‘I make my wine at Lafite and Latour, but my heart is in Calon.’ The legend is that the Marquis de Segur, who owned all three of these properties, uttered these words in the eighteenth century and inspired the heart-shaped logo on bottles of Calon-Segur ever after. The good Marquis gave Calon-Segur half its name, but the other half had been around for quite some time. The estate was recorded as being in the hands of one Monseigneur de Calon, Bishop of Poitiers, in 1157. In other words, Calon-Segur, by the standards of the Medoc and St-Estephe in particular, is ancient.

In the early nineteenth century, a new owner cleared heather and scrub off gravelly soils to expand the vineyards. It is hard now to imagine a time when St-Estephe was anything other than a monoculture of vines. In 1855, Calon-Segur received a very respectable classification as a Bordeaux third growth. At the end of the century, it came into the hands of the Capbern-Gasqueton family, where it remained until the redoubtable, eccentric Madame Denise Capbern-Gasqueton died in 2011. With other family members at loggerheads over what to do with it, Calon-Segur had to be sold. It was bought by Suravenir Assurances, an insurance company. That has been no bad thing for the chateau, which has seen generous investment in the cellar and the winery. There have been new tanks, new vats and a new tasting room, while the (much-praised) winemaking team led by Vincent Millet has remained in place.

The vineyards lie in one large block around the chateau, less than a kilometer from the Gironde, and almost identical in layout to 1855. They are planted to 55 per cent Cabernet Sauvignon, with the balance mainly of Merlot and small amounts of Cabernet Franc and Petit Verdot. The soils are a diverse mix of gravel, rocks, clay, sand, and limestone. The new owners have also begun an extensive, long-term replanting programme, aimed both at increasing the overall proportion of Cabernet Sauvignon (which will better reflect the terroir) and at increasing the planting density, that is, packing more vines into each hectare. While that makes vineyard work more difficult, it also forces the vines to work harder to survive, and ultimately they produce better fruit. (NT 30/08/23)