Did ships really lower their sails for Beychevelle?

Every ship that passed Château Beychevelle, the story goes in Saint-Julien, lowered its sails for one man: the Duc d'Épernon, Grand Admiral of France, the head of the king's navy. Say baisse-voile, French for "lower the sail," fast enough and you hear Beychevelle. That, in the story, is how the wine estate got its name. Did it happen?

The estate tells it on its own site, under the year 1587, and no château in the Médoc has a prettier origin story. Bordeaux, which kept its own yearly record, the Chronique bordeloise, tells a plainer one. Ships were being stopped on the Gironde, the estuary below Bordeaux, as the duke's admiralty ended and in the years just after. The man the chronicle names is not the duke.

Between 1589 and 1592, in years of civil war, « Monsieur de Lussan », the man who held Blaye against the king, laid « une grande imposition », a great levy, on the river trade. He seized English merchant ships « pour lever un tribut », to raise a tribute, and built « un nouveau fort à la Marque », a new fort at Lamarque, 2 parishes south of Beychevelle, beyond Cussac.

The Parlement of Bordeaux, the region's high court, declared him a traitor, and ships were armed against him « pour rendre la riviere libre », to make the river free again. The ruling, the chronicle admits, « estoit sans nul effet », had no effect. Then 2 Bordeaux officials, President La Lane and Gourgues, made « un accord » with him, and the court ratified it. In 1592 a storm at Blaye wrecked his warships. The rate stands in the Parlement's complaint of October 1590, published in the Archives historiques de la Gironde, the Gironde's published historical records: « ung escu et demy par thonneau de vin », an écu and a half on every tonneau of wine (a Bordeaux tonneau is 4 barrels, about 900 liters). Lussan was running the river like a toll road, and the bill survives.

Théophile Malvezin, the historian of Bordeaux's commerce, who set the complaint out in 1892, gives the man who levied it a title: « l'amiral du roi, M. de Lussan », the king's admiral. That title is the twist, and a loose one. Jean-Louis de Nogaret de La Valette, duc d'Épernon, had been amiral de France, admiral of France, from 1587 to 1589, and gave the office up just as the trouble on the river began. In the record, the only man called admiral who taxed ships in this reach in those years is Lussan, and the title is Malvezin's, given 3 centuries on. His toll came as Épernon's admiralty ended, or after it.

The chronicle's same entry does record a salute to Épernon, and no ship is in it. At Vayres, on the Dordogne River, the duke and his duchess « furent visitez & saluez », were visited and greeted, by a Bordeaux councilor, a jurat, « de la part du corps de Ville », on behalf of the city. A salute, in the chronicle, is a courtesy call.

Saint-Julien remembers a grander one, from every ship on the river. If the chronicle of those years says nothing of it, where did the story come from, and why did it surface just when it did?

The first telling came 259 years later

The first on record to tell it, 259 years after Épernon became admiral, is an English travel writer, Charles Cocks, whose French volume of 1850 later became the Bordeaux trade's standard reference. His guide of 1846 takes the reader past the château by steamer, and what Cocks notices there is the pier: "That noble mansion on the left is the Château de Beychevelle, the seat of M. P. F. Guestier, to whom the public are indebted for the recently constructed landing-place." From the deck, no salute.

A footnote sends the reader to the wine chapter for the château's description, and there, in a note on the Saint-Julien entry, is the salute:

This duke, being high admiral of France, obliged every vessel that sailed up the river towards Bordeaux to lower her sails (Baisse-Voile, hence Beychevelle) in token of submission. He possessed also the Chateau de Vayres, (on the Dordogne, now belonging to the ancient family of de Gourgue,) where he exercised the same right, with the same formalities.

The note insists on a duty, "in token of submission," and on a second river. The chronicle knows that river, and what it records at Vayres is a councilor's courtesy call.

One author, 2 stories

In 1850 Cocks brought out a French book, published in Bordeaux by Féret, Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins, Bordeaux, its surroundings and its wines, and the salute moved from the wine entry to the chapter on the steamer trip to Royan:

The château de Beychevelle, one of these houses, is said by tradition to have replaced an old feudal manor, whose lord required every boat that passed the domain to salute him by lowering its sails; from this custom, it is said, comes the name of Beychevelle (Baisse-Voile) given to the château.

