Bureau Lévêque & Associés

The house

The first broker in the family was François Lévêque’s great-grandfather, who worked with small châteaux, and the trade has passed down since. François Lévêque was the first of the line to broker the classed growths. He began with the 1982 vintage and, in his words, “a blank piece of paper”: no allocations of the top châteaux at all. On January 16, 1998 he set up the present company, Bureau Lévêque & Associés, with himself as its manager. Since August 25, 2023 its president has been Holding Lévêque, a company formed in 2019 and run by Caroline Lévêque, of the 5th generation.

She took her oath as a sworn courtier in 2012. By 2014, 32 years on from the 1982 vintage, the firm worked entirely in the grands crus, and she had begun to broker older wines, already in bottle, beside the young vintages. Sales en primeur (sold as futures, while the wine is still in barrel) had traditionally made up about 90% of a broker’s work. Her aim was to bring them down to about 50%, the rest coming from older wines ready to drink.

At a glance

Kind

Courtier (wine broker)

Based in

Bordeaux

Founded

Bureau Lévêque & Associés in 1998; the family in the trade for 5 generations

Owner

Holding Lévêque, run by Caroline Lévêque, president of the firm since August 2023

Direction

Caroline Lévêque, sworn courtier since 2012