A little history…

On the road from Saint-Julien to Beychevelle, a stone’s throw away from its church, the imposing square tower of Château La Tour Carnet rises in the axis of a monumental gate. If its thick walls could talk, they would tell us about the history of this authentic medieval castle. They would wake the knights’ gallop on the drawbridge in the twelfth century, the rumblings of the Hundred Years War in the fourteenth century, conversations between Montaigne, the owner’s brother, and La Boétie in the sixteenth century. In the seventeenth century we would hear the "drum sticks, which were used when the grapes were mature to keep wolves and wild boars away”, while the heyday of the "1855 classification" and the dark hours of phylloxera would unfold in the nineteenth century before the wonderful wine revival of the twentieth century.

Medieval roots

Its origins are lost in the mists of time. Originally called Château de Saint-Laurent, this medieval fortress perched on the most beautiful hills of the Médoc was used by the English against the French cavalry, and was lived in since the twelfth century. The defensive architecture of the castle (the famous round tower was built in the eleventh century) evokes the tumultuous period of the Hundred Years War. However, the Medoc wine trade was flourishing at the time and the wines of Chateau Saint-Laurent were particularly popular: in 1407, a wine "hogshead" of the château, about 240 litres, sold for 36 crowns, compared to 6 crowns for a Graves wine. At that time, "any lord’s wine being considered quality wine, it was deemed necessary to build a château at the centre of all vineyards". Carnet had already had its own château for two centuries.
In the thirteenth century, the House of Foix, subservient to the King of England, owned the seigneury of Saint Laurent. And when in 1451, Bordeaux surrendered to the King of France, Count Jean de Foix and his faithful squire Carnet refused to submit. Their loyalty to the King of England earned them plenty of problems punctuated by episodes of war.
In 1486, Carnet became executor of his master’s testament, who had died a year before, and still refused to join the King of France. Fighting alongside the English who were then harvesting in Aquitaine, he maintained a long siege in his castle. He was defeated by the "Beau Dunois", Joan of Arc’s companion. The castle was partially destroyed on the order of the King of France. Nevertheless, the valiant squire’s name remained.
Over the centuries, the domain was home to a succession of owners including Montaigne’s brother-in-law, Thibault de Carmaing, in the sixteenth century.

At the heart of the revolution of the Medoc vineyard

From 1500 until the Revolution, Tour Carnet evolved in an era of profound transformation of the vineyards. Spurred on by the growing importance of members of Parliament established by Louis XI, “nobles of the robe” appeared who were more interested in land than in the wine business. This activity gradually fell into the hands of Northern European merchants, particularly the Dutch. They built their cellars and warehouses in the swampy area on the left bank of the Gironde, in a suburb known as the "Chartrons", named after a former Carthusian monastery.
At that same time in some vineyards, expert winemakers managed not only to keep the wines but also to improve them by letting them age. Even though the notion of “vintage” had not yet come to be, buyers began to test before concluding any deal. At La Tour Carnet, the domain was always prim and proper. From 1725, with a focus on quality (light fertilisation and short pruning) rather than quantity, a wine of "new merit" was already being produced.
The 1789 revolution spared the estate, which was then owned by a Swedish nobleman, a wine-merchant at the Chartrons, Charles de Luetkens. This was to prove a lucky break for the property. Being in the hands of a foreigner, it was not subject to revolutionary laws. Moreover, in the hands of Luetkens, La Tour Carnet wines acquired lasting prestige.
His descendants, who became French, continued his work and did all they could to develop the immense potential of La Tour Carnet.

The 1855 classification

It was under the leadership of Angelica Raymond, Jean-Jacques Luetkens’s wife, that La Tour Carnet received an award for the quality of its wine in 1855 by appearing on the list of "Grands Crus Classés" on the occasion of the Universal Exhibition in Paris.
While this title offered a guarantee of quality and great publicity, it now forced the owners to keep producing great wine in order to keep their ranking.
At that time, the vineyards of La Tour Carnet covered 52 hectares.
In 1861, Charles Oscar Luetkens, Angelica’s son, became the owner of the chateau. Already involved in local politics (he was mayor of Saint-Laurent-de-Médoc during the Second Empire and during the provisional government of the emerging Third Republic), he also turned out to be a very influential man in the vineyard, recognised by his peers as a "distinguished winemaker".
Gradually destroyed by phylloxera, the vineyard underwent a period of eclipse, like most other grands crus classés. When such a misadventure occurred to a property, its value decreased. Many fell into the hands of investment companies that were more concerned with financial investments than wine quality.

The revival of the 60s

It was not until 1962 that the virtually abandoned property gradually rose from its ashes. A new owner, Louis Lipschitz, a Bordeaux shipowner (owner of a towing company), undertook to renovate, rebuild and restore this grand cru classé.
He started replanting abandoned plots, restoring the chateau and renovating the buildings around it.
He thus preceded by a decade the general move to rehabilitating the vineyards.
From 1978 onwards, his daughter Marie-Claire Pellegrin continued his work with the same diligence.
"My father”, she said beautifully, “left me a diamond he had not finished cutting». The vineyard was reconstituted with an area increased to 45 hectares, and the buildings were rehabilitated, expanded and modernised. Her creative husband, Guy Francis, imagined a rotating sorting table and a tracked enjambor, the prototypes of which are kept at the château. The estate thus regained the splendor of its 1855 classification.

Celebrating quality again

To maintain this drive for quality, Bernard Magrez has already undertaken a program of restoration and renovation. Not only is it his intention to raise La Tour Carnet, a total area of 126 hectares with 48 hectares of vines, to the excellence of its heyday, but he also wishes to exalt one of the most original soils in the Médoc thanks to all the latest cutting-edge knowledge and techniques. To continue, in the terms of its previous owner, Marie-Claire Pelegrin, to cut the diamond...