Château Lescalle - Macau
This pretty little château was built by Emmanuel Tessandier in 1875 in Macau, which lies at the southern border of the Haut-Médoc. He surrounded his family’s home with vineyards, but was unhappily forced to divide his time between his bucolic life as a vigneron and his day job in Le Havre, where he had made his fortune creating and operating one of the world’s largest shipbuilding yards.
Today, the winemaking at Château Lescalle is still done in the classic Médoc style. Vineyard manager Claude Gaudin rigorously follows several basic principles. Extremely dense planting of the vines (up to 5000 vines per hectare) naturally limits the yields and increases the intensity of the fruit. A long maceration ensures full extraction of the fruit flavors and is followed by aging in barriques with a just touch of new oak.