Were the twins of Margaux ever twins?

In its first edition of 1824, William Franck's Traité sur les vins du Médoc, the Bordeaux wine merchant's book of prices and rankings, looks back to the good years around 1745. Its table of prices lists, among the second growths of Margaux, "Rosan aîné, Rosan officier, Mme Gassie," at 1,000 to 1,300 livres the tonneau (a Bordeaux tonneau is 4 barrels, about 900 liters).

An elder Rauzan, an officer Rauzan, and a Madame Gassie. More than a century before the 1855 Classification, each piece already answered to a person.

Margaux tells the story of Rauzan-Ségla and Rauzan-Gassies as a family portrait. There was once one great Rauzan, second only to Château Margaux in the commune, and heirs divided it into the twin sisters of Margaux, second growths side by side since the classification began. The claim on trial is that the twins were never really equal.

Twins, though, are born together. The old table shows more than 2 pieces, priced under more than one name. So the question comes before the claim. When did 2 of those pieces become twins, and who made them so?

The man who gave his name

The family had spent a long time assembling the estate before giving it away. In 1661 the property passed to Messire Pierre des Mesures de Rauzan, a celebrated merchant of his time, who gave it his name. That same year he leased Château Margaux, and a few years later Latour; his daughter later carried the vines of Pichon into that family, as Case 11 of these files sets out.

Gassies was a named house long before he arrived. In 1530 Gaillard de Tardes was lord of the noble house of Gassies, and in 1615 Bernard de Faverolles held it, before it passed to M. de Rauzan. A Chevalier de Rauzan made it a reputed vineyard in the 17th century.

A Rauzan dowry became Desmirail, a third growth

Then the family divided it. The best witness is Armand d'Armailhacq, a Médoc proprietor who finished his treatise on the vineyards in the classification year and walked his reader through Margaux estate by estate:

This growth, almost as famous as Château-Margaux, enjoys after it the greatest favor; it is divided into two parts. The first, comprising about two thirds of the old domain, bears only the name of Rausan, without any other addition, and belongs to the family of Madame de Rausan, baronne de Ségla, today to the heirs of Madame la comtesse de Castelpers, her daughter. The second portion, separated from the first for three generations, was allotted by a family partition to a demoiselle de Rausan, married to a sieur de Gassies, and bears the name of Rausan-Gassies.

« la première, comprenant à peu près les deux tiers de l'ancien domaine, porte seulement le nom de Rausan, sans autre addition... La seconde portion, séparée de la première depuis trois générations, fut attribuée, par partage de famille, à une demoiselle de Rausan, mariée à un sieur de Gassies, et porte le nom de Rausan-Gassies. »

Then he measured them. The first had about 34 hectares of vines and made 45 tonneaux in an average year. "The growth of Rausan-Gassies is only half the preceding one; it is therefore about 17 hectares, producing 24 tonneaux."

He still ranked them together, adding that "the one and the other are in the first rank among the second great growths." But the division was a family matter, 3 generations old by 1855, and it had left one part twice the size of the other.

It was not the only piece the family gave away. When a demoiselle Rauzan de Ribail married a Desmirail, part of the Rauzan estate went with her as a marriage portion and, as so often happened, took the name of its new family: Desmirail.

Château Desmirail was classed a third growth in 1855. The portrait of 2 sisters leaves out a third child, ranked a step lower.

Names that followed the owners

The trade named the pieces the way it named everything, by owner. A growth was a place joined to a family, and the name followed the owner until one stuck.

Franck's book of 1845 lists the Margaux proprietors on 2 separate lines, "Rauzan Rauzan. De Segla. 40 50" and "Rauzan Gassies. De Puyboreau. 30 40," each with its own harvest. His price notes for the 1830s price Gassies on its own: "Rauzan-Gassies, 1050 fr. en 1833, 1200 en 1839."

His list of the sales of the 1844 vintage gives, for Margaux, "Rauzan-Segla et Lascombe-Hue, 2500 fr." Saint-Julien, on the same list, has "Léoville-Lascaze" and "Léoville-d'Abadie," and further on "Langoa-Barton."

Looking back to the famous 1825 vintage, the same book lists one Rauzan, priced together with Lascombe: "Rauzan et Lascombe, 3,000."

That is how both twins got their names. Ségla is the title of Madame de Rausan, a Rauzan heiress who had become baronne de Ségla, the mother of the Comtesse de Castelpers who held the estate in 1855.

Gassies, in d'Armailhacq's account, is the name of the sieur de Gassies who had married another Rauzan daughter 3 generations earlier, though the older record knew a noble house of Gassies in 1530. By 1845 that portion had been sold to M. Chevalier de Puyboreau, and by 1853 to Madame Chabrier.

Neither name belonged to anyone who owned the land when the classification fixed it in place. One was a mother's title; the other, on d'Armailhacq's account, a son-in-law's name.

