Domaine de L'Aurage

Fermentation begins in Radoux oak

In new Radoux oak, Louis Mitjavile begins fermentation as winemaker at Domaine de L'Aurage in Saint Genes De Castillon, holding the owner and cellar role he has carried here since 2007. The estate sits in Saint-Genès-de-Castillon, in Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux, where Caroline and Louis Mitjavile took on the former Château Cadet and gave it a new name. Before that fixed point, his consulting work moved through Bordeaux, the Languedoc, Spain, Argentina, and the United States. At L'Aurage, that comparative training narrows into one hillside, one cellar, and a set of decisions repeated vintage after vintage.

The lineage is present without needing theatre. Louis is the son of François Mitjavile, the winemaker associated with Château Tertre Roteboeuf, Roc de Cambes, and Domaine de Cambes, and L'Aurage carries a recognisable family conviction: ripeness, long élevage, and oak used as structure rather than ornament. The estate works at small family scale, about 20 to 22 hectares, with production around 35,000 bottles per year. The house makes one main cuvée, L'Aurage, and a second wine, Le Pic du Versant, all vinified and aged on site.

A Merlot estate on clay-limestone slopes

The vineyard is contiguous, planted on clay-limestone slopes on the right bank of the Dordogne, in the natural extension of Saint-Émilion soils. Most vines are about 40 years old. Merlot carries the wine, usually about 80 to 90 percent of the blend, with Cabernet Franc making up the remaining 10 to 20 percent for lift and line. Louis has spoken of a long-term wish to plant the whole estate to Merlot, a choice rooted less in fashion than in his reading of the soil.

The farming is reasoned and observation-led, without a formal organic or biodynamic label. Treatments are not systematic. Harvest is by hand, at high maturity, and the cellar follows the same patient grammar: fermentation in new Radoux barrels, limited concrete, gentle extraction by temperature and gravity, and no fining or filtration before bottling. Élevage runs approximately 18 to 24 months in Radoux oak, much of it new. The method asks the fruit to meet the barrel slowly, until the tannin is framed rather than covered.

The cellar keeps the estate quiet

L'Aurage is not built around spectacle. The cellar, vineyard, and any estate tasting remain secondary to the work of the wine, not a separate performance around it. The place reads as a classic right-bank property: rural slopes, contiguous vines, the quiet of a small cellar, and the controlled pace of barrels resting through their élevage. There is no public hospitality language to soften the experience. The focus stays on the cuvée.

That restraint suits the wines. L'Aurage is made as the estate's central statement, a Castillon Côtes de Bordeaux red with Merlot at its core and Cabernet Franc for freshness. Le Pic du Versant gives the same ground a lighter register. In the room where the barrels sit, the distinction is not decorative; it is a matter of fruit, oak, and time.

One property, two wines

The estate's recent rhythm is easy to read through its releases: L'Aurage remains the principal cuvée, while Le Pic du Versant keeps the second wine close to the same clay-limestone source. Vintages including 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023 have carried that line forward, with the 2021 described through high-maturity harvest and 18 months in new Radoux barrels. For now, the clearest next movement is the same one the cellar has chosen since 2007: the next bottle of L'Aurage.