Château Maison Blanche

The estate

The story of Maison Blanche starts on a Gallo-Roman road: the way from Bordeaux to Lucaniacus, the villa of the poet Ausonius, crossed this land, and at the end of the Middle Ages it belonged to the seigneury of Corbin. In 1835 Bernard Constant, an owner and merchant of Libourne, bought part of that seigneury, and in 1838 he divided it among his children. On the share of his daughter Marie Céline, called Amélie, her husband Octave Pineau, sub-prefect of the Vienne, built a master’s house of the white stone of his region, and the farm of Château Petit Corbin became Château de La Maison Blanche. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, first print the name in 1874, among the crus bourgeois et 1ers artisans of Montagne, under Pineau, at 25 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), and it stayed with O. Pineau into the 1920s, at 30 tonneaux in 1908 and 1922. The same O. Pineau also held La Fleur-Pétrus, a 1er cru classé of Pomerol, at 10 tonneaux in 1908.

Jean Barroy bought the estate in 1932 and in 1938 sold it to Louis Rapin, a Libourne wine merchant. When his estate was settled in 1972, his daughter Françoise received the 40 hectares of Maison Blanche, 26 of them in vines, and ran it with her husband, Gérard Despagne. Their children Nathalie and Nicolas joined in 1994 and 1995, and Nicolas became co-manager in 2003. In autumn 2005 he converted the family vineyards to organic farming; the 2009 wines were the first from grapes certified organic by Ecocert, and in 2009, when his parents retired, Nicolas received Maison Blanche. Demeter certification followed, and Bio Cohérence the year after; biodynamic preparations have been sprayed on the vines since 2001.

Today Cabernet Franc and Merlot cover 32 hectares of slopes and plateau, on clay with traces of limestone and iron. Near the center stands the 19th century house of white Poitou stone in its park, with traditional vats, a barrel cellar of nearly 650 square meters built in the early 1990s and an underground cellar of old vintages. Maison Blanche, the grand vin (the estate’s first wine), comes from old Cabernets and Merlots, picked by hand, sorted again in the vat room before destemming, fermented without chemical additives in concrete vats lined with glass tiles, aged in French oak barrels and bottled at the estate without pasteurization or sterilization. Louis Rapin comes from 2.80 hectares of Merlot that Louis Rapin himself planted in 1943; it has aged 24 to 30 months in French oak barrels since 2003 and was the estate’s first cuvée without sulfite. Les Piliers de Maison Blanche is the second wine.

At a glance

Appellation

Montagne-Saint-Émilion

Commune

Montagne

Classification

No classification

Owner

Nicolas Despagne, Vignobles Despagne-Rapin, since 2009; the family since 1938

Vineyard

32 hectares of vines on an estate of 40

Ground

Clay with traces of limestone and iron

Grapes

Cabernet Franc and Merlot

Farming

Organic, certified by Ecocert from the 2009 wines; biodynamic, certified by Demeter; Bio Cohérence

Cellar

Picked by hand; concrete vats lined with glass tiles; French oak barrels; bottled at the estate

Wines

Maison Blanche; Les Piliers de Maison Blanche; Louis Rapin, without sulfite

In history

La Maison-Blanche of the Pineau family from 1874; 30 tonneaux in 1908 and 1922

Sources: Château Maison Blanche, the estate · Château Maison Blanche, history · Château Maison Blanche, history: the Constant and Pineau century · Château Maison Blanche, history: Louis Rapin · Château Maison Blanche, history: from the Rapins to the Despagnes · Château Maison Blanche, history: Nicolas Despagne · Château Maison Blanche, approach · Château Maison Blanche, the grand vin · Château Maison Blanche, Louis Rapin · Montagne-Saint-Émilion syndicate, Maison-Blanche