Château Le Crock
Le Crock is one of those names that perhaps doesn’t work quite so well in English as it does in French. The origins of the name are far from certain, but it seems to be relevant to the locality, as evidenced by the coexistence of the Marais du Crock, a hook-shaped area of marshland which cuts into the Saint-Estèphe heartland close to the hamlet of Marbuzet. This marshland wraps itself around the vineyards of Château Cos Labory and Château Cos d’Estournel and is contiguous with the marshy fields that run either side of the Jalle de Breuil, the drainage channel which passes just to the north of Château Lafite-Rothschild, and which forms the boundary between the Saint-Estèphe and Pauillac appellations.
And it is at the tip of this hook of marshland that we find Château Le Crock.
It seems plausible that the old French word croc, meaning hook, is the origin of the crock in both Marais du Crock and Château Le Crock, just as it also gave us the words crochet (the modern French word for hook) and croquet (relating to the hooks pushed into the ground I think). The fact that the modern-day name Le Crock has evolved from the original term Cru de Croc, as used by a proprietor named Merman in the 1830s, lends a little weight to this theory. Nevertheless, the property did not begin life as Le Crock (or even Le Croc), nor did it originate with the Merman family. Its earliest recorded history evokes other names, some of which may be familiar to those who know the histories of the châteaux of Saint-Estèphe.