One Rauzan, then a bracket

The rankings took longer to catch up. Franck's ranking of 1824 names one Rauzan among its second growths.

Charles Cocks, whose English guide to the claret country grew into Féret's directory, listed the second growths of 1846 by name and owner. Rauzan's line reads "Rauzan. Castelpert and Gassieff": one growth already split between the Castelpers and Gassies names, in the same notation he used for Léoville's 3 proprietors on the line above.

Cocks's French edition of 1850 disagrees with itself. Its Margaux chapter says the commune has "three second growths: Rauzan, Durfort and Lascombes," and its index of the most celebrated growths has one line, "Rauzan (Château)." A few lines on, its table of proprietors brackets the name into 2 lines.

Franck's 3rd edition of 1853 was the first of these rankings to carry 2 names, with one production figure between them: "Rauzan-Rauzan (baronne de Sigla), et Rauzan-Gassies (Chabrier). Margaux. 70 75." On the same page Léoville is "divisé en trois" with a separate figure for each owner.

Then the brokers wrote their tableau for the Paris exhibition, in April 1855. On its second-growth page they wrote "Rauzan" once, in the column for the growths, and opened a bracket beside it holding 2 names, "Ségla" and "Gassies," still in the growth column. Across the page they bracketed the owners, the Comtesse de Castelpers and Viguerie.

Directly below, they wrote "Léoville" once and bracketed its 3 proprietors. At Léoville the brokers bracketed only the owners. At Rauzan they bracketed the wines.

They were recording a separation the trade already knew. But they kept the 2 parts under one name, side by side, and so drew the picture of twins.

One house in the prose

The picture stuck in the rankings and only slowly in the prose. Féret's directory of 1868 lists "Rauzan-Segla, Margaux, E. Durand" and "Rauzan-Gassies, Id., Rhoné-Pereire" on consecutive lines.

The writers saw one house, before the bracket and after it. Pierre Biarnez, the Bordeaux poet who put the growths of the Médoc into rhyme in 1849, arrived in Margaux "before Château-Rauzan, whose aspect is so sad and yet imposing," and wrote:

It is only a ruin, and its old dome / Shines nonetheless with a bright aureole: / For there is no wine more lively, more savory, / More elegant, more fine, more pure, more generous.

Alfred Danflou, a Bordeaux publisher who wrote and photographed monographs on the great châteaux, still gave Rauzan one chapter in 1867, with one production figure, 60 to 70 tonneaux. He disagreed with the poet: "the aspect of Rauzan is at once picturesque and majestic; it is a château of the last century, a rich country house, a sort of model farm, anything one likes."

He ended the chapter: "Château-Rauzan has belonged for several years to Madame la comtesse de Castelpers and to the family Viguerie," though both halves had already changed hands by 1866.

Strangers who share a name

By 1920 G.A.K., an anonymous London author who surveyed every classified growth, could fit both halves of the story into one sentence: "In olden days, what are now known as the estates of Rausan-Segla and Rauzan-Gassies, were really one, and were termed simply 'Chateau Rauzan,' but, as savants in the Bordeaux trade well know, they have been quite distinct and separate properties, under different proprietors, since very early times."

His 2 sections describe 2 estates that share a surname and a rank, and little else. Rauzan-Ségla passed from the Rauzan heirs to M. Durand Dassier sometime between 1860 and 1866, and made about 60 tonneaux under a régisseur, a manager who also ran Pontet-Canet. Rauzan-Gassies passed through a string of owners, among them M. Rhoné-Pereire from 1866, made about 55 tonneaux, and took gold medals at the exhibitions of 1878, 1889 and 1900.

The clearest difference was in the bottle. In G.A.K.'s day an estate granted or refused its buyers the right to have the wine bottled at the château and sold as such.

Of Rausan-Ségla he writes: "Contrary to the practice obtaining with so many of the classed growths, the privilege of Chateau bottling at Chateau Rausan-Segla has never been granted up to the present," and adds that "it would be very interesting to observe the effect of granting the privilege."

Of Rauzan-Gassies, across the road, he writes that it "is not among the properties that refuse to undertake the work entailed by Chateau bottlings, as the privilege is granted at this Chateau," and he lists château-bottled vintages from 1891 to 1914.

G.A.K. found the privilege refused at several classed growths, the 2 Barton estates and Calon-Ségur among them. At Rauzan the refusal fell on one twin and not the other.

The critics' scores split the twins

D'Armailhacq, who measured one twin at half the other, still put both "in the first rank among the second great growths." The critics of the late 20th century separated them.

In 2008 a team at Cornell's Center for Hospitality Research ran the major critics' scores for the classified growths, vintages 1970 to 2005, through a regression and drew a new classification from the results. Of the 44 classified growths in their data, they judged that 23 could be misclassified.

