Bordeaux guide - Victoria Nabholz
Bordeaux guide - Victoria Nabholz
Bordeaux guide - Victoria Nabholz

Bordeaux guide - Victoria Nabholz/ Blog

Château Smith Haut Lafite-visit of the king CharlesIII

04 January 2025

 

Hotel Les Sources de Caudalie spa vinotherapie, a veritable ecosystem, the art of  living in the heart of the Château Smith Haut Lafitte vineyards.  This complex is first awarded “European Ecolabel” and visited by Charles III last year. Château Smith Haut Lafitte, a classified Grand Cru of Graves in the AOC Pessac-Léognan appellation, was carefully chosen by the royal family for its principles of organic farming and biodynamics. The occasion of the Château’s visit by Charles the 3rd in September 2023 allowed her Majesty to witness the production techniques implemented on the estate since the 1990s by Florence and Daniel Cathiard, the owners of Château Smith Haut Lafitte. Organically certified chateau uses many biodynamic practices for nearly 10 years, benefit from medicinal herbs in preventing vine diseases, such as yarrow, horsetail and tansy, to make decoctions which are often sprayed onto the vines using horses. The château’s teams grow their own rootstocks while preserving the unique identity of their own grape varieties. Alongside these traditional viticultural methods, satellite images, drones, detailed soil surveys are used.At Château Smith Haut Lafitte, a vat room using only gravity flow has been in operation since 2013 in order to keep the grapes intact. Each facility is equipped with the latest technology. The grapes are harvested by hand and then sorted on vibrating tables, followed by precise optical sorting using photographic analysis. This ensures only ripe grapes of optimal quality are put into the truncated cone-shaped oak vats used for fermentation. The thousand-barrel underground cellar ages several red wine vintages. Another cellar is reserved for white wines.  Wines are matured in oak barrels for 12 to 18 months. Designed to limit its environmental impact, the winery runs on positive energy, particularly thanks to low consumption and the production of solar energy, rainwater recovery, a ground-coupled heat exchanger to cool the barrel cellars.  In 2014, the world’s first system that recycles the CO2 produced during fermentation was installed. In 1993, Daniel Cathiard decided to hire a master cooper, and almost all of the estate’s barrels are now made in-house.