Profile: 100 Years of the Delmas family at Haut-Brion

Georges Delmas, whose last name has been synonymous with Château Haut-Brion for the past 100 years, got his first job in a wine cellar in 1912, when he was barely 18, just two years before the First World War would set his life on a different course.

It was a way north from his future employer, in the barrel cellars at Château Cos d’Estournel in St Estèphe.

His family was originally from two small villages in the Dordogne, Campagnac-lès-Quercy and Daglan, where they can trace their roots back to at least the 18th century. Farmers for many generations, it was his father Antoine Delmas who left the Périgord region for the Médoc, moving first to Soulac on the Atlantic coast, then Bégadan and finally Cissac-en-Médoc. He would have four children, the youngest of which was Antoine Georges born December 21 1894, known to all as Georges. Three of the children, André, Marthe and Georges, would all work in the cellars at Cos d’Estournel.

You can read a description of Georges on his military register, recording that in 1914 he was a cart driver and then cellar master, ‘1.67m tall, round face, dark hair, dark eyes, straight nose. Corporal in 1916, sergeant in 1919… Estate manager Haut-Brion from 1923 to 1961. Previously estate director Cos d’Estournel’. It doesn’t mention that he was also a passionate lover of horse racing, and rode himself, winning several races with his horse Gélinotte – including the America Cup twice, a prize that allowed him to buy a house in Pyla with the winnings. He named it Villa Gélinotte.

Although Georges didn’t remain in St Estèphe long term (by the early 1920s he was recored as living in Bordeaux, moving there after the war), it was where he met his wife, Antoinette Bugat. They married in November 1924, and had their only son Jean-Bernard on November 30, 1935.

Impact of war
The First World War had changed things for the owners of Haut-Brion just as much as it had that of Georges Delmas. Descendants (through marriage) of Parisian banker Joseph Eugène Larrieu, this was a family that had acquired Haut-Brion at auction in 1836 – and immediately brought together the disparate parts of the vineyard that had been separated following the French Revolution, uniting it again as one great estate in 1841, just 14 years before it was proclaimed First Growth in the Paris exhibition.

In the early 20th century, the Millerets also replanted the entirety of the vineyard after the devastation of Phylloxera, building on a decision taken in the late 19th century by Larrieu, but their ownership would soon draw to a halt. Jacques-Norbert Milleret, serving alongside the 78th Division of the American Expeditionary Forces, was killed in action in 1918, during the closing stages of the war that had also taken Delmas away from Bordeaux. The château reverted to his father.

Grief stricken and impacted by years of deprivation following the war, Milleret Senior borrowed heavily to fund Haut-Brion’s upkeep, but was unable to keep up repayments on the loans, and was foreclosed by his bank Compagnie Algerienne in 1922. These bankers seemed unwilling to take up the expenses required to run such a large property, and quickly sold it on to another bank L’Entrepôt de Grenelle. It was here that one of the directors, André Gibert, fell in love with the property and upon his retirement in 1925 took Haut-Brion, and a large sum in cash, in exchange for his stake in the bank.

It was almost certainly Gibert, in his role as director of L’Entrepôt de Grenelle, who hired Delmas into the role of technical director in 1923.

It was a role would remain in the Delmas family for the next century, handed down from father to son to grandson – racking up 37 vintages for Georges, 43 for his son Jean-Bernard, with 20 – and counting – for his grandson Jean-Philippe.

Château-bottling
1923 was a crucial year for Haut-Brion in one other aspect, as the decision was taken to bottle the entirety of the production at the château – something that was put into practice in 1925, with the 1923 vintage. Mouton Rothschild made the switch with the 1922 vintage, bottled in 1924, with all of the original four First Growths regularly bottling at least a part of their production in their own cellars since the late 19th century, but almost all other châteaux were still at the time leaving most of their bottling to the négociant houses in Chartrons (although, interestingly, records in the Haut-Brion archives show that Frédéric Woltner at neighbouring estate La Mission Haut-Brion began mis en bouteille au château entirely from the 1919 vintage; the year that he became owner).

