Cooperage
Tonnellerie Saury
How to read this
Capitals mark the stressed syllable. The French r comes from the back of the throat. The recording is the reference.
François Cabrié founded this cooperage in the Minervois in 1873, but it carries the name of his grandson Marius Saury, whose son Marcel took it to Brive in 1952.
The house
François Cabrié set up the family’s first cooperage at Rieux-Minervois, in the Aude, in 1873. His daughter Marie-Antoinette married Jean Saury, and their son Marius, born at Rieux-Minervois on October 16, 1892, learned the trade from his grandfather and from his uncles Antonin and Joseph-Louis. Later he carried the cooperage on under his own name.
In 1952 Marius’s son Marcel left the Minervois for Brive-la-Gaillarde, in Corrèze, closer to the vineyards of Bordeaux and to the chestnut forests of the Limousin. The cooperage moved in 1983 to land it had bought at Saint-Pantaléon-de-Larche, outside Brive, and the site grew until 1994. In 2006 the Saury group took in the cooperage of the cognac house Martell, which became Tonnellerie Leroi.
The Charlois group, which brings it French oak from its own mills, bought Tonnellerie Saury in 2009. From 2017 to 2020 the house kept an office in Bordeaux, and since January 1, 2021 it has had an establishment at Ludon-Médoc, north of the city. For its 150th year, in 2023, it made a barrel named 150, in 150 numbered pieces.
Its barrels are on record at estates of Bordeaux. For the 2022 vintage Château Cheval Blanc worked mainly with 5 coopers and, on smaller volumes, with a few other houses, Saury among them. Its grand vin of the 2025 vintage rests in barrels from 7 coopers, Saury again among them. Château Guiraud, a Premier Cru Classé of Sauternes, aged its 2022 wines in barrels from more than 10 coopers, Saury included. At Château Larrivet Haut-Brion, in Pessac-Léognan, the white wine cellar of the 2023 vintage held 7 oak vats of 25 hectoliters, made by Saury in 2011, and new Saury barrels. Those are the records of those years.
At a glance
- Kind
- Cooperage
- Based in
- Saint-Pantaléon-de-Larche, near Brive; establishment at Ludon-Médoc
- Founded
- 1873, by François Cabrié, at Rieux-Minervois
- Owner
- Charlois group, since 2009
- Abroad
- More than 30 countries
- In the record
- Cheval Blanc, 2022 and 2025 vintages; Guiraud, 2022 vintage; Larrivet Haut-Brion, 2023 vintage
Sources
- Books and studies
- Jeanne Lutun, Vinification et élevage à Château Cheval Blanc : élaboration du millésime 2022, 2023; Benoît Robert, Production de vin de Bordeaux blanc et de vin de Sauternes au Château Guiraud, 1er grand cru classé de Sauternes, 2023; Thomas Héraud, Étude comparative de vinifications en grappes entières ou avec ajouts de rafles sur le cépage merlot, 2024; Louis Despagne, Gestion du dioxyde de carbone dissous lors de l’élevage des vins rouges en grands contenants bois, 2026
- Its own publications
- Tonnellerie Saury, La Maison; Charlois: Saury, more than 150 years of cooperage tradition, 2018, 150 years: Tonnellerie Saury since 1873, 2023
Revised October 10, 2026. How I choose sources
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