Château Cissac

More than 25 years in one cellar

Cool extraction and long maceration set the tempo for Laurent Saint Pasteur, winemaker at Château Cissac in Cissac Medoc. His route has run through this Haut-Médoc estate for more than 25 years, long enough for the same parcels, vats, and tannic questions to become a working memory rather than a seasonal note. The role places him at the technical center of the wines, where Cabernet Sauvignon gives the frame and Merlot with Petit Verdot adjusts the breadth, fruit, and depth of the blend.

That duration matters at a property whose modern family chapter began in 1895. Château Cissac is not a house built around restless reinvention; it asks its winemaker to return to the same Médoc materials and make small decisions count. Saint Pasteur’s work is attached to extraction, maceration, and tannin management, not to a public circuit of many addresses. The discipline is in staying.

Cabernet carries the frame

The estate farms around 100 hectares under vine in the Haut-Médoc, with Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Petit Verdot, Malbec, and Cabernet Franc named among its varieties. One planting account gives the core blend as 58% Cabernet Sauvignon, 34% Merlot, and 8% Petit Verdot, a set of proportions that explains the house grammar before a cork is pulled: Cabernet for line and grip, Merlot for roundness, Petit Verdot for color and darker pressure.

Saint Pasteur’s cellar method follows that structure. Low-temperature extraction draws from the skins without pushing too quickly; long maceration lets the wine take its tannin and texture over time. The result associated with his work here is not a stripped, nervy Médoc but a Cabernet-based wine with smooth, succulent tannins and a broader fruit register. The estate works sustainably, and its vineyard language stays close to the old Bordeaux bargain between drainage, struggle, and ripeness: gravel over clay and limestone, maritime weather, and fruit grown for still red wine rather than for cellar theater.

The charterhouse and the vats

The room around the work is an 18th-century Bordeaux charterhouse set among Médoc vineyards between Pauillac and Saint-Estèphe, built on the remains of a Roman villa. That is the visible history, but the craft happens in quieter increments: Cabernet arriving from estate parcels, extraction watched by temperature rather than bravado, maceration allowed to lengthen because the tannin still has something to say.

Château Cissac’s atmosphere is countryside rather than salon, a family estate with a quiet setting and a cellar program tuned to traditional Bordeaux craftsmanship. Fermentation is described with temperature-controlled concrete vats, a practical choice at a house where control matters as much as heritage. Concrete keeps the work close to the wine’s temperature and texture; it does not turn the cellar into a display case. At Cissac, the next measure remains the same, moving through Saint Pasteur's long maceration.