Château Sociando-Mallet

The château

The Mallet in the name was a sea captain, Achille Mallet, whose link to this slope goes back to 1831. William Franck, whose Traité sur les vins du Médoc first appeared in 1824, listed it in 1845 as Lamothe, under Mallet, capitaine de navire, at 35 to 40 tonneaux (the old Bordeaux measure of a crop, 900 liters, or 4 barrels); in his edition of 1853 the same captain and the same figure stand under a new name, Sociando, the one on the label today. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, carried the estate through the century as a bourgeois growth on gravel. Their English edition of 1883 noted that its wines were especially appreciated in Holland and England, and their edition of 1893 that L. Simon had bought it in 1878 from the heirs of the widow Malet, when it already counted as one of the 2 first growths of the commune, with close to 15 hectares of vines in full production.

In 1969 Jean Gautreau, a Bordeaux négociant sent to find a vineyard for a Belgian client, came upon this frost-free gravel rise over the estuary at Saint-Seurin-de-Cadourne and kept it for himself: 5 run-down hectares for 250,000 francs. He had spent 12 years selling Bordeaux in Belgium and Holland, and Holland was among the markets the old book had named. He built the barrel cellar the estate did not have, bought parcels as they came up, and took the vineyard from 5 hectares to 83 and production to about 450,000 bottles a year across the château wine and its second; La Place came to price it at the level of the 4th and 5th growths.

When the Médoc’s bourgeois classification was rebuilt in 2003, 490 estates applied and 247 were ranked. Sociando-Mallet did not apply: Gautreau held that a place among the crus bourgeois (a Médoc classification) would lower his château’s standing. In 2007 the Bordeaux court annulled that classification in 3 judgments on a single morning, and Case File 07 tells the whole story. Gautreau died on November 1, 2019, at 92. His only daughter Sylvie, who had run the estate since his 90th birthday, runs it with her son Arthur.

The property covers 120 hectares, 83 of them in vines on Günz gravel over a deep subsoil of clay and limestone, planted at 8,333 vines a hectare, 54% Merlot, 42% Cabernet Sauvignon and 4% Cabernet Franc, with vines 35 years old on average. La Demoiselle de Sociando-Mallet is the second wine, and a cuvée carries Jean Gautreau’s name. What this estate proves best is time, and it is why I love its wines: they show again and again how beautifully they age. The 1998, which I tasted in February 2024, was still drinking beautifully at 26 years: black fruit and cassis, hints of coffee and chocolate, the tannins still present and fully knit. The 1997, from a modest vintage, showed tobacco, earth and softened fruit when I wrote about it in November 2025, character in a year that gave little. For many years it flew under the radar of most drinkers; in certain circles it has become a cult wine.

At a glance

Appellation

Haut-Médoc

Commune

Saint-Seurin-de-Cadourne

Classification

No classification; never applied to the Cru Bourgeois

Owner

The Gautreau family, since 1969; Sylvie Gautreau

Vineyard

83 hectares on a property of 120; 8,333 vines a hectare; vines 35 years old on average

Soil

Günz gravel over deep clay and limestone Terroir of Haut-Médoc →

Grapes

Merlot 54%, Cabernet Sauvignon 42%, Cabernet Franc 4%

Production

About 450,000 bottles a year

Wines

Château Sociando-Mallet; La Demoiselle de Sociando-Mallet; Jean Gautreau

In history

Lamothe, under Mallet, a sea captain, in 1845; Sociando in 1853; one of the 2 first growths of the commune in 1893