Producer
Château Prieuré-Lichine is a fourth-growth Margaux that began life as a Benedictine priory, and was seized and divided during the French Revolution. When it was bought in 1951 by wine writer Alexis Lichine, it had just eleven hectares of vines. Bit by bit he acquired surrounding vineyards, increasing the extent of the estate to fifty-eight hectares by the 1970s. Alexis’s son Sacha ran the château between 1989 and 1999, before selling to Groupe Ballande and going on to make his name with the Provence Rosé Whispering Angel.
Vineyard
The vineyard currently consists of eighty-five hectares of vines averaging twenty-five years old, planted on sandy-gravel soil. The second wine, Confidences, typically comes from twenty-four of those hectares.
Winery
The grapes were sorted and destemmed, then fermented whole in temperature-controlled vats. Following twenty-five days’ maceration, the wine was aged in second- and third-fill French oak barriques.
