Château Lynch-Moussas
Ranking: Fifth growth (1855 Classification)
Appellation: Pauillac
Owner: The Castéja Family
Ten-second primer: The most westerly classed growth in the appellation, the château sitting just outside the communal boundary. Rescued from near-extinction by the Castéja family, it is today a good-value gateway wine to the classed growth ranks, with evident improvement in quality in recent years.
This profile includes: Four pages of history and detail (links above), and tasting notes back to 1997.
e car bounced just a little harder along the coarse tarmac of the single track road as I pressed the accelerator. I had not long passed Château Bernadotte, a minor estate situated in Fournas, in the Haut-Médoc vineyards west of the Pauillac appellation. Now I was headed south and east, back towards St Julien and – just a little, to be fair – it felt as though I was heading back to civilisation. Although there are a few vines around Fournas, I had quickly left such evidence of viticulture behind, and the narrow road was lined with dense pine woods on one side, and a tall thicket on the other.
Rounding a near-ninety-degree bend, the road began to climb slightly, and after passing a high wall on the left the landscape suddenly opened out. At first there was some rather sparse pasture, and then suddenly vines, the trees now seemingly pushed back by the now-dominant vineyard. And to the left, in the distance, a grand château appeared, albeit one partially obscured by trees. It was October, and harvest was just getting underway, and I could see the pickers scurrying around, ant-like both in their endless activity and their tiny, distant appearance. But what was this place? It was not long before I found out – the conveniently position road sign gave a bit of a clue. On this journey through the backwaters of Bordeaux I had chanced upon, on the very periphery of the Pauillac appellation, Château Lynch-Moussas.
Long a property easily overlooked, only half a century ago Château Lynch-Moussas (pictured below) was teetering on the brink of extinction, the vineyard having shrunk to a mere nubbin of vines. Happily, taken on by the Castéja family of the negociant house Borie-Manoux, it was rescued, resuscitated and restored to a position befitting its classed-growth status. While still a minor, arguably under-preforming property, today the quality and character is clearly improving, and this is now a property worth following. Before we come to these modern developments, however, as usual I begin with some history.
