Le Borderon

Château Larrivaux sits within the Haut-Médoc appellation in the Gironde department of Bordeaux, spread across approximately one hundred hectares. The soils are predominantly clay — a rich, moisture-retentive terroir that gives the wines their characteristic body and depth. The property is embedded in a broader ecosystem shaped by large forests that moderate temperature and humidity around the vines. Historic stone quarries, excavated to build both Le Borderon and Château Larrivaux, punctuate the landscape and have become home to nine distinct bat species — today the sole bat breeding site in the Gironde. These bats serve as natural allies for the vineyard, providing biological pest management that reduces the need for intervention in the vines. Beehives maintained on the estate further contribute to this mosaic of biodiversity. The kitchen garden, tended as an integral part of the domaine, speaks to the same commitment to the land: a property where the health of the whole ecosystem is understood as the foundation of wine quality.

The guiding vision at Château Larrivaux is one of coexistence — of making the many small worlds of the estate thrive alongside one another so that, in the end, a truly delicious wine emerges. Rather than treating viticulture as an isolated endeavour, the estate embraces its forest, its quarries, its bats, its bees, and its kitchen garden as active participants in the life of the domaine. Bérangère, the owner, embodies this philosophy in how she receives visitors: leading guests personally to the potager to harvest vegetables at the height of their season, then cooking that produce while the guests tour the estate, before gathering at table together to enjoy both the food and the wines of the land. It is a vision of wine as something rooted in a complete living environment — precise and continually improving in quality, yet never severed from the warmth and particularity of the place that made it.

Le Borderon was originally a self-contained workers' settlement within the broader Château Larrivaux estate — essentially a small, enclosed village where the domaine's employees lived and worked. Over time, the two properties diverged in name and function, with Château Larrivaux becoming the principal estate. After a period of restoration work to bring Le Borderon back to life, the decision was made to honour its history through a dedicated cuvée rather than let its name disappear. The cuvée Le Borderon, now produced within Château Larrivaux, serves as a living tribute to that original community and to the continuity of the land. The estate's recognition in the Best of Wine Tourism program marks a more recent milestone, reflecting a deliberate evolution toward welcoming visitors into the story of the domaine.

The cuvée Le Borderon is the flagship expression of Château Larrivaux and the wine that gives voice to the estate's Haut-Médoc terroir most directly. It is built on a majority of Merlot, with Sauvignon as a blending companion — an assemblage oriented toward fruit that is at once vibrant, fresh, and ripe: éclatant in the fullest sense. The wine is conceived as a fruit-centred cuvée, one that reflects the clay-rich soils of the domaine and the vitality of an estate tended with careful attention to its natural ecosystem. Its name carries the memory of the workers' village that once stood on the property, making it as much an act of homage as a statement of winemaking ambition.