Château de Portets

The château

Portets was a lordship long before it was a wine. Guillaume de Gascq took charge of the castle in 1587 and his family held it for 2 centuries; in 1781 the last Gascq heir left it to Valdec de Lessart, who passed it in 1785 to the Séguineau de Lognac family, owners through the 19th century. On July 31, 1808, Napoleon, on his way back from Spain, stopped here before entering Bordeaux, and a bronze plaque in the courtyard marks the day. German troops occupied the château in the Second World War and left it in poor repair; in 1956 Jules Théron, an agronomy engineer and president of the General Council of Oran, bought it and restored it with his son Jean-Pierre Théron, also an agronomy engineer and an enologist. His granddaughter, Marie-Hélène Yung-Théron, owns and runs it today, and since 2016 she has opened it to visitors, with a space devoted to Napoleon’s stop of 1808. The Renaissance front is on the inventory of historic monuments.

The red vineyard covers 28 hectares, 60% Merlot and 40% Cabernet Sauvignon; the white covers 4 hectares, 60% Sémillon, 30% Sauvignon Blanc and 10% Muscadelle. The soil is heavy and gravelly, with rounded pebbles, over a subsoil of clay and silica. The estate joined the environmental management system of the Bordeaux wine council in 2017 and was certified Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) in 2017; it works the soil, grasses part of the vineyard and uses biocontrol products. The harvest is mainly by machine, and the reds begin with a few days of cold maceration before fermentation. Stéphane Grenier runs the vineyard and Jérôme Folin the cellar, and since the 2012 vintage the consultant enologist Antoine Médeville has worked with the enologists of the Jacoby-Sourdès laboratory to choose and blend the wines of Château de Portets. Château de Portets has been chosen as an Ambassadeur de Graves, the yearly selection the Graves wine syndicate began in 2021, which asks for environmental certification, a welcome for visitors and a blind tasting by consumers.

At a glance

Appellation

Graves

Commune

Portets

Classification

No classification

Owner

Marie-Hélène Yung-Théron

Direction

Stéphane Grenier, vineyard manager; Jérôme Folin, cellar master

Consultant

Antoine Médeville, since the 2012 vintage

Enologist

Jacoby-Sourdès laboratory

Vineyard

28 hectares of red and 4 of white

Soil

Heavy gravel with rounded pebbles over clay and silica Terroir of Graves →

Grapes

Red: Merlot 60%, Cabernet Sauvignon 40%; white: Sémillon 60%, Sauvignon Blanc 30%, Muscadelle 10%

Farming

Environmental management system since 2017; Haute Valeur Environnementale since 2017

Wines

Château de Portets; 15 Barons de Portets; Château Port du Roy; red and white Graves

In history

The Gascq family from 1587; Napoleon on July 31, 1808; Jules Théron from 1956