Château Sénéjac

The château

Sénéjac’s first known owner, Nicolas de Bloys, a squire married to Jeanne Fleix, planted its first vines in the 16th century. In the 18th century Joseph-Ignace de Chatard, a counselor at the Parlement de Bordeaux, bought it, and in 1746 he sold it to his nephew Jean-Louis Baour, later mayor of Le Pian-Médoc, who put up new buildings. By the middle of the 19th century the vineyard made the equivalent of 100,000 bottles a year. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, lists the Château de Sénéjac under Roques in 1845, at 30 to 50 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels), and in 1855 Armand d’Armailhacq, a Pauillac grower whose De la culture des vignes, la vinification et les vins dans le Médoc came out that year, gives M. Roques 40 hectares and 80 tonneaux.

The Comte de Guigné bought Sénéjac in 1860, and his family kept it for 139 years and made it a showpiece. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, describe in 1893 the old seat of a barony, 165 hectares with about 40 of vines on siliceous gravel over yellow or bluish clay, where the owner had planted Cabernet throughout and so improved his wines. By 1898 it was a cru bourgeois supérieur of 120 tonneaux, with springs feeding more than 500 meters of stepped basins among avenues of poplars and limes, and a château lately restored and enlarged. In 1999 Charles de Guigné sold it to Lorraine Cordier, who also owned Château Talbot. Since her death in 2011 her nieces Philippine and Marguerite and her nephew Gustave have carried it on, backed by their parents Nancy Bignon-Cordier and Jean-Paul Bignon; Sénéjac belongs to the Bignon-Cordier family.

The estate covers 150 hectares on a hilltop of clay and deep gravel, gravel carried down from the Pyrenees in the Quaternary, halfway between Margaux and Bordeaux. The vineyard is 54% Cabernet Sauvignon, 32% Merlot, 10% Cabernet Franc and 4% Petit Verdot, 35 years old on average and planted at 6,600 vines a hectare. Fermentation runs in temperature-controlled stainless steel vats, with 20 to 30 days of maceration depending on the vintage. The 2023, 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 29% Merlot, 11% Cabernet Franc and 7% Petit Verdot, was picked by hand and by machine from September 12 to 29 and aged 12 months in barrels, 25% new. Comte de Sénéjac, the second wine, comes from the younger parcels.

At a glance

Appellation

Haut-Médoc

Commune

Le Pian-Médoc

Classification

No classification

Owners

The Bignon-Cordier family; Philippine, Marguerite and Gustave, since 2011

Vineyard

41 hectares of vines on an estate of 150; vines 35 years old on average; 6,600 vines a hectare

Soil

A hilltop of clay and deep gravel Terroir of Haut-Médoc →

Grapes

Cabernet Sauvignon 54%, Merlot 32%, Cabernet Franc 10%, Petit Verdot 4%

Cellar

Temperature-controlled stainless steel; 20 to 30 days of maceration; the 2023, 12 months in barrels, 25% new

Wines

Château Sénéjac; Comte de Sénéjac

In history

Roques, 30 to 50 tonneaux, in 1845; the Guigné family, 1860 to 1999; a cru bourgeois supérieur of 120 tonneaux in 1898