Château Poitevin

Since 1991 in the family cellar

Pruning decisions begin before the cellar does. Guillaume Poitevin, winemaker at Château Poitevin in Medoc, works from Jau-Dignac-et-Loirac with the weather still on the bench, because this is a Médoc estate where the outside work sets the tone for the wines inside. He has led the estate since 1991, following a family line of vine growers that reaches back to René Poitevin, who planted the first 2 hectares in the 1950s while also working as a baker and in agriculture.

That beginning still matters here. The estate did not arrive as a finished château story; it grew by fieldwork, plot by plot, into a Cru Bourgeois Supérieur house with Guillaume at the pass. His own words stay close to the method, not the mythology: “I always enjoyed working outside in the sun and the fresh air.” The role is less a separation between vineyard and cellar than a handoff. The vines carry the family inheritance; the cellar gives it form as Château Poitevin, Château Poitevin White, Lamothe Pontac, and INSULA Amphora.

Organic rows and amphora patience

The vineyard is worked across approximately 46 plots, with Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Petit Verdot forming the red program, and Sauvignon Blanc, Sémillon and Muscadelle held for the white wines. Château Poitevin carries Terra Vitis, HVE, and organic certification, with Agriculture Biologique in place since 2023, HVE since 2018, and Terra Vitis since 2015. In winter, the work turns to pruning, including Guyot double, then disbudding, replacing missing vines, and trimming as the season asks.

In the cellar, red wines ferment in stainless steel tanks with temperature control before aging, including work in new oak barrels. INSULA Amphora takes another route, using amphora rather than oak for a micro-cuvée that lets fruit and mineral texture move without the same barrel frame. The white program is handled with its own timing: a 2017 technical sheet gives handpicking in two stages, then 24-hour settling before transfer to new oak barrels, with fermentation on Oxoline. The estate produces around 260,000 bottles of red wine and 6,000 bottles of white annually, enough scale to require discipline, not enough to erase the hand.

The vineyard between estuary and ocean

The room here is the rural château and the land around it, set on the northern Médoc peninsula between the Gironde estuary and the Atlantic Ocean. Tours move through the vineyard and cellar without turning the place into theatre. The tone is conversational, grounded in farming choices, certifications, tanks, barrels, and the tasting of red, white, rosé, and amphora-aged cuvées.

That down-to-earth quality suits the estate. The setting has classic Médoc gravel and maritime air, but the visit is not built on grandeur alone. It is built on seeing how a family-run cellar keeps tradition and experiment in the same working rhythm. INSULA Amphora carries that rhythm.