Nath. Johnston & Fils

The house

The Johnstons came from County Armagh, in Ireland, and have been merchants in Bordeaux since the 18th century; William Johnston was trading there by 1743. Their ledgers and letter books are full of the great growths, bought and sold. William set down in 1765, for his son Nathaniel Weld Johnston, how to buy and blend wine. In 1795 the family was among the Bordeaux merchants who helped the Fumels buy back Château Margaux, and in April 1842 the firm, by then Nathaniel Johnston et Fils, sold 108 hogsheads to the Duke of Wellington.

Through the 19th century the house was among the main buyers of the first growths. Charles Cocks, the Englishman whose guide of 1846 grew into the directory of the Bordeaux trade, listed N. Johnston et fils in 1850 among the 5 houses that shared the crop of Château Margaux, one fifth each. The lease ran for 10 years. In 1866 the house was one of the 6 that bought the Lafite crop of 1865. Paul Gaubert, who wrote a study of wines and preserved foods in 1857, put it among the first houses to set out to win the Paris market.

Nathaniel Johnston, born in Bordeaux in 1836, trained as an engineer: he entered the École polytechnique in 1855 and then the École des Mines. He also owned land. On March 3, 1866 Château Ducru-Beaucaillou was bought in the name of his wife, Lucie-Caroline Dassier, and he had Michel-Louis Garros frame its chartreuse with 2 Victorian towers. Château Dauzac was his as well. From 1869 he sat for the Gironde as a free trader, in the Corps législatif until the Empire fell in 1870 and in the National Assembly from 1871 to 1876. Trials on his estates from 1883 to 1885, run in the vineyard by his manager Ernest David with Alexis Millardet, professor of botany at Bordeaux, proved a spray of copper and lime. That spray became the Bordeaux mixture, the treatment that beat mildew.

In 1898 Cocks and Édouard Féret, in their Bordeaux et ses vins, the reference book of the trade, recorded him as the owner of Beaucaillou, Dauzac and other Médoc estates. They also named him as the maker of a sparkling Royal-Médoc, in the old fortress cellars at Bourg. He became the first president of the syndicate of the classed growths of the Médoc in 1904. The family sold Ducru-Beaucaillou in 1928; the house itself is still on the cours du Médoc, in the Chartrons. Ivanhoé Johnston has chaired its management board since 2021, and Denis Johnston its supervisory board since 2025. Every member of its 2 boards is a Johnston.

At a glance

Kind

Négociant

Based in

Bordeaux, cours du Médoc

Founded

By the Johnston family, from County Armagh, in the 18th century

Owner

The Johnston family

Direction

Ivanhoé Johnston, chairman of the management board, since 2021; Denis Johnston, chairman of the supervisory board

In the record

One fifth of Margaux, 1850; Lafite 1865; Ducru-Beaucaillou, 1866 to 1928; Dauzac, recorded in 1898