Château Maucaillou

The château

Maucaillou was born of the railway and the trade. In 1871 the Bordeaux merchants Petit-Laroche built the Caves et Entrepôts de Moulis, cut-stone warehouses beside Moulis station, to ship Médoc wines across Europe. In 1875 J. Petit-Laroche married and gave his wife the château that faces them, an eclectic mansion built by the Marian brothers of Moulis, and at the same time planted a new estate on 2 plots called Maucaillou and Caubet, 1.5 hectares in all. Maucaillou means bad stones: gravel too poor for cereals. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, first print Château Maucaillou in 1893, at 12 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), planted only to Petit Verdot, Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon and holding a gold medal from the universal exhibition of 1889; by 1922 it was a cru bourgeois supérieur of Moulis. The Maucaillou of Soussans in the same books is a different growth.

In 1929 Roger and André Dourthe bought the warehouses and the château, then 2.5 hectares, and by his death in 1984 Roger had taken it to 32 hectares. His son Philippe Dourthe bought out the family in 1991 and brought the vineyard to 72 hectares of Moulis and 18 of Haut-Médoc; since 2006 his children have run the estates, Pascal as president and Magali as technical director. Maucaillou was a Cru Bourgeois in 1932 but renounced the classification of 2003, and Philippe Dourthe put the stance in a motto: “Grand Cru Classé, cannot; Cru Bourgeois, deigns not; Château Maucaillou, is.”

The vines grow on quaternary alluvial rises of Günz gravel from the Garonne and are 52% Cabernet Sauvignon, 41% Merlot and 7% Petit Verdot. The wine ages 18 to 20 months in French oak, with 40% to 60% of the barrels new each year, and is fined with egg white. The second wine is N°2 de Maucaillou, and the family also makes a Haut-Médoc. Since 1987 the estate has kept a museum of the arts and crafts of vines and wine.

At a glance

Appellation

Moulis; also Haut-Médoc

Commune

Moulis-en-Médoc, beside the station

Classification

Cru Bourgeois in 1932; out of the classification by choice since 2003

Owners

The Dourthe family, since 1929

Direction

Pascal Dourthe, president, and Magali Dourthe, technical director, since 2006

Vineyard

72 hectares of Moulis and 18 of Haut-Médoc

Soil

Günz gravel of the Garonne Terroir of Moulis →

Grapes

Cabernet Sauvignon 52%, Merlot 41%, Petit Verdot 7%

Cellar

18 to 20 months in French oak, 40% to 60% new; fined with egg white

Wines

Château Maucaillou; N°2 de Maucaillou; Maucaillou Haut-Médoc

The house

A museum of the arts and crafts of vines and wine, since 1987

In history

Château Maucaillou under Petit-Laroche from 1893; a gold medal in 1889; a cru bourgeois supérieur in 1922