« L'une de ces maisons, le château de Beychevelle, aurait, suivant la tradition, remplacé un ancien manoir féodal, dont le seigneur exigeait que toutes les embarcations, qui passaient devant ce domaine, le saluassent en baissant leurs voiles; de cet usage vient, dit-on, le nom de Beychevelle (Baisse-Voile) donné à ce château. »

In 4 years the admiral had left his own story. In his place stands an unnamed lord of an old manor, « suivant la tradition », according to tradition, and the fact has become « dit-on », it is said. The wine chapter of the same book lists Beychevelle, owned by Guestier, among the fourth growths, the fourth tier of its ranking, with no story attached.

From here the salute is 2 stories taking turns: the admiral's, told first and in English, and the feudal lord's, with no duke at all, which for a generation was the one French writers used.

The fullest telling of the century belongs to the feudal version. Charles Saint-Amant, a traveler who wrote a promenade through the Médoc for a general reader in 1855, stopped at the château and wrote:

The way it commands the river recalls its old feudal authority, which obliged every boat sailing on the river to lower its sails to salute the lordly château in passing; hence its name of Beychevelle, which means in patois Baisse-voiles.

« la façon dont il domine la rivière rappelle son ancienne autorité féodale, qui obligeait toutes les embarcations naviguant sur le fleuve à baisser leurs voiles pour saluer au passage le château seigneurial; de là son nom de Beychevelle, qui veut dire en patois Baisse-voiles. »

He pointed to « les débris de quelques vieux canons », the remains of some old cannon, « semblant attester qu'au besoin les barons de Beychevelle savaient appuyer leurs droits sur la force »: seeming to show that, if need be, the barons knew how to back their rights with force. The barons have cannon now; the duke is still missing. Saint-Amant is also the first on record to call the name dialect, « en patois Baisse-voiles », Baisse-voiles in the local tongue, though the word he gives is plain French.

The trade's own books stayed out of it. William Franck's Traité sur les vins du Médoc, the Bordeaux wine merchant's book of prices and rankings, priced the estate and said nothing of a salute; nor did d'Armailhacq's book on Médoc vineyards in 1855 or Ferrier's buyer's guide in 1857. Pierre Biarnez, who set the growths in rhyme in 1849, called the house « Favori de Plutus, ce superbe manoir », the favorite of the god of wealth, this superb manor, and left the sails out of his verses.

The book that changed its mind

After Cocks died in 1854, Féret re-edited his French volume as the trade's reference. Its second edition, in 1868, kept the story, still without the duke. The name, it says, « vient de baisse voile, ou du salut que faisaient autrefois au château les navires passant devant le port », comes from baisse voile, lower the sail, or from the salute that ships passing the port once made to the château: a house receiving honors on its own account.

The edition of 1874 brought the duke back: « Le nom de Beychevelle (Baisse Voile) vient du salut que faisaient autrefois les navires passant devant le château du duc d'Epernon, alors grand-amiral de France. » The name, it now says, comes from the salute that ships once made as they passed the château of the duc d'Épernon, then Grand Admiral of France.

In French, the ships « faisaient » the salute: they made it, and nothing says they had to. The English edition of 1883 put back what Cocks had said in 1846: "The name of Beychevelle (haul down the sail) arises from the salute that vessels were formerly obliged to make, when passing before the chateau of the duke d'Epernon, then grand admiral of France." The custom was a duty again.

From 1846 to 1874 the story was told 5 times, and the telling never held still: an admiral's due, a lord's demand told as tradition, a right backed by cannon, an honor to the house itself, a salute to the admiral's château. The French sentence of 1874 then held still, word for word, through the editions of 1893, 1898 and 1922. G.A.K., an anonymous London author who surveyed the classed growths in 1920, made the duke "at one time High Admiral of France, and the then proprietor of this fine estate."

The estate's own site tells the admiral's version, and the ships have a new reason: "ships passing by his estate must lower their sails to show their allegiance." Saint-Julien's own town website lists it under "Baisse la voile et autres légendes," lower the sail and other legends.

