Château Cantemerle: The Fifth Growth That Nearly Wasn't

(Wine-Searcher) - After a century spent sadly shrunken and neglected, insurance company money returns Château Cantemerle near its mid-1800s heights.

It’s a pleasing scene to picture. The year is 1855, Bordeaux is still one of the leading ports of France, although its glory has faded slightly from its pre-French Revolution days, as the trade in sugar, spices, coffee and slaves has dropped away, leaving just the one stalwart of the city: wine. The Paris exhibition is drawing international attention to the importance of Bordeaux’s wine industry, and its brokers have drawn up a list of the 60 most commercially successful red wines in the region.

Most château owners had zero understanding of how important the 1855 ranking would become. But one woman in the commune of Macau did grasp its relevance, and was furious to have not been included. She was Caroline de Villeneuve, owner of Château Cantemerle, one of the biggest properties in the Haut-Médoc.

Villeneuve had sold her wine direct for 40 years, building up a loyal following almost entirely in the Netherlands. But in 1854, she handed over sales responsibilities to the network of brokers and négociants of the Place de Bordeaux.

She realized she needed help keeping up with the demands that selling wine required, but also felt she was doing the merchants a favor by allowing them a cut of such a successful brand. Now, barely a year later, this was how they repaid her, by leaving her wine off the list

Not prepared to put up with this turn of events, Villeneuve marched down to the Chamber of Commerce in September 1855, while the Exhibition was still ongoing in Paris. She demanded a meeting with the head of the brokers union, and told him in no uncertain terms that she had put her faith in the Place by giving her wine to them for distribution, and she expected to be acknowledged. She brought 40 years' worth of receipts with her, showing how much Cantemerle sold for; how it was comparable to other newly-classified estates that had made the cut