Haut-Brion’s Forgotten Origins

by Charlie Leary

Haut-Brion reached the heights of fame in the 17th century, with a 1660 purchase of its wine made by King Charles II of England for the royal cellars. By 1663 it was being drunk in English taverns by notable citizens such as Samuel Pepys. At this time the de Pontac family owned the vineyard estate, prominent members of the noblesse de la robe of Bordeaux.

Arnaud III de Pontac is given credit for creating a new, stronger style of claret through careful viticulture and oenology that came to define Bordeaux red wine for centuries. This was a darker, more extracted red wine, with notable tannins and phenolic character, that could age well.

But did this new stronger wine style, and attention from the English market, really date from the 1660s? Or did Haut-Brion’s fame and specific character begin centuries earlier?

The Owners of la Vigne au Brion
A little investigation shows that the Haut-Brion terroir was already attracting attention, specifically for producing wine suitable for England, more than 200 years before the 1660s. And that its commercial fame, in fact, seems to have attracted Jean de Pontac to make a major investment there in 1533.

We know that vines were found on the site during the Hundred Years War. The record shows that as early as 1436, a reference existed to the “vigne à Haut-Mont alias Aubrion.” As Jane Anson has written, “We can place a woman called Johana Monadey as Seigneur at the time” with “29 rows of vines in a place known as Aubrion.” Her husband was the noble Galhard d’Arsac, who later concluded some land deals with the  Ayquem de Montaigne family – an important name in the early story of this future First Growth.

Pey Ap: A Wine Trade Entrepreneur
The Hundred Years War (1337-1453) undoubtedly made vine growing difficult at times, as the region was mired in conflict, but more uncertainty was on its way when the French captured Bordeaux from the English on October 19, 1453, and the thirsty English were no longer the dominant players.

The end of conflict, however, offered new opportunities.

An English loyalist named Pey Ap was counted among the refugees who fled Bordeaux. Most refugees were of two classes: minor nobility and merchants. Pey was a merchant who specialised in the English wine trade. In 1450, when the city and surrounds were changing hands back and forth in various battles, his name can be found among the Gascons who petitioned King Henry VI – the English monarch at the time fo the Battle of Castillon – regarding “commercial and trading activities (particularly the wine trade).” Historian Guilhem Pepin notes that the “petitioning process was an essential tool by which Gascons could address their sovereign directly, and they used this device no less fully than their English counterparts.” This indicates that Pey Ap had facility in English, rather than purely the Gascon language, alongside political savvy.

He also did something quite unusual: he left his possessions to friends who remained in Bordeaux. He probably saw a future in the wine trade despite the temporary setback of French conquest, and established himself in the short term as a vintner or wine trader in London, as did other refugees; owing to their status as “English”, Bordelais citizens were even allowed the join the London Guild of Vintners.

Pey Ap’s deep involvement in the English wine trade not only gave him the commercial acumen to invest in vineyards but also positioned him to influence viticultural practices that catered specifically to English preferences when he returned to France.

Bourdieu, Wine Presses, and Stronger Red Wine
In the decades that followed, Pey Ap became quite the wheeler-dealer in productive vineyard land back in his homeland. We find him purchasing vineyards on the isle of Macau in the Médoc, where he built a structures called a bourdieu – typically something that began as a rustic agricultural sheds with simple winemaking facilities, but eventually grew to encompass country houses and winemaking cellars, some of them quite substantial.

Macau is intriguing because it was the site of Medieval Médoc vineyards, likely protected from the ravages of war owing to its riverine location. It had no particular strategic value and lay offshore.  A major concentration of bourdieu appeared there. The island parish, home to the Saint Croix Abbey, counted among the first places that produced “vins treuillis,” that is, those made using mechanical presses. Peace encouraged investment in buildings and new equipment, which spurred oenological advancements.

