Château Smith Haut Lafitte: Strength and charm, an excellent combination

Winegrowers’ Portraits Martillac

CHÂTEAU SMITH HAUT LAFITTE

Strength and charm,
an excellent combination

Since Florence and Daniel Cathiard acquired Château Smith Haut Lafitte in Martillac in 1990, they have never ceased
to develop the vineyard and the wine estate as a whole following one guiding principle: make great wines in a sustainable, well-considered environment.

With a talented past in the world of competition, then in business, this new adventure has deepened the bonds between this close-knit couple. In 1994, they added the 20 hectares of Château Cantelys to the existing vineyard assets. But the project dearest to them (in every sense of the word), was to reconstruct the historical vineyard by bringing together the 67 ha planted with red and 11 ha in white at Smith Haut Lafitte and those of Château Le Thil. This was accomplished in 2012: the 17.2 ha were divided up among themselves and the owners of the Château des Carmes Haut-Brion. 11.6 hectares in the continuity of the Smith growing areas and the superb 18th century Charter House have therefore completed their acquisitions. The roles are clearly divided up to ensure consistency and progress on all these projects: Florence handles reception activities, Daniel the technical side with Fabien Teitgen, the technical director.



On the reception side, Florence Cathiard has had changes made to certain parts of the Château Smith Haut Lafitte, including a terrace hidden from the road where, after a tour of the wine cellars, pre-dinner drinks can be served before guests go up to the dining room. She is also planning to create a cosier tasting room, and reorganise the boutique.
At the same time, she takes care of rehabilitating Château Le Thil into a luxury Charter House with 9 superb rooms and 4 tasting salons, overlooking the listed grounds designed by Ferdinand Fischer, who also designed the Bordeaux Jardin Public.
On the technical side, a workshop-farm holds tractors, the two draft horses that carry out the work in the white vineyard, and will soon be the venue for serving meals to almost 200 grape pickers. Another building in the “anti-ego” spirit (as Florence emphasizes) because it is discreet, integrated into nature, partly buried in an old quarry and endowed with a green roof: a furtive cellar with the positive energy of the new generation, totally isolated, signed by architect Jean-Bernard Nadeau. The partially buried vat house is located above the underground barrel warehouse. An investment of 3 million Euros which complies with the HEV* standard originating from the Grenelle Environment Forum and which will be inaugurated for Vinexpo. Starting from the next grape harvest, even the CO2 will be recovered and sold to the pharmaceutical industry. The building work provided an opportunity to embellish and restructure the warehouse at Smith Haut Lafitte in the same spirit as the work undertaken for many years: bio-precision.

Château Smith Haut Lafitte

33650 Martillac - France
Tél.: +33 (0) 5 57 83 11 22

www.smith-haut-lafitte.com

This unique philosophy of the Château associates the greatest respect for the
living, the earth and the vine, with innovative winegrowing and winemaking techniques. This approach favours biodiversity, the abolition of chemical inputs, the balance of the vineyard ecosystem by planting hedges, allowing natural grass to grow, making organic compost or even horse-ploughing (for the white vines). It also geared towards maintaining the genetic diversity of the vines and the resultant complexity of the wines, thanks to rigorous vine selection and the cultivation of the rootstock parent vines in the closed ecosystem of La Lande island.

The optimum harvesting of successive batches within the vineyard plots is achieved through precise cartography of the growing area, delimited by the electrical resistivity of the soil and a pedological analysis, completed by satellite images. The use of optical sorting, mastered since 2008, the gravity system, the restructuring of the vat house into more suitable vats, which is currently underway, and the work of the master cooper will all further refine the work of Fabien Teitgen's team. The enlightened amateur will recognise the excellence of Smith Haut Lafitte wines in bottles sealed with Prooftags and authenticated by a QR code.

* High Environmental Value
Florence Varaine