Château Bouscaut

The château

The place was Domaine Haut Truchon in the 17th century and took the name Le Bouscaut in 1876, from the village it stands in. Its first great age came under Pierre Chabanneau. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, printed Château-du-Bouscaut under him from 1886, at 80 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), and at 100 by 1893: an estate of about 50 hectares, 30 of them vines, on a rich gravelly slope over alios, the iron hardpan, which Chabanneau had restocked entirely with cuttings chosen at Château Lafite, Château Margaux and Mouton-Rothschild. The guide ranked its reds at the head of the premières graves, the first-rank gravel wines. A white vineyard was laid out around 1887 with fine varieties from the best growths of Sauternes, and in 1908 Féret called Bouscaut a first growth of the Graves, with 35 hectares of vines, 100 tonneaux of red and 30 of white.

In 1925 the Courtade family sold the estate to Victor Place and the Comte de Rivaud, who drained the land, rebuilt the working buildings, bought neighboring Château Valoux in 1929 and enlarged the château in 1930. Bouscaut was classified in 1953, for red and for white, and the list took its present form with the decree of February 16, 1959. Then came the fires. On September 6, 1961, during a party for Gilbert Bécaud, fire caught the tower; 1 year later an accidental fire took the whole château and spared only the cellars. The architect Michel Garros rebuilt it stone for stone to Victor Place’s plans and finished in 1966. Investors from the American East Coast bought the estate in 1968, and Lucien and Marie-Jeanne Lurton in 1979. Their 7th child, Sophie Lurton, took it on in 1992 and runs it with her husband, Laurent Cogombles, who was president of the Pessac-Léognan appellation from 2005 to 2017.

The 41 hectares lie on clay and gravel over limestone, and the limestone holds the water that keeps the whites fresh. Thirty-two hectares are in red, 52% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, 7% Malbec and 1% Petit Verdot; 9 are in white, 55% Sauvignon Blanc and 45% Sémillon. In 1999 Bouscaut bought back 9 hectares of Château Lamothe-Bouscaut, the neighbor Féret had printed beside it in 1908, under Fernand Defaure, at 25 tonneaux. The estate took Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) at level 3 in 2018 and went into organic certification with the 2023 vintage. Les Chênes de Bouscaut is the second wine, and the family also makes Château Valoux.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Commune

Cadaujac

Classification

Cru Classé de Graves for red and white, 1953 and 1959

Owners

The Lurton family, since 1979

Direction

Sophie Lurton and Laurent Cogombles

Vineyard

41 hectares, 32 in red and 9 in white

Soil

Clay and gravel over limestone Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

Red: Cabernet Sauvignon 52%, Merlot 40%, Malbec 7%, Petit Verdot 1%; white: Sauvignon Blanc 55%, Sémillon 45%

Farming

Haute Valeur Environnementale, level 3, since 2018; organic certification from the 2023 vintage

Wines

Château Bouscaut (red and white); Les Chênes de Bouscaut; Château Valoux

The house

Burned in 1962 and rebuilt stone for stone by Michel Garros, finished in 1966

In history

80 tonneaux under Pierre Chabanneau in 1886; a first growth of the Graves in 1908