Château Siran

The château

Siran’s history starts with Guilhem de Siran, who swore a feudal oath in 1428, and runs through the Lussignet, du Boscq and La Roque-Bouillac families; in 1808 Jeanne Adèle de Laroque-Bouillac married the comte de Toulouse-Lautrec. In the family’s telling, the Toulouse-Lautrecs, legitimists, refused to enter what they called a Bonapartist classification in 1855. The trade knew the wine all the same: William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, lists Château Siran under the comtesse de Lautrec in 1845, and in 1855 Armand d’Armailhacq, a Pauillac grower, counts 22 hectares and 45 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels) among the bourgeois supérieurs of Labarde.

On January 14, 1859 the Bordeaux merchant Léo Barbier bought Siran from the comtesse, great-grandmother of the painter Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, carry it under him in 1874 among the crus bourgeois supérieurs: an estate of 51 hectares, 17 of red vines on gravel rises and 14 of heavier land also in vines, with meadows for 12 dairy cows. His sons-in-law, the Sollberg brothers, went bankrupt in the 1880s, and from 1885 their nephew Frédéric Miailhe, a broker, ran the estate; in 1915 he bought out his aunts. William-Alain Miailhe brought in Émile Peynaud, Guy Guimberteau and then Jacques Boissenot, and with his wife Brigitte he commissioned the labels from artists. His son Édouard Miailhe, the 6th generation, has run Siran since 2007.

Siran was a Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel in 2003; when that classification was canceled in 2007, it gave up the Cru Bourgeois title for good. Its 37 plots, the oldest planted in 1920, slope toward the Gironde on gravel and sand that warm early, planted 46% Merlot, 44% Cabernet Sauvignon, 9% Petit Verdot and 1% Cabernet Franc, 32 years old on average; the family also farms 2 hectares of Haut-Médoc and 11 of Bordeaux Supérieur. The wine ages 12 months in French oak from 6 coopers, one third new, and is fined with albumin. Marjolaine Defrance, cellar master since 2016, is now technical director. The other wines are S de Siran; Bel-Air de Siran, a Haut-Médoc; and Saint-Jacques de Siran, a Bordeaux Supérieur named for a chapel on the road to Compostela. An atomic shelter keeps the estate’s wine library, back to 1912, and a Chai des Collections shows more than 300 objects of wine and art.

At a glance

Appellation

Margaux; also Haut-Médoc and Bordeaux Supérieur

Commune

Labarde

Classification

Cru Bourgeois Exceptionnel in 2003; left the Crus Bourgeois in 2007

Owners

The Miailhe family; the same family since 1859

Direction

Édouard Miailhe, since 2007; Marjolaine Defrance, technical director

Vineyard

37 plots, the oldest from 1920; vines 32 years old on average

Soil

Gravel and sand, sloping toward the Gironde Terroir of Margaux →

Grapes

Merlot 46%, Cabernet Sauvignon 44%, Petit Verdot 9%, Cabernet Franc 1%

Cellar

12 months in French oak from 6 coopers, one third new; fined with albumin

Wines

Château Siran; S de Siran; Bel-Air de Siran, Haut-Médoc; Saint-Jacques de Siran, Bordeaux Supérieur

The house

A wine library back to 1912 in an atomic shelter; labels by artists

In history

A bourgeois supérieur of Labarde, 22 hectares, in 1855