Cruse et Fils Frères

The house

Hermann Cruse, born in 1790 to a family from Krempe, in Holstein, came to Bordeaux in 1815 and founded his house in 1819. In 1843, when the firm was Cruse & Hirschfeld, the Senate of Hamburg made him its consul in Bordeaux. His 3 sons worked beside him, and the firm traded as Cruse et Fils Frères on the quai des Chartrons.

Louis-Napoléon, then Prince-President, came to the cellars at 123 quai des Chartrons on October 8, 1852, with 4 ministers. Cruse, his son and his son-in-law Lalande, a member of the municipal and district councils, showed him 400,000 bottles of first growths and at least 15,000 casks. In a tent set up in a cooperage workshop the prince was served the Château Margaux of 1831 and the Lafite of 1841 and 1844. He put many questions on the export trade, above all with England, to Cruse and Lalande, and Lalande answered at length; he left 300 francs for the workers.

The family put its money into land as well as wine. It bought Château Laujac, at Bégadan, in 1852. In 1865 Henri Herman Cruse bought Château Pontet-Canet, in Pauillac, which a book on the classed growths of the Médoc printed in London in 1920 records as held by the firm itself. By 1881 Château Giscours belonged to the family too. The house bought the great crops. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, list it among the houses that bought the Lafite crop of 1865. In 1888 it took the crop of Marcelin Clauzel’s share of Château Citran. The London book of 1920 has it at Rauzan-Ségla from 1902 to 1905 and at Langoa in 1908 and 1909. Then come Cantenac-Brown in 1911, 1914 and 1917, Ducru-Beaucaillou in 1911, 1913 and 1914, and Saint-Pierre in 1917. On July 2, 1938, when the national committee for appellations of origin met, a Cruse sat among the men who spoke for the trade.

In June 1973 tax inspectors called at the house and asked for its books, in an inquiry into wine sold under the Bordeaux appellation. The house said at the time that its accounts were in order and that it had paid for every wine at the price of its appellation. The case was tried in Bordeaux in 1974, together with a broker and other merchants, and the 2 members of the family who then ran the house received suspended sentences of 1 year.

By 1988 the company Cruse et Fils Frères had become Société des Vins de France et Compagnie, on the quai des Chartrons. The family stayed on the land it bought in 1852: 6 generations of Cruses have worked at Laujac, which Vanessa and René-Philippe Duboscq have run since 2012.

At a glance

Kind

House of the past

Based in

Bordeaux, quai des Chartrons

Founded

1819, by Hermann Cruse

Châteaux

Pontet-Canet, bought in 1865 and held by the firm in 1920; Laujac, in the family since 1852; Giscours, in the family by 1881

In the record

Lafite 1865; Citran 1888; Rauzan-Ségla 1902 to 1905; Langoa 1908 and 1909; Cantenac-Brown 1911, 1914 and 1917; Ducru-Beaucaillou 1911, 1913 and 1914; Saint-Pierre 1917

Today

Renamed Société des Vins de France et Compagnie by 1988