An admiral for 15 months

The admiral's version needs the duke to be admiral and master of Beychevelle at the same moment. Cocks assumed it in 1846; Féret folded it into one adverb in 1874: alors, then. When?

Épernon held the admiralty from November 1587 to February 1589: the admiral of the legend was admiral for about 15 months. In 1587 he also married Marguerite de Foix-Candale, whose family held Beychevelle. Marguerite died in 1593, and the next year so did a bishop of her family, François de Foix-Candale, who had built a château at Beychevelle in 1565.

How the land reached the duke's family is less certain, and the record offers 2 routes. Cocks said Épernon became lord of Lesparre, and of Beychevelle with it, by marrying the heiress, and Père Anselme's genealogy of the great families of France, in its volume of 1728, says Marguerite brought him « tous les biens de sa maison », all her house's property, when they married. The other route is slower: a modern history of Saint-Julien has Beychevelle reach the duke's family only after the marriage and a string of deaths in hers.

No deed on record dates the land's passage to his family. If the land came with Marguerite in 1587, the duke was master of Beychevelle for all 15 months of his admiralty; if it came only after her death in 1593 or the bishop's in 1594, the 2 roles never overlapped at all. Féret's alors and G.A.K.'s "the then proprietor" assert an overlap that no deed demonstrates.

When an admiral did claim something from ships on the Gironde, a century later, it was money. A royal council ruling of 1687, reprinted in the same chronicle, orders that « le droit d'Ancrage, Tonnes & Balises », the anchorage and buoy dues, be collected for the admiral and not by the city. The admiral's due, on this river, was paid in coin.

The chronicle that noticed the duke and duchess at Vayres records no Épernon salute on the Gironde.

No sail in the oldest spellings

If the salute did not name the place, what did? The record is thin either way.

No known document uses the name before 1587, in any spelling. The oldest forms come from maps of the Épernon family's own years and just after: Bascheule in 1630, Beysebelle in 1634, Beßcheuelle in 1690. The maps give it 3 spellings in 60 years, and not one of them is a sail.

While the dukes of Épernon held the land, the name seems never to have been written as Bêcha vêla, which the estate calls Gascon for "lower the sail," or as baisse voile. The first duke lived until 1642: the maps show the name in his time, not before it. After the maps, the next known use of the name is an inventory of 1740 for François-Étienne de Brassier, « baron de Lamarque, Beychevelle et autres lieux », baron of Lamarque, Beychevelle and other places.

The case for an older name belongs to Bernard Ginestet, writer on the Médoc and a négociant, a Bordeaux wine merchant, as Decanter carried it in 2018: "the name Beychevelle had been attached to the estate at least 200 years before the grand old duke of Epernon came along." In his account the boats lowered sail there "simply to manoeuvre against the prevailing winds that can be particularly strong at this point." The report gives no document for the date.

The river gives the practical reading some support. In the 1890s the river had 2 passes under 4 meters deep between Pauillac and the Bec d'Ambès, one « à Beychevelle, 3m,60 », at Beychevelle, 3.60 meters, and sailing ships bound for Bordeaux had to « attendre la haute marée », wait for high tide, to cross them. That is the river 3 centuries after the duke, but it shows a shoal here, and for the late 16th century Malvezin places the English fleet off this shore: « Les gros navires de la flotte anglaise se tiennent devant Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac et Beychevelle », the big ships of the English fleet lie off Saint-Estèphe, Pauillac and Beychevelle. A shoal and an anchorage are where sails come down. Saint-Julien's website adds contrary winds, and doubts that ships on so wide a river could even hear the order. The château itself sits 1.3 kilometers from the water's edge.

No teller on record, champion or critic, offers another meaning for the name. Even the critic Chris Kissack, who doubts the salute, keeps the meaning: the alternative he passes on, sailors lowering their breeches instead, is a joke.

The story and a ranking arrived together

When the last duke died without heirs, the family's debts forced sales: Branaire, now Branaire-Ducru, carved off in 1680, and the core of Ducru-Beaucaillou sold as a dowry in 1720.

The Brassiers came next, and their wine sold well: Franck's retrospective price list for the good years around 1745 names « Brassier » among Saint-Julien's « Seconds crûs, de 400 à 600 liv. », second growths at 400 to 600 livres (the old French money): a band on a price list, not a classification. In 1800 the estate passed to Jacques Conte, « un des armateurs les plus connus de Bordeaux », one of the city's best-known shipowners, and apparently something of a privateer.

