Château Couhins

The château

Couhins goes back to the 17th century and was made of 2 properties, the Domaine de la Gravette and the Domaine du Pont de Langon. Its commune had a name for white wine early: André Jullien, the Paris wine merchant whose Topographie de tous les vignobles connus surveyed the vineyards of the world, put the dry whites of Villenave-d’Ornon in the first class of the white wines of France in 1832, and Couhins was among the growths of the commune in the Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins of Charles Cocks, in 1850. Catherine Sérès, married to Victor Hanappier, inherited the estate in 1883. Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose guide had become the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, gave Hanappier 25 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) in 1886, and in 1898 set Couhins on a fine rise that commands the country and closes the valley of Léognan, on clay-limestone and ferruginous soil, with reds of real quality and dry whites of great sap. In 1908 it made 20 tonneaux of red and 6 of white.

A later marriage carried Couhins to the Gasqueton family of Calon-Ségur, and under Édouard Gasqueton the estate, then 60 hectares, built a name; it was classified in 1953 for its white wine, and the list took its present form with the decree of February 16, 1959. Gasqueton died in 1962, after the freeze of 1956 and the heat of 1959 and 1961, and in 1968 his heirs sold to INRA, today INRAE, the French national research institute for agriculture, food and environment. In 1972 the institute sold 1.5 hectares of white vines to André Lurton, who made Château Couhins-Lurton of them, and kept the remaining 4 hectares of the old white vineyard. Then it rebuilt the place as only a research institute would: 4 kilometers of ditches and 6 of paths, 30 hectares reconditioned for drainage, the soil mapped on a 50 meter grid, and new cellars in 1981. Dominique Forget has been general manager since 1999.

The vineyard is 32 hectares, 22 red and 10 white, on 3 soils: a gravel rise of pebbles over compact clay, a clay and limestone slope, and a plateau of sand and gravel on clay. The white is 96% Sauvignon Blanc and 4% Sauvignon Gris, with Sémillon going back in from 2024; the red is 46% Merlot and 43% Cabernet Sauvignon, with Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc for the rest. The estate makes about 110,000 bottles of red and 60,000 of white, farms organically, with agroecology and agroforestry, and holds Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) at level 3. Dame de Couhins, in white and red, is the second wine.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Commune

Villenave-d’Ornon

Classification

Cru Classé de Graves for white, 1953 and 1959

Owner

INRAE, since 1968

Direction

Dominique Forget, general manager, since 1999

Vineyard

32 hectares; 22 red and 10 white

Soil

3 soils: gravel rise over compact clay; clay and limestone slope; sand and gravel plateau on clay Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

White: Sauvignon Blanc 96%, Sauvignon Gris 4%, Sémillon from 2024; red: Merlot 46%, Cabernet Sauvignon 43%, with Petit Verdot and Cabernet Franc

Farming

Organic; Haute Valeur Environnementale, level 3; agroecology and agroforestry

Production

About 110,000 bottles of red and 60,000 of white

Wines

Château Couhins (white and red); Dame de Couhins (white and red)

In history

Dry whites of the first class of France in 1832; 20 tonneaux of red and 6 of white in 1908