Château de la Croix du Casse, located in the south of Pomerol on the outskirts of Libourne, is mentioned on 18th-century maps drawn up by Pierre de Belleyme, the engineer and geographer to King Louis XV. According to these documents, vines were planted in 1775.
In 1956, Georges Audy, a well-known Pomerol wine merchant and owner of Château Clinet, bought the estate. He replanted a large part of the vineyard to replace vines that had been damaged by winter frost. Jean-Michel Arcaute, his son-in-law and talented winemaker, took over the running of the estate a few years later.
With the help of Michel Rolland, he improved the quality of the wine and gave it an excellent reputation. In 2001, Jean-Michel Arcaute died in a tragic boat accident in Arcachon, leaving behind his vineyards.
The Groupe des Assurances Nationales, which owned Château la Croix du Casse for a number of years, agreed in 2005 to sell to Philippe Castéja and his sister Chantal Preben Hansen, already owners of 8 châteaux and the Borie-Manoux wine-merchant . A great deal of work was carried out following the acquisition by the Castéja family, including roofing, trellising and the vat room.
Following the discovery of a layer of clay in the subsoil, the soil was also reworked to encourage the roots to grow deeper and bring more elements to the vines and, ultimately, to the wine.
Immediately after his acquisition, Philippe Castéja modernised the wine’s packaging to underline the Château’s change of direction, and created a second wine, Les Chemins de la Croix du Casse, to reinforce the qualitative effort.
For the record, when Philippe Castéja redesigned the wine packaging, he added to the label the emblem of the pilgrims to Santiago de Compostela, which is also the symbol of the Order of the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem.
This small cross with a scallop shell at the intersection of the branches was once carved on the boundary stones of the Commanderie estate and is now embroidered on their red dress. On the road to Santiago de Compostela, the cross is always a guide for pilgrims, and the shell, which has symbolically become the attribute of the apostle, is often attached to pilgrims’ bags.
