Château Le Boscq

The château

Le Boscq lies by the Gironde estuary, and the river made its trade: in the 18th century the wine went down to the port of Bordeaux by gabarre, a barge, which is now the emblem on its labels. In 1749 Thomas Barton, an Irishman and a founder of the négociant (a merchant who buys from the châteaux and sells on) house that is today the oldest on La Place, took on its tenancy. Jules de Camiran bought the estate in 1839. Charles Cocks, the Englishman whose Bordeaux, ses environs et ses vins appeared in 1850, lists it under de Camiran that year at 130 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), and William Franck, in the edition of 1853 of his Traité sur les vins du Médoc, counts it among the bons bourgeois whose wines were likened to those of Pauillac. In 1874 it was an estate in 2 parts, 50 hectares of fine meadows below and 30 of vines above, on gravel rises over clay, making well-colored, full-bodied wines.

Then came Jean Grazilhon, its manager. He bought the property from the de Camirans in the 1880s: by 1886 the family had kept only the château, 20 hectares of meadows and a small clos of vines, and by 1889, after further plots bought from Eugène de Camiran, the estate was his. In 1891 he built the present château, and in 1932 Le Boscq was ranked Cru Bourgeois. In 1922 it had 30 hectares of vines on very strong gravel and was counted one of the oldest crus of the commune.

Dourthe took the tenancy in 1995, remodeled the vineyard and bought the estate in 2021; Joachim Gilbert manages it. The vines stand on a high, deep hilltop of Garonne gravel and clay, at 9,080 vines a hectare on average, pruned Guyot Poussard, plowed and weeded by machine, with 550 meters of new hedgerows; the estate holds Haute Valeur Environnementale (High Environmental Value, the French state’s environmental certification for farms) at level 3 and Terra Vitis. The grapes are picked by hand and sorted optically and by density, in a cellar where no pump touches the fruit, then fermented by parcel in small stainless steel vats and aged in barrel in 2 partly underground cellars. The 2025, picked from September 5 to 22, is 47% Cabernet Sauvignon, 47% Merlot, 4% Petit Verdot and 2% Cabernet Franc. The second wine is Héritage de Le Boscq. Le Boscq was a Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel in the classification of 2020 and is not in the list of 2025.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Estèphe

Commune

Saint-Estèphe

Classification

Cru Bourgeois in 1932; Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel in 2020; not in the list of 2025

Owner

Dourthe, since 2021; tenant from 1995

Direction

Joachim Gilbert, estate manager

Vineyard

9,080 vines a hectare on average; Guyot Poussard

Soil

Garonne gravel and clay on a high hilltop Terroir of Saint-Estèphe →

Grapes

The 2025: Cabernet Sauvignon 47%, Merlot 47%, Petit Verdot 4%, Cabernet Franc 2%

Farming

Haute Valeur Environnementale, level 3; Terra Vitis

Cellar

Picked by hand; optical and density sorting; barrels, in 2 partly underground cellars

Wines

Château Le Boscq; Héritage de Le Boscq

In history

Thomas Barton, tenant, in 1749; 130 tonneaux under de Camiran in 1850; the château built by Jean Grazilhon in 1891