Then the rankings. In Franck's treatise of 1824 the name belongs to a marsh, « marais de Bechevelle », the Bechevelle marsh, and his ranking of that year leaves the estate out of the first 4 classes, where Saint-Julien's fourths are Saint-Pierre and Duluc, listing it only by its owners, « Brassier ou Budos, Conte (Jacques) ». His edition of 1845 still leaves it out.

In the next 10 years the wine came into the rankings. Cocks's guide of 1846, the book that first tells the story, lists it under "Third, Fourth, and Second-Fourth Growths," one band for 3 ranks. Biarnez in 1849 granted it a fourth's rank, and Franck listed it fourth in 1853. D'Armailhacq wrote in 1855 that « le vin se vend depuis quelque temps aussi cher que les quatrièmes crûs de Saint-Julien », that the wine had sold for some time as dear as the fourth growths of Saint-Julien: for some time only. The brokers of 1855 classed it fourth. Saint-Amant, praising it, still sighed « Il n'est pourtant qu'un quatrième », and yet it is only a fourth.

The story and a place in the rankings arrived together, in the same guide of 1846, and then for 9 years mostly kept their distance. The timing is suggestive, not proof, and says nothing of intent. What it does answer is when. The trade's books and the wine chapters carried the rank and no story; the salute rode in the steamer chapter of 1850, and only Saint-Amant's promenade carried both on the same page.

The verdict

The legend gives the duke the river. The chronicle, for the admiral's years and those just after, gives the river to another man: Lussan, who took money from ships and was declared a traitor for it. The one salute it gives the duke is a councilor's call at Vayres; from a ship, none. No book tells the story before Cocks in 1846, 259 years on, and from that first telling the salute would not hold still. The duke it returned to may never have been admiral and master of Beychevelle at once. As for the name, the record neither dates it before the family nor rules that out.

Legend. No witness before 1846, and no two tellings alike since: the obligation becomes a tradition, the duke vanishes and returns, and the name was likely on the river before he was. The sails may well have come down. Nobody was saluting.

The wine

Château Beychevelle, the Saint-Julien fourth growth, belongs to Suntory and the Castel group, which joined Suntory as owner in 2011. Philippe Blanc, the director, arrived in 1995, and Romain Ducolomb has been technical director since 2012. The estate has 90 hectares of vines, planted to 57% cabernet sauvignon, 40% merlot and 3% petit verdot.

The second wine is Amiral de Beychevelle, the Admiral of Beychevelle, drawn mainly from the estate's vines in Cussac, and a third, Les Brulières de Beychevelle, comes from the Haut-Médoc. The estate's emblem is a ship with a griffin at its bow, and in China the wine is popular for that dragon-boat image on its label.

The admiral never got his salute. But the estate's second wine carries his title: Amiral de Beychevelle.

Chronology

Sources

Period sources, read in the original.

