Tonnellerie Leroi

The house

Martell, the cognac house founded in 1715, made its own casks. In 1784 it had 30 coopers, and 40 years later 75, who made and kept up to 130 barrels a week. Jean Martell bought the first plots of the Gâtebourse site, at Cognac, in 1750, and his descendants went on buying land there until 1834. There the architect Eugène Demangeat rebuilt its cellars, offices and bottling hall in the 1850s, a distillery followed in 1890, and around 1930 the distillery became the cooperage. In 1987 a new cooperage was built on the edge of Cognac, a few hundred meters from Gâtebourse. The Martell works, with 200 people in 1882, had 778 in 1988. On September 27, 1995 the state listed parts of the site as a historic monument, the large casks of cellar number 10 among them.

Martell sold the cooperage to the Saury group in 2006, and it became Tonnellerie Leroi, with its seat at Cognac from June 2006. The Charlois group bought Saury in 2009, and in 2018 Leroi had 15 craftsmen and apprentices. From 2007 to 2020 the house kept an office in Bordeaux.

On July 26, 2023 Charlois and Martell formed White Oak, held 51% by Oak Nation, of the Charlois group, and 49% by Martell. Charlois brought to it Leroi, the stave makers Nièvre Merrain and L’Atelier du Foudrier, maker of vats and large casks. The 2 houses plant oaks for every barrel made, and Leroi has bought forest of its own. In 2025 Tonnellerie Leroi received the Entreprise du Patrimoine Vivant label, which the French state gives to firms keeping a rare craft alive. After 17 years in other hands, the cooperage Martell had founded came back, in part, to Martell.

At a glance

Kind

Cooperage

Based in

Cognac

Founded

The cooperage of Martell, its coopers on record from 1784; Tonnellerie Leroi from 2006

Owner

White Oak, of Charlois (51%) and Martell (49%), since July 2023