Château Ducru Beaucaillou

History

The property took off in 1720 with the marriage of the squire Jacques de Bergeron and Marie Dejean, heiress of the vineyard. Bertrand Ducru, a Béarnais merchant, acquired it in 1797 and gave it its current name by investing heavily in cellars and vineyards; under his daughter Marie-Louise Ravez, the cru became one of the most sought-after in Saint-Julien and obtained 2nd place in the 1855 ranking. The Johnston family (1866-1928) built the two Victorian towers of the castle and contributed, with the development of Bordeaux porridge in 1884, to the fight against mildew throughout the French vineyard. Francis Borie took over the estate in 1942; his descendants have been running it ever since.

Château Ducru-Beaucaillou, Grand Cru Classé of the Saint-Julien appellation, dominates the Gironde estuary from its chartreuse Directoire framed by two Victorian towers. Owned by the Borie family since 1942, now managed by Bruno-Eugène Borie, the estate has been cultivating for three centuries an artisanal requirement summarized by its motto: wines of emotion, shaped by winemakers rooted in their terroir of quaternary pebbles.

The Vineyard

The vineyard stretches over hills of Günzian gravel — quartz pebbles carried by an ancient Garonne nearly two million years ago — which give the estate its name: the "beautiful pebbles". These poor and stony soils force the vine to draw its resources in depth, while the pebbles store the daytime heat to restore it at night and facilitate ripening. The immediate proximity of the largest estuary in Europe, with its daily tides, moderates the climatic excesses (winter cold, heat waves, hailstorms) on this soil of Saint-Julien.