Domaine de Chevalier

The château

Domaine de Chevalier stands in a single block in a clearing of the forest, with no immediate neighbor. The name goes back to the middle of the 17th century, when Jehan de Lalanne was called Chivaley and the name passed to his land. The estate went from the Lalannes to Jean Destang in 1736 and to the Ricards in 1865, and the old Gascon name stayed with it in print. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, listed it in 1874 as A Ghibaley, under Chéri Ricard, at the foot of the Léognan list, with 8 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) of young vines; by 1893 it was Dom. de Chevalier dit Chibaley, 50 hectares, a vineyard Ricard had created some 30 years before and planted with nothing but first-order varieties, and the alias was still in print in 1898.

Gabriel Beaumartin bought the estate in 1900, Claude Ricard brought it back to his family in 1948, and the Bernard family bought it in 1983; Olivier Bernard runs it. The Graves classification was enacted by the INAO in January 1953, approved that August and enlarged in 1959, and Domaine de Chevalier is classified for red and for white, as few estates are. Of about 100 hectares, 67 are under vine, 60 in red and 7 in white, on poor, complex gravel over a subsoil of clay and gravel, planted at 10,000 vines a hectare where the appellation averages 6,500. The red is 63% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Merlot, 5% Petit Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc; the white is 70% Sauvignon and 30% Sémillon. The vineyard is in conversion to organic farming. L’Esprit de Chevalier, born in 1989, is the second wine, in red and in white, mainly from the young vines.

The white is the wine that made the estate’s name, and there is not much of it for a wine of such standing. The 2017, which I wrote about in May 2026, comes from a year Bordeaux remembers for its frosts, when the best whites of Pessac-Léognan still came out precise and clear, and it has the balance of the house between richness and tension: the Sauvignon gives the freshness and the structure, the Sémillon the texture and the depth.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Commune

Léognan

Classification

Cru Classé de Graves for red and white, 1953 and 1959; Michelin Guide, 1 grape (2026)

Owners

The Bernard family, since 1983

Direction

Olivier Bernard

Vineyard

About 100 hectares, 67 under vine: 60 red and 7 white; 10,000 vines a hectare, against an appellation average of 6,500

Soil

Poor gravel over a clay and gravel subsoil, in a single block ringed by forest Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

Red: Cabernet Sauvignon 63%, Merlot 30%, Petit Verdot 5%, Cabernet Franc 2%; white: Sauvignon 70%, Sémillon 30%

Farming

In conversion to organic

Wines

Domaine de Chevalier (red and white); L’Esprit de Chevalier (red and white), since 1989

In history

A Ghibaley under Chéri Ricard in 1874; Dom. de Chevalier dit Chibaley, 50 hectares, in 1893