Calvet

The house

Jean-Marie Calvet founded his house in 1818 at Tain-l’Hermitage, in the Rhône valley. In the 19th century it came down to Bordeaux, and in 1876 it put up its building on the cours du Médoc, in the Chartrons, the merchants’ quarter by the river. Aimé-Jean Calvet, born in 1861 at Tain, where the house began, was its head. A foreign trade adviser to the French state, he sat on the jury of the Saint Louis World’s Fair in 1904, and in 1906 he was made a knight of the Legion of Honor. J. Calvet & Co. traded far, and its export business from the 1860s to 1914 belongs to the first wave of the globalization of wine. It reached Brazil: in São Paulo it had an importer by 1904. By 1910 its general agents for all Brazil were Charles Hü & Cia, whose advertisement showed a man with bottles in his arms and the words “I like Calvet wines too.”

The house bought the great growths by the crop. A book on the classed growths of the Médoc printed in London in 1920 records that J. Calvet et Cie held the whole 1899 vintage of Château Calon-Ségur and bought the 1903 wines of Château Figeac first hand. The whole crop of Château Ferrière was Calvet’s in 1912 and 1913. The Lafite vintages of 1917, 1918 and 1919 went to 5 houses, Calvet among them, and those of Cos d’Estournel to 7.

In the second half of the 20th century the house changed hands several times. The British group Whitbread bought it in 1982, Allied Domecq followed, and in 1997 it regained its independence under Jack Drounau, a former general manager of Martell. In 2003 the cognac house H Mounier took the majority. Les Grands Chais de France, the Alsace group founded by Joseph Helfrich, bought it in November 2006 and runs Calvet as one of its Bordeaux houses, beside Dulong. Joseph Helfrich has been president of the company that carries the name, Dulong-Calvet, since 2019. The Rhône house of 1818 has worked from Landiras, in the Graves, since 2020.

At a glance

Kind

Négociant

Based in

Landiras, in the Graves

Founded

1818, at Tain-l’Hermitage, by Jean-Marie Calvet

Owner

Les Grands Chais de France, since November 2006

Direction

Joseph Helfrich, president

Brands

Calvet; Calvet Reserve; Calvet Prestige; Calvet Limited Release

In the record

Calon-Ségur, the whole 1899 vintage; Figeac, 1903; Ferrière, 1912 and 1913; Lafite and Cos d’Estournel, 1917 to 1919