The vines

History

Grapes have been grown on the hillside below the château since the Middle Ages when it was the principal supplier of wine for the Abbé de Cluny. Today their link with the château has been restored with the vines now tended by the benevoles working with Castrum Lordo.

For a long time the vines were cultivated by a resident of the village of Lournand before it was managed by the co-operative COPEX. More recently the vines were bought by Robert Walker, a Canadian who is an active member of the association and a generous supporter of our work. His vines were first leased to Castrum Lordo in 2015.

Today, volunteers working on the chateau can look down the hill and see their grapes ripening in the summer sunshine

Grape varieties

Covering an area of 0.7 hectares, the grapes are both chardonnay and gamay. The wine they produce (both white and rosé) helps fund the work programme at the chateau. Some of the root stock is aging and we regularly replace a proportion of the pieds.

The wine

Each year we search for volunteers to join us for the vendange to pick the grapes and eat a traditional vignerons meal. The grapes are then transported to the Cave de Genouilly where their expert winemakers make our exclusive wines.

Our first Millesime was in 2016 and both our Macon white and rosé wines proved so popular that we had sold our entire year’s production before the end of the journée du patrimoine in 2017. The stock for 2017 was quickly sold, the last at the journée du patrimoine where it was sold in special coffrets.

The vendange in 2018 was exceptional both in terms of quantity and quality and we shall have several thousand bottles to sell in 2019.