In their table Rauzan-Ségla stayed a second growth, as the brokers had it. Rauzan-Gassies came out a fifth, the only château in the study to drop 3 growths.

The verdict

The claim is that the twins of Margaux were never really equal. They came out of a family partition, 3 generations before the classification, as 2 thirds and one third of an estate that also gave a piece to Desmirail. The trade priced them separately and named each after an owner. The classification wrote them as one Rauzan in 2 parts, and that bracket made them a pair. Since then one refused château bottling and the other granted it; in a private table built from the critics' scores, one stayed a second growth and the other came out 3 classes lower. In 2026 one belonged to the owners of Chanel, the other to the family that bought it in 1946.

Confirmed. Equal in rank, and in nothing else the court could find. Measured at half in 1855. Re-ranked in 2008 from the critics' scores, at Cornell, in a table of the team's own making: one twin a second growth, the other a fifth, the longest fall in the study. Twins by courtesy. Siblings at most.

The wine

Rauzan-Ségla has belonged since 1994 to the Wertheimer family, the owners of Chanel, who in 2026 grouped their wine estates, Rauzan-Ségla, Canon and Berliquet among them, under a shared name, Les Vignobles. Its second wine, Ségla, has taken the baronne's title from a parenthesis in Franck to a label of its own.

Rauzan-Gassies has belonged since 1946 to the Quié family: Paul Quié, a Paris wine merchant, bought it that year. It farms 28 hectares, planted to 58% cabernet sauvignon, 40% merlot, and 2% petit verdot, and its second wine is Gassies. Today it is run by Paul Quié's grandchildren, Anne-Françoise and Jean-Philippe, who are twins. It is the only part of the Rauzan story in which that word is literally true.

Chronology

Sources

Period sources, read in the original.

• William Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc et les autres vins rouges du département de la Gironde, 1st edition, Bordeaux, 1824, the table of prices since 1745 and the classification.
• A. Joubert, Observations sur la culture et la gestion des propriétés du Haut-Médoc, Paris, Paul Dupont, 1842, the classes of the Médoc.
• William Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc, 2nd edition, Bordeaux, 1845, the Margaux table, the prices of 1833 to 1840, and the sales of the 1844 vintage.
• Charles Cocks, Bordeaux: Its Wines, and the Claret Country, London, 1846, the second growths.
• Pierre Biarnez, Les grands vins de Bordeaux : poëme, Paris, Plon Frères, 1849, pp. 17 to 18.
• Charles Cocks, Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, Bordeaux, Féret fils, 1850, Margaux, pp. 202 to 203, and the alphabetical index.
• William Franck, Traité sur les vins du Médoc, 3rd edition, Bordeaux, 1853, the table of second growths, and the classification.
• A. d'Armailhacq, La culture des vignes, la vinification et les vins dans le Médoc, Bordeaux, 1855, Margaux, and the state of the vineyards of Margaux.
• Alfred Danflou, Les grands crus bordelais : monographies et photographies des châteaux et vignobles, Bordeaux, 1867, Château-Rauzan.
• Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, Bordeaux et ses vins classés par ordre de mérite, 2nd edition, Bordeaux, 1868, the classification, p. 91.
• G.A.K., Clarets and Sauternes: Classed Growths of the Médoc and Other Famous Red and White Wines of the Gironde, London, 1920, section VI, Château Rausan-Ségla, section VII, Château Rauzan-Gassies, and section XXX, Château Desmirail.

Modern scholarship and the public record.

• Chambre syndicale des courtiers de commerce près la Bourse de Bordeaux, "Vins rouges classés du département de la Gironde," the tableau annexed to the letter of April 18, 1855, in the copy certified "pour copie conforme" and held by the Bordeaux Chamber of Commerce, read from photographs of its 5 pages.
• Gary M. Thompson, Stephen A. Mutkoski, Youngran Bae, Liliana Ielacqua and Se Bum Oh, "An Analysis of Bordeaux Wine Ratings, 1970-2005: Implications for the Existing Classification of the Médoc and Graves," Cornell Hospitality Report, June 2008, Exhibit 12 and the text on the revised classification.

The trade and the estates.

• Union des Grands Crus de Bordeaux, the Château Rauzan-Gassies page, for the Quié family, the vineyard, the blend, the second wine, and the Chevalier de Rauzan. ugcb.net
• "Château Rauzan-Ségla 1994-2018: a great estate right back in fashion," World of Fine Wine, for the purchase by the Wertheimer family in 1994 and the second wine. worldoffinewine.com
• "A new identity for Chanel's vineyards," Terre de Vins, 2026, for Les Vignobles.

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, "Were the twins of Margaux ever twins?", Bordeaux Reviews, Château Case Files 15/70, 2026, https://bordeauxreviews.com/case-files/were-the-twins-of-margaux-ever-twins/.

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.