Cellar Raid #2: Carruades de Lafite
After last week’s clutch of 1997 Coteaux du Layons from Jo Pithon, this week more results from my recent cellar raid. Two vintages of Carruades de Lafite.
The story of Carruades de Lafite is noteworthy, not least because it goes back much further than you might expect. The history of most second wines in Bordeaux usually makes for a short read; you only have to go back a few decades to find many cru classé châteaux producing only a grand vin, and any lots not deemed suitable would be sold off to whoever was willing to buy them.
As an example, looking to one of Lafite’s neighbours, when Baron Philippe de Rothschild (1902 – 1988) purchased Château d’Armailhac in 1933 he also acquired Dominique d’Armailhacq’s recently created négociant business; subsequently rechristened Baron Philippe de Rothschild SA it was under this label the Baron created Mouton Cadet, into which he channelled rejected lots from Mouton-Rothschild (including entire vintages from the early 1930s) and d’Armailhac, but he would also blend in lots purchased from many of his cru classé neighbours. This continued for decades; the second wine of Mouton-Rothschild, Le Petit Mouton de Mouton-Rothschild (to give it its Sunday name) was not created until 1993. Château d’Armailhac still has no second wine today.
Carruades de Lafite, meanwhile, is either a little older, or a lot older. It depends on which Carruades you are referring to.
The Rothschild family have owned vines on the Carruades plateau for as long as they have owned the Lafite property, but it would be wrong to say that this is the source of the modern-day Carruades de Lafite. The plateau gives the inspiration for the name, but not necessarily its fruit.
If you look back to the 19th century, however, there was a Carruades wine which was indeed sourced from the plateau. At a celebratory dinner quite a few years ago, the outgoing Baron Eric de Rothschild poured an 1875 Carruades, the vines part of the Lafite-Rothschild vineyard (since 1845 – so predating the Rothschild purchase) but bottled separately in this vintage. And in other vintages too. This practice continued intermittently through the 19th and 20th centuries, the wine essentially a cuvée parcellaire, released under the names Carruades and Moulin de Carruades.
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