Listrac-Médoc

Listrac lay in the land of the Medulli. The Levade, a raised road from Burdigala to Soulac, crossed the village, and in the late Middle Ages some of the first Médoc vineyards grew along it, by then a route to Compostela. From the sixteenth century nobles founded maines and bourdieux. In the eighteenth-century "planting fever" vines replaced cereals, and after the Restoration plantings reached the Peyrelevade plain. After phylloxera the vineyard drew back to gravel and clay-limestone. Between the wars it held up, helped by the 1932 Crus Bourgeois list (28 estates), the cooperative cellar founded in 1935 and supply contracts with the Compagnie des Wagons-Lits. The appellation Listrac was recognised by decree on 8 June 1957 and renamed Listrac-Médoc by decree on 27 October 1986.

Listrac-Médoc lies in the centre of the peninsula on the road from Bordeaux to Le Verdon, away from the estuary. Its plateau reaches 43 m, the highest point of the Médoc, between the gravel rises of Fonréaud to the south and Fourcas to the north. Here the Tertiary clay-limestone base was pushed up by an anticline and stripped by erosion; the "Listrac" limestone is the oldest in the Médoc. At the end of the Tertiary the Garonne spread across the Médoc, and later relief inversion hollowed the Peyrelevade plain, where clay-limestone soils outcrop, a configuration the specification calls unique to the appellation. Pyrenean gravel forms the high terrace in the centre and the Médrac rise in the east. Rain averages 800–850 mm a year.

The specification describes intense, tannic red wines, among the most structured of the Gironde, usually led by Merlot with Cabernet Sauvignon, and sometimes Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc. Their mark is to combine tannic power with the roundness that comes from Merlot, which the rules call remarkable for the Médoc peninsula. They tie this to the soils: Merlot is very expressive on the clay-limestone, and Cabernet Sauvignon is planted on the gravel. Because the grapes are concentrated they must be pressed gently, and continuous screw presses are banned.

Listrac-Médoc is red only, from the commune of Listrac-Médoc. The grapes are Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carménère, plus the adaptation varieties Arinarnoa, Castets, Marselan and Touriga Nacional, together at most 5 % of an estate. The base yield is 54 hl/ha, and producers must hold organic or approved environmental certification. Waterlogged land, deep fertile soils, black sands over alios and frost-prone hollows are excluded. The Bordeaux wine council gives 570 ha and 25 growers. The specification gave about 650 ha and 75 growers in 2010, a little over half of them in the cooperative, with the 22 largest estates holding three-quarters of the vines.