Cadillac Côtes de Bordeaux
Cadillac Côtes de Bordeaux is a red-wine-only appellation on the right bank of the Garonne: a band 60 kilometres long and barely five kilometres wide, running upriver from Bordeaux towards Langon. It came into being with the 2009 vintage, when the red wines of the Premières Côtes de Bordeaux moved under the newly created umbrella of the Côtes de Bordeaux and received a name of their own there; since then the older names apply only to sweet white wines. Around 1,250 hectares in 39 communes are farmed by some 140 estates, and Merlot leads the blends. The name on the label sets a framework: area, grape varieties, maximum yields, minimum ageing. What happens within that framework is decided by each estate for itself — and that is where most of the difference lies, all the more so because the subsoil changes considerably within the area.
Where the name comes from
The vineyards above the Garonne take their name from the small town of Cadillac. The sites were recognised much earlier, however: in 1937 as Premières Côtes de Bordeaux, and in 1973 the name Cadillac was added for the area's sweet wines. Anyone who reads three names for one area today is reading three different types of wine.
What the framework sets, and what it leaves open
An appellation name is the short form of a specification. For the red wines, the main varieties provided for are Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Côt, plus Carménère and Petit Verdot as secondary varieties, which together may not exceed fifteen per cent of the blend. Cadillac is one of five named area designations under this umbrella; all of them work to stricter rules than the basic appellation. What is not regulated, on the other hand, is almost everything that actually shapes a wine: the day of the harvest, the rigour of the selection, the question of how much time a vintage is given. A designation of origin therefore tells you reliably where a wine comes from, and only roughly how it tastes.
Why an appellation only describes the average
The specification describes the Cadillac zone as vineyards on the limestone escarpment that runs along the right bank of the Garonne, with slopes facing mainly south and west towards the river, whose mass of water evens out temperatures. How far such a description can be from an individual plot is shown by the limestone: our subsoil contains practically none at all, and total lime content stays below one part per thousand in every profile. How great the differences are over a small area is something we had mapped in 2024: eight reference profiles across sixteen plots produced seven soil classes and three geologies on five hectares, and a single plot contains two soil types within the same boundary.
Our gravel sites lie on a very high terrace of the palaeo-Garonne from the early Pleistocene, around two million years old; on the gravel plot, from a depth of about fifty centimetres the soil consists of 70 to 80 per cent rounded pebbles, which store heat and hold virtually no water — the measured available water reserve is the lowest on the Domaine. It is the same family of terraces of the same river that built up the gravel ridges of Pauillac on the left bank, there on younger steps closer to the river, here on one of the oldest and highest. Right next door lie deep clay soils that hold water and let the Merlot ripen more slowly — the same property from which Merlot on the right bank, in the Saint-Émilion area for instance, draws its texture. The underlying ground is different, though: our clay sits on the Quaternary terrace body, not on a limestone plateau.
A detail whose influence went beyond the area
The region is credited with a grafting technique that entered the specialist literature as the greffe Cadillac and that, in the late 19th century, helped to set European noble varieties reliably onto American rootstocks — one of the preconditions for European viticulture surviving phylloxera. It was spread by the local winegrowers' association; a decade later Joseph Capus headed the plant protection station there — the same Capus whose law founded the French appellation system.
How we work with the framework
Our plots lie in Saint-Caprais-de-Bordeaux, facing south at an altitude of about 80 metres: five hectares of vines within a 19-hectare Domaine of woodland, meadows and streams, certified organic and HVE4. Sixteen plots across four terroirs are vinified separately before we decide what belongs together. Our red wines carry the appellation; the white wines and the rosé cannot, because it is reserved for red. The Caprice, an Alvarinho, lies entirely outside the permitted varieties — we bottle it as Vin de France, because we would rather accept the smaller designation than change the wine. Jean Ribéreau-Gayon, one of the co-founders of modern oenology, was for decades the owner of the Domaine aux Conseillans, the home of LaSuite aux Conseillans. When a vintage goes on sale, we decide at the glass: only once it is ready to drink.