Indeed, investing in bourdieu enhanced the efficiency of Bordeaux wine production; it also therefore started to change the style of wine. Bourdieu increasingly housed equipment for crushing and pressing grapes, enhancing yields, which also produced a darker, more tannic wine, “vin rouge” instead of a lighter “vin clairet.” The historian Sandrine Lavaud find that the bourdieu were “places of innovation, ‘cutting-edge’ wineries. By colonising new lands, by choosing a production of quantity and quality with a new product, red wine, they are the initiators of decisive changes.” These wines eventually led to the New French Claret style of the 1660s.

Within a decade, Pey Ap had returned to Bordeaux. He became a citoyen and counted as a marchand et bourgeois possessing three houses on the rue du Hà in the town centre. The political tensions that caused him to flee in 1453 had apparently calmed quite rapidly, and, at least in this case, the Bordeaux wine trade to England continued almost uninterrupted.  By 1459 he owned a ship called La Marie de Navarre, with the name suggesting that the Ap family conducted business with the independent Iberian Kingdom of Navarre as well as England.

 Pey Ap Acquires at Haut-Brion
Pey Ap was set on business expansion. On April 30, 1470, the Sire of Arsac perfected an “exchange” with Pey Ap, for the family’s au Brion vineyard. It was a wise purchase. Pey Ap, growing ever wealthier, was no longer simply a merchant but also a ship owner, the proprietor of various domains, and a wine producer, with his English trade connections now paying off handsomely.

By 1478, records document property transactions involving the “vigne au Brion,” showing increasing interest from Bordeaux city residents. Massey Hervemers, “fournier” from the Saint-Michel district purchased a vineyard bordering the “sendey communau auant de Bordeu au bordiu deudeyt Pey Ap .” That is the “common” or public trail leading from Bordeaux city to the bourdieu of Pey Ap “au Brion.” This is the first mention of a bourdieu at Haut-Brion; suggesting almost certainly that Pey Ap had begun producing wine on site, potentially staying at the country estate when not living at the rue du Hà, as many bourgeois did at the time. The bourdieu was mentioned again in 1521 property records.

An Active Market for Vineyards
Pey Ap had a son, also Pey Ap, and a daughter, Billone. The son, continuing in his father’s footsteps, owned the ship Marie de Landerneau and became a jurat of Bordeaux – one of a group of municipal magistrates who governed the city alongside the mayor, overseeing commerce, justice, and local administration, usually with a strong connection to the wine trade. Pey Ap II shows that in the 15^th century one could produce wine, market it, and ship it, all in-house, while also helping govern the trade.

For her part, Billone married Grimon du Four. Their daughter, Jeanne du Four, married Grimon Ayquem de Montaigne, a very significant surname in Bordeaux history, and one with links to the Haut-Brion vineyard through land purchases from Galhard d’Arsac. Like many other examples of inheritance going through the female line, Billone inherited the vineyard estates, including the bourdieus at Haut-Brion and Macau island, from her father and brother.

The Macau bourdieu ultimately passed to the Ayquem de Montaigne family. “It appears in the 1568 division between [the philosopher] Michel de Montaigne and his brothers,” writes Theophile Malvezin. “From Pey Ap and Jeanne Dufour, his heir, lands in Bordeaux along the banks of the Pêugue stream also came into the possession of the Eyquem family.” Thus, the Ap family counts among the antecedents of the famous d’Yquem estate as well as Haut-Brion.

The Haut-Brion vineyards passed from Billon to her other daughter Marguerite du Four, who married Pothon de Ségur, seigneur de Francs. Their son, Jean de Ségur, and his sister Jeanne de Ségur, then inherited the vineyards. Jeanne married d’Arnaud de Lataste, who sold his Haut-Brion holdings on 15 November 1531 to Jean Duhalde, thought to be a Basque merchant. On 12 Avril 1533 he sold to the very wealthy Jean de Pontac, who had already acquired adjacent vineyards through his marriage with Jeanne de Bellon.

The rest is history. Arnaud III de Pontac inherited the same, unified estate and made the wine purchased by King Charles II in 1660.

In the end, the family of an English loyalist marchard and refugee of Aquitaine had, within a generation, married into the Bordeaux nobility, with an intense focus on creating a wine business empire – and set the stage for a darker, phenolic style of claret that would catch the fancy of King Charles more than a century later.