Château Brillette

The estate

Brillette stands at the top of a gravel rise of Moulis, and its name comes from the way that small gravel gleams in the sunshine. The comtes du Périer de Larsan worked the vineyard for nearly 100 years, and the old books follow them. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, has Brillette under the family in 1845; Armand d’Armailhacq, in La culture des vignes, la vinification et les vins dans le Médoc of 1855, counts it at 12 hectares and 30 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) among the ordinary bourgeois of Moulis; and from 1874 Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, raise it among the crus bourgeois supérieurs, at 75 tonneaux in 1898 and still under the comtesse du Périer de Larsan in 1922.

Raymond Berthault, a founder of 2 large food retail chains, bought Brillette in 1975. In 1995 Jean-Louis Flageul, Mme Berthault’s son, took it over; in 2000 he rebuilt all the technical installations, and his sons Romain and Erwan have worked with him since. The Flageuls and the family of Chasse-Spleen had been linked for several generations and had decided together to settle at Moulis in the early 1970s, so when the Flageuls’ other businesses came to need more of their time, the vineyards went to the neighbor. In 2023 Chasse-Spleen joined them to its own: 30 hectares in production, a homogeneous stretch of fine gravel with some large plots of gravel and big pebbles, among forest, marsh and meadow. Éric Boissenot, who advised Brillette and advises Chasse-Spleen, expected the merger to bring more Cabernet Sauvignon from deep gravel into the Chasse-Spleen blend.

At a glance

Appellation

Moulis

Commune

Moulis-en-Médoc

Classification

No classification

Owner

Château Chasse-Spleen, since 2023; before it the Flageul family, from 1995, and Raymond Berthault, from 1975

Consultant

Éric Boissenot

Vineyard

30 hectares in production

Ground

Fine gravel, with plots of gravel and big pebbles

In history

The du Périer de Larsan family, 1845 to 1922; a cru bourgeois supérieur from 1874

Not to be confused with

Château Biston-Brillette, Moulis

Sources: Moulis-en-Médoc, Brillette · Moulis-en-Médoc, Chasse-Spleen and Brillette · Château Chasse-Spleen, yesterday · Château Chasse-Spleen, the parcels