Château Macquin

The château

Albert Macquin was born at Jaulnes in Seine-et-Marne and trained in agronomy at Grignon, and in 1884 he bought the domaine of Maisonneuve at Saint-Georges: 22 hectares badly hit by phylloxera. His answer to the plague made his name. He set up a school of grafting onto American rootstocks and worked out his own method, the Macquin graft; he made more than 20,000 grafts in 1885 and nearly 1 million 3 years later, sold as far as the Médoc, Cognac and the south of France, and in 1891 he won a gold medal offered by the minister of agriculture at the comice of Libourne. The profits took Maisonneuve to 46 hectares and bought him Château Pavie Macquin and Château Lasserre at Saint-Émilion; he also managed Château Figeac. Édouard Féret, in Les vins de l’arrondissement de Libourne of 1897, lists 2 of his holdings among the crus bourgeois of Saint-Georges, the Château Saint-Georges-Macquin at 125 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) and the Domaine de Maisonneuve at 100, with 46 hectares of vines between them, 24 of them taken from Château Saint-Georges. He died in 1911.

In 1922 his heirs still held the 2 properties. His daughter Andrée kept Maisonneuve and settled there in 1920 with her husband, François Corre, of a Libourne négociant (a merchant who buys from the châteaux and sells on) family; the partition of 1947 gave Pavie Macquin to her sister Marie-Louise, and Maisonneuve became Château Macquin. When their son Denis Corre took over in 1967 only 8 hectares of vines were left, and from 1968 he and his wife replanted. The estate now covers 31 hectares and 47 ares, and the children of Christine and Denis Corre have taken it over. The vines, 40 years old on average at 5,500 a hectare, are 80% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 10% Cabernet Sauvignon, on clay and limestone, with a limestone plateau on the heights and red sandy clay lower down. The estate plays sequences of sound to the vines, the Génodics method, to help them resist wood diseases.

At a glance

Appellation

Saint-Georges-Saint-Émilion

Commune

Montagne

Classification

No classification

Owners

The children of Christine and Denis Corre, descendants of Albert Macquin

Vineyard

31 hectares and 47 ares; 5,500 vines a hectare; vines 40 years old on average

Soil

Clay and limestone; a limestone plateau above, red sandy clay below Terroir of Saint-Georges-Saint-Émilion →

Grapes

Merlot 80%, Cabernet Franc 10%, Cabernet Sauvignon 10%

Farming

Génodics sound sequences against wood diseases

Wines

Château Macquin

In history

Château Saint-Georges-Macquin and the Domaine de Maisonneuve, 46 hectares of vines, in 1897