 hectares (a huge rise from about 75 hectares ten years previously), a figure presented alongside the 2024 vintage.
The percentages of each variety planted has also changed in recent years, inevitable with the shifting nature of the vineyard, The plantings are currently 37% Cabernet Sauvignon (down from 50% ten years ago) and 58% Merlot (up from 39% ten years ago), with just 1% being Cabernet Franc (constituting a huge shift in this variety which previously accounted for 11% of the vineyard). Alongside these three varieties, the acquisitions of neighbouring vineyards has brought some Petit Verdot into the mix, accounting for 4% of the vineyard area. This shift towards Merlot is one of the reasons that the wines of La Tour Carnet have changed so much in recent times.