• Chronique bordeloise, edition dated 1703, the entries for 1589 to 1592 on Lussan, the accord with him and the duke at Vayres, the Conseil d'État case of 1607, and the arrêt of 1687 on the admiral's dues.
• Père Anselme, Histoire généalogique et chronologique de la maison royale de France, des pairs, grands officiers de la Couronne et de la Maison du Roy, 3rd edition, continued by the Pères Ange and Simplicien, Paris, tome III, 1728, the comtes de Candale, p. 386, and the duchy of Épernon, tome VII, 1733, the admirals of France, pp. 887 and 888, and tome IX, 1733, the catalog of the Order of the Holy Spirit, for Marguerite's marriage and her dowry, Épernon's admiralty (letters of November 7, 1587) and his death in 1642, Brichanteau's succession (letters of February 1589), Marguerite's death in 1593 and the bishop's on February 5, 1594.
• William Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc et les autres vins rouges du département de la Gironde, 1st edition, Bordeaux, 1824, the Saint-Julien table and the classification.
• William Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc, 2nd edition, Bordeaux, 1845, the classification, the retrospective list of the good years from 1745, and the table of purchase prices of Médoc estates.
• Charles Cocks, Bordeaux: Its Wines, and the Claret Country, London, 1846, the steamer trip, Saint-Julien and the classification.
• Pierre Biarnez, Les grands vins de Bordeaux : poëme, Paris, Plon Frères, 1849, Saint-Julien.
• Charles Cocks, Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, Bordeaux, Féret fils, 1850, the voyage to Royan, and the classification.
• William Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc, 3rd edition, Bordeaux, 1853, the classification.
• A. d'Armailhacq, La culture des vignes, la vinification et les vins dans le Médoc, Bordeaux, 1855, Saint-Julien.
• Charles Saint-Amant, Le vin de Bordeaux : promenade en Médoc, Bordeaux, 1855, Beychevelle.
• Ferrier, Guide du consommateur de bons vins, Bordeaux, 1857, the table of purchase prices.
• Thomas George Shaw, Wine, the Vine, and the Cellar, London, 1863, the fourth growths.
• Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 2nd edition, Bordeaux, 1868, 3rd edition, 1874, 6th edition, 1893, 7th edition, 1898, and 9th edition, 1922, Saint-Julien, Château Beychevelle.
• Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, Bordeaux and its Wines Classified in Order of Merit, English edition, Bordeaux, 1883, Saint-Julien.
• Théophile Malvezin, Histoire du commerce de Bordeaux depuis les origines jusqu'à nos jours, volumes II and IV, Bordeaux, 1892, Lussan's levy and the Parlement's complaint of 1590 (from the Archives historiques de la Gironde), the English fleet's anchorages, the sirie de Lesparre, and the passes of the river.
• G.A.K., Clarets and Sauternes: Classed Growths of the Médoc and Other Famous Red and White Wines of the Gironde, London, 1920, Château Beychevelle.

Modern scholarship.

• René Pijassou, "Un château du Médoc: Palmer," Revue historique de Bordeaux, 1964, for the Brassier inventory of 1740.
• Marc Bouffard, Saint-Julien: Vineyards, Cellars, People and Place, Wine Education Council Press, 2025, the Beychevelle chapter, pp. 45 to 51, for the château of 1565, the maps, the passage of the estate to the duke, the owners from the dukes to Castel and Suntory, the management, and the vineyards.
• Stephen Browett, "Long Live the Vintage!", in Susan Keevil, ed., On Bordeaux: Tales of the Unexpected from the World's Greatest Wine Region, Académie du Vin Library, 2020, for the dragon boat.

The estate, the commune and the press.

• Château Beychevelle, the history timeline, for the salute as the estate tells it. beychevelle.com
• Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, the Château Beychevelle page, for the director, the vineyard, the blend and the emblem. ugcb.net
• Commune de Saint-Julien-Beychevelle, "Baisse la voile et autres légendes." saint-julien-beychevelle-site-officiel.fr
• Jane Anson, "Château Beychevelle: New ratings and why it's one to watch," Decanter, July 21, 2018, for Bernard Ginestet. decanter.com
• Chris Kissack, "Château Beychevelle 1905-2022," The Wine Independent, May 29, 2025. thewineindependent.com

How this was checked

Every period quotation was read in the original text, in a private library of 244,000+ wine documents, the oldest from 1373. Where an English edition is quoted its wording is kept, spelling and all; the other translations from the French are mine, with the French beneath the lines that matter most so that you can check one against the other. If a page cited here does not say what I say it says, write to me at antonio@bordeauxreviews.com and I will correct it.

To cite this article: Antonio Assumpção, "Did ships really lower their sails for Beychevelle?", Bordeaux Reviews, Château Case Files 17/70, 2026, https://bordeauxreviews.com/case-files/did-ships-lower-their-sails-for-beychevelle/.

Antonio "Guto" Assumpção stands at the intersection of law and wine. Admitted to practice law in Florida, New York, and Rio de Janeiro, he is also a French Wine Scholar and a Master of Bordeaux by the Wine Scholar Guild and holds a WSET Level 3 certification. Antonio has been studying, collecting, and tasting Bordeaux wines for the past 20 years, and his articles blend a detailed analysis with a connoisseur's insight into the world of wine. Follow him on Instagram at @BordeauxReviews.