Château Fombrauge is the largest Grand Cru Classé of Saint-Emilion with a vineyard stretching on 58.60 hectares (143 ac.). It is its exceptional surface area that gives the soil a unique character... A typicity in diversity. Diversity of soils but also multiple exposures donate Château Fombrauge’s wine complexity and identity. Soil diversity, of course, because it is composed of asteriated limestone from the Tertiary, white clay and white molasses rocks, but also because of its multiple exposures that gives the wine its complexity and identity.
It is indeed the almost only Estate to benefit from the added-value of its large surface. The combination of different soils gives the quality and specificity of Château Fombrauge’s wine too. But the richness of the land wouldn’t be anything without the use of precision techniques. Bernard Magrez gave to the Estate the use of more advanced technologies such as a drone, an extremely effective tool to properly conduct the vines and vineyard.
Né à Villandraut en 1264, Bertrand de Goth est nommé le 28 Mars 1295 évêque de Comminges, dans les Pyrénées, jusqu’en 1299, date à laquelle il est nommé archevêque de Bordeaux par le pape.
Along with the use of latest technology, Château Fombrauge works to ensure much of the work in accordance with the more traditional methods: use of animal traction and manual harvest in small crates. But this culture of precision and excellence in the vineyard is also found in the winery: sorting table before and after de-stemming; encuvage gravity wooden tubs; maceration; manual pigeages, running off into French oak barrels of which 50% are new. Thus, to carry out a high quality wine, Château Fombrauge has a wide variety of containers: wooden vats, cement tanks, stainless steel and terracotta jars. The use of these four types of containers allows at once to get the best expression of the fruit, while taking advantage of the tannic structure.
Similarly, plot selection and intra-plot follows up in the cellar, where the diversity of containers are used to make wine volumes from the barrel to the tank up to 90 hl. Those small and medium containers allow to isolate the most homogeneous lots, under the varietal, maturity and health of the grapes, the age of the vine.
Finally, the assembly of the grapes variety - essential step in Bordeaux - is implemented in close collaboration between the teams of Château Fombrauge and Michel Rolland, world-wide famouse oenologist- expert.