Coming back to Calon provides the same beneficial feeling each time. The one you experience when you find a familiar place – if not family – with its good smells of flowering vines, the sound of gravel crunching underfoot, the reassuring vision of the elements firmly in place. , the small chapel placed on the back of a hilltop, the trimmed boxwoods of the French garden, the white shutters open on the facade of the 18th century castlee. A few moments before, we crossed, through the main gate, the long enclosure wall which, bordering the village of Saint-Estèphe to the north, surrounds the fifty hectares of vines. They are 55 today, they were 55 during the classification of (18) 55, which placed Calon Ségur in third place in the Médoc hierarchy.
“My heart is in Calon”
This constancy is singular in the west of the Gironde, and it contributes to forging the particular identity of the cru. Everything there changes in depth without anything changing in appearance. Calon has always been a field, a heart and rumps. Finely traced on the label, where they intertwine the name of the castle, the two lobes symbols of the seat of passion have long evoked these words pronounced around 1720 by the Marquis de Ségur, “prince of the vines” according to Louis XV: “I make wine at Lafite and Latour but my heart is in Calon. »
There are, in fact, few terroirs like this one, undulating in long waves of gravel, covering layers of deep clay, descending gently towards the river. It’s been ten years and a few months since Jean-Pierre Denis, former president of Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, having taken up the torch held firmly by Denise Gasqueton, undertook, at the cost of work as discreet as gigantic, to restore all its luster in Calón. It is in the enclosure of the vat room and the cellar that the work is seen, but it is in the vineyard that it takes shape, under the brush of Vincent Millet, pointillist artist of a viticulture of precision. Year after year, Millet sows its mass selections of Cabernet Sauvignon, destined to become the monarch of the place. This radical choice brings grace and depth to Calon Ségur, giving it common nobility initials, CS. Already, Calon 2016, with 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, is breathtaking in its sensuality and race.
Château Calon Ségur 2016, Saint-Estèphe. €170 a bottle. wineandco.com
