Château Couhins-Lurton

The château

The place was the Bourdieu de La Gravette, the Gravette farm, about 10 hectares of gravel at Villenave-d’Ornon, held around 1700 by the Bordeaux notary Alphonse Banchereau; his family kept it more than a century and built the manor around 1800. Charles Cocks, whose Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins of 1850 grew into the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, already printed 2 Couhins side by side among the growths of the commune that year, R. de Basquiat’s at 25 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) and Whitfoot’s at 20. Antoine Lair, a timber merchant, bought the Gravette in 1855, and in 1883 his granddaughter Catherine Sérès, married to Victor Hanappier, inherited it, then 17 hectares with 7 in vines; the directories of 1898 and 1899 list Hanappier under the older name, Château Couhins-La-Gravette. Until 1910 Couhins made 90% red.

Couhins was classified in 1953 for its white wine, and the list took its present form with the decree of February 16, 1959. In 1967 the widow of Édouard Gasqueton set about pulling up the vines, and André Lurton took a lease on them to save them. The SAFER, the public land agency, then split the property: the pharmacist Gilbert Comte took the château and cellars, and INRA, the French national agronomic research institute, today INRAE, the rest. Lurton bought 1.5 hectares from INRA in 1972, which made Château Couhins-Lurton a classified growth in its own right, and in 1992 he bought the château, the cellars and the park from the Comte family, bringing the house and the vines together again. The château and the cellar were rebuilt in 1998, and the red came back in September 2002.

André Lurton, born October 4, 1924, won the Pessac-Léognan appellation in 1987 after 23 years of pressing for it, and died on May 16, 2019. His son Jacques Lurton has been president of the family company since that month and makes the wine, with Mathilde de Caix-Lurton as general manager. The vineyard is 18 hectares, 12 red and 6 white. The white stands on clay and limestone and is 100% Sauvignon Blanc; the red stands on clay and gravel and is 83% Merlot and 17% Cabernet Sauvignon. Part of the wine is vinified and aged in barrels of 500 liters and in stoneware amphorae of 400 and 650 liters, and the estate has held Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) since 2017. Château Couhins-Lurton and Acte II are each made in white and in red.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Commune

Villenave-d’Ornon

Classification

Cru Classé de Graves for white

Owner

Vignobles Famille André Lurton; the vines bought in 1972, the château in 1992

Direction

Jacques Lurton, president since May 2019; Mathilde de Caix-Lurton, general manager

Vineyard

18 hectares; 12 red and 6 white

Soil

Clay and limestone under the white; clay and gravel under the red Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

White: Sauvignon Blanc 100%; red: Merlot 83%, Cabernet Sauvignon 17%

Farming

Haute Valeur Environnementale since 2017

Cellar

Barrels of 500 liters and stoneware amphorae of 400 and 650 liters

Wines

Château Couhins-Lurton (white and red); Acte II (white and red)

In history

2 Couhins among the growths of Villenave-d’Ornon in 1850, at 25 and 20 tonneaux