Château Palmer: Vineyards
Château Palmer is located in the Margaux heartland, overlooking the D2 just as it heads into the village of Margaux itself, which sits just to the northwest. While it can be viewed from the vineyards of Château Rauzan-Ségla, Château Rauzan-Gassies and Château Marquis de Terme which lie directly to the west, surely its most notable neighbour is Château Margaux, which sits just to the north, just a short walk through the vines away. To the east there are two more properties, the cru bourgeois estate Château Pontac-Lynch and Château d’Issan.
There are today 66 hectares of vineyards, situated on beds of gravelly soil which constitute the first of the gravel terraces which run right up the length of the Médoc. These gravels are rich in quartz, quartzite, chalcedony and lyddite, all of which were deposited here during the Quaternary era, having arrived here after being swept down from the Pyrenees by the flow of the Garonne and then into the broad estuary waters of the Gironde. These gravels form a fairly profound surface layer, up to four metres deep in places, which sits over a hard limestone bedrock.
