Château de Candale

Balance before ornament

Sugar, acidity and tannin stay in view for Thibaut Decoster, winemaker at Château de Candale in Saint-Laurent-des-Combes, before the wine takes shape in the cellar. His standard is structural rather than decorative, the same balance he names in his work at Clos des Jacobins: “I believe that quality lies in sugar-acidity-tannins balance.” At Candale, that thought meets a small Saint-Émilion Grand Cru estate on the southern slope, where Merlot and Cabernet Franc carry the red-wine program and the plant’s full cycle remains the first measure of quality. Decoster and Magali Decoster purchased the château in 2017, adding it to a family of Saint-Émilion properties that also includes Clos des Jacobins. The position leaves little distance between ownership and the cellar’s decisions. Farming, picking, fermenting and aging do not read as separate gestures here; they follow one line of responsibility from the vine to the glass. The house traces its name to Lady Margaret, Countess of Kendal, and Jean de Foix, Comte de Candale, but the present work is not antiquarian. It is a modern Saint-Émilion language, ripe in profile, attentive to proportion, and anchored to the south-facing slope.

Merlot on clay limestone

The estate works a small holding of around 8 hectares, with Saint-Émilion Grand Cru red wine at the center of the program. The vineyard is described through clay-limestone soils, the argilo-calcaires of the slope, and through a solar exposure that gives the wines their mature, modern profile. Organic farming is the stated direction, with conversion to Organic Agriculture completed in 2024. The property also holds High Environmental Value certification at level 3, achieved in 2021, and participates in the Bordeaux Wine Environmental Management System. In the vineyard, the harvest is manual. In the cellar, fermentation takes place in wooden barrels and stainless steel tanks, a division that lets the estate work with structure and control without making either one the whole method. Barrel aging follows, including at least one wine aged entirely in barrel and a portion of new barriques.

The château, the cellar and the view

The room around the work is unusually open for a Bordeaux estate. A small château with a turret sits above the vines, looking toward the Dordogne valley, while L’Atelier de Candale brings the dining room directly into the vineyard setting. Floor-to-ceiling greenhouse windows and a terrace keep the rows in sight, so the tasting does not separate the cellar from the slope that feeds it. The atmosphere is conversational, polished without stiffness, and shaped by the same proximity that defines the place: château, cellar, restaurant and vines held in one field of vision. Candale is also one of roughly a dozen Bordeaux châteaux with its own onsite restaurant, which changes the tempo of the estate. Wine here can be tasted with food from the same address, among the Merlot and Cabernet Franc rows that frame L’Atelier de Candale.