Château Haut Nouchet

The château

The first name at Nouchet, in Martillac, is Tandonnet: Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, list the family there in 1868, and A. Tandonnet at 15 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) in 1883, then his heirs. At the end of the 19th century the estate passed by inheritance to the Vayssière family, and from 1898 the guide prints Château Nouchet under Marcel Vayssière, at 35 tonneaux. He made its reputation. Édouard Féret’s Les vins des Graves rouges et blancs of 1908 gives 30 tonneaux of red and 10 of white, praises a red of much-admired finesse and whites of Sémillon, Sauvignon and Muscadelle that rivaled the greatest white Graves, and records that Alfred Videau fils et Cie of Bordeaux had bought the white crops in advance for 12 years. Awards came at Liège in 1905 and gold medals at Bordeaux in 1907, London in 1908 and Brussels in 1910. By 1922 Vayssière, senator and mayor of Martillac, was listed for the red of the Château de Nouchet and the white of Château Haut-Nouchet.

Then came the economic crises and the world wars, and at the end of the 1960s the property was sold to a property developer. Lucien Lurton took it out of the developer’s hands at the beginning of the 1970s, when everything had to be rebuilt: the buildings were restored and the vineyard replanted. His son Louis inherited it in 1992, converted the whole estate to organic farming that same year, with the soils plowed, no herbicide and natural pheromones against pests, and built a modern vat room in 1994. In September 2008 the Briest family bought it. Domitille, Gauthier and Thibaut Briest, trained as a notary, an agricultural engineer and at a business school, left their careers for it.

The vineyard lies on 3 rises of Günz gravel over a compact base of clay and limestone that holds water and nutrients for the roots, and the white grapes go where the clay and limestone come to the surface. It climbs to 49 meters above sea level, and the Nouchet stream crosses the property. Of 32 hectares in all, 13 are red vines and 2 white: the reds 50% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, 7% Petit Verdot and 3% Cabernet Franc, the whites 60% Sauvignon and 40% Sémillon, for an average of 80,000 bottles of red and 10,000 of white.

At a glance

Appellation

Pessac-Léognan

Commune

Martillac

Classification

No classification

Owners

The Briest family, since September 2008

Vineyard

32 hectares in all, 13 of red vines and 2 of white

Soil

Günz gravel on 3 rises over clay and limestone; up to 49 meters Terroir of Pessac-Léognan →

Grapes

Red: Cabernet Sauvignon 50%, Merlot 40%, Petit Verdot 7%, Cabernet Franc 3%. White: Sauvignon 60%, Sémillon 40%

Farming

Organic since 1992

Production

About 80,000 bottles of red and 10,000 of white

Wines

Château Haut Nouchet, red and white

In history

The Vayssière family from the 1890s; gold medals at Bordeaux in 1907, London in 1908 and Brussels in 1910