Maison Ginestet

The house

Fernand Ginestet, born in 1871, founded Ginestet & Co. in 1897. By the First World War, as Latrille et Ginestet, the house was buying the classed growths by the crop. A book on the classed growths of the Médoc printed in London in 1920 records it as the buyer of the Cos d’Estournel wines of 1912, 1913, 1914 and 1915. The same book names it as one of the 7 houses that held the Cos vintages of 1917, 1918 and 1919, and one of the 4 that shared the same 3 vintages of Château Latour.

He bought estates as well. Clos Fourtet, at the gates of Saint-Émilion, was his from 1919 to 1942. Charles Cocks and Édouard Féret, whose Bordeaux et ses vins was the reference book of the Bordeaux trade, recorded 4 more estates in his name in 1922. They were La Tour-Carnet, a fourth growth at Saint-Laurent, Petit-Village in Pomerol, and Marbuzet and Pomys in Saint-Estèphe. From 1930 to 1950 he leased the 2 halves of the old Rabaud, at Bommes in Sauternes, and made them 1 wine again.

A man of the institutions too, he presided over the syndicate of the Bordeaux négociants from 1919 to 1926 and over the association of growers and merchants for the defense of Bordeaux wines from 1920 to 1934. From 1938 to 1942 he also presided over the Saint-Émilion wine syndicate. He was made a knight of the Legion of Honor in 1925 and an officer in 1936. In 1935 he served as vice-president of the food class at the Universal Exhibition in Brussels. For 18 years he sat on the national committee that became the INAO, the state body that governs French appellations, from its first year until his death on July 7, 1953, at 81.

Château Margaux was the family’s great estate. The Ginestets were already among its owners in the 1930s, and around 1950 Fernand and his son Pierre took the whole of it. Pierre and Bernard Ginestet sold it to André Mentzelopoulos in 1977. In 1978 the family handed the house to the Merlauts, and it joined the Taillan group, founded in 1961, which Denis Merlaut has led since 1998. The house that bought the Cos d’Estournel of 1912 now works from Carignan-de-Bordeaux, east of the city.

At a glance

Kind

Négociant

Based in

Carignan-de-Bordeaux

Founded

1897, by Fernand Ginestet

Owner

The Taillan group, of the Merlaut family, since 1978

Direction

Franck Lederer, chairman and managing director, since January 2024

Brands

Ginestet; Marquis de Chasse

In the record

Cos d’Estournel, 1912 to 1915 and 1917 to 1919; Latour, 1917 to 1919; Clos Fourtet, 1919 to 1942; the whole of Château Margaux, around 1950 to 1977