Château La Caussade

The Armand family has been in the house for eight generations. Angélique Armand has headed it since 2009. Six hectares with HVE certification on the bank of the Garonne, directly opposite Sauternes and Barsac.

What lies under those vines is uncommon even for Bordeaux. Sainte-Croix-du-Mont sits on a cliff of fossil oysters overlooking the Garonne, dated at some twenty-two million years. The shells piled up on the sea floor during the Tertiary and were left hanging above the valley when the tectonic movements at the end of that period lifted the ground and the waters withdrew.

Geologists call it a lumachelle: an accumulation of shells of a single species, Alectryonia aquitanica, packed so tightly against one another that there is barely room for sediment. It is not a soil with fossils in it; it is a soil made of fossils.

Erosion has opened caves inside that bank of shells, and those caves are still used today to keep the sweet wine.

The appellation makes sweet whites, across the river from where those of Sauternes are made.