Whoever can truly claim first mover advantage for château-bottling, what is clear is that this meant that Delmas, still in his 20s and fresh in a new role, was entrusted with overseeing a major change that would revolutionise the way Bordeaux châteaux worked.

Haut-Brion would have looked very different to the young Georges Delmas. In 1923 there were very few buildings between the outskirts of central Bordeaux (known as the portes de Bordeaux) and the village of Pessac, and pretty much anything that wasn’t vineyards was open countryside. Having said that, there were far more vineyards around the château than you would find today. At the beginning of the 20th century, Pessac counted 37 vineyards in its boundaries, compared to four today.

Gibert would remain owner of Haut-Brion for the next decade. The son of a Bordeaux tailor who had made a fortune in Algeria (supposedly by selling cheap Algerian wine to troops), Gibert was a true wine lover, and was deeply interested in improving the vineyard that had suffered from years of under-investment. He also tried to protect the exclusivity of the name Haut-Brion, issuing legal proceedings against a number of vineyards. Although Larrivet-Haut Brion, Carmes Haut-Brion and La Mission Haut-Brion escaped, around a dozen properties hastily changed their name around this time, each time strengthening the reputation of the main château.

Gibert didn’t do quite such a good job with the vines, and the vineyard contracted to just 31ha, from the 50ha that it had been at the turn of the century. He had a great interest in the process of winemaking, but didn’t have the capital at his disposal to carry out his ideas. Running out of money, Gibert tried to first give the estate away to the Académie Nationale des Sciences, Belles-Lettres et Arts de Bordeaux, but they turned it down, fearing how much money it would cost to upkeep. He was desperate, however, to stop his beloved Haut- Brion being turned into development land for the ever-increasing needs of the city of Bordeaux – some of the park land had already handed been over to the local government, but he was determined that this would not happen with the vines.

The Dillon family
The man who came to the rescue was Clarence Dillon, a New York financier, who was shown around while on a visit to France in 1934, introduced by Dillon’s nephew Seymour Weller who was living in Paris at the time and a regular visitor to Bordeaux. Dillon was already on the ocean liner that was taking him back to the United States when he received a telegram informing him that he could acquire the château, but only if he acted quickly. The response he sent back was brief and to the point ; ‘Act quickly!’.

The sale was closed on May 13, 1935, a year that saw Georges Delmas welcome not only a new owner, but a new son, with the arrival of Jean-Bernard Delmas, born on the grounds of Haut-Brion.

Winemaking
Despite the Great Depression, and the approaching world war, Delmas continued to provide a steady hand at Haut-Brion. He was renowned for his careful, measured approach in the vineyard, improving traditional viticulture without radically altering things. Old vines were removed at 40 years, soil was allowed to rest in between plantings to allow the soil to recover (a full six years in the case of Sémillon and Sauvignon grapes for the white Haut Brion), young vines were planted out separately before being placed in rows, pruning in the ‘y’ shaped ‘double guyot’ was followed, and the vines were allowed to grow taller than those in the Médoc, reflecting their different soil types. This was also the point at which the white grapes begun to be systematically harvested before the reds.

His wife sounds pretty formidable too. Haut-Brion was used as a military hospital during the first years of World War Two before being requisitioned by the Luftwaffe as an officers’ billet. Antoinette, who cultivated a kitchen garden on the grounds so that her little boy Jean-Bernard could have fresh produce, complained to the commandant that his men were eating the fruit and vegetables meant for her son.

The commandant promised that the pilfering would stop, but it didn’t. Refusing to be bowed, she returned to the château and complained again, questioning the commandant’s authority. The officer immediately posted a guard around the garden. The story is retold with relish by the Delmas family today, as is another important wartime anecdote: the entrance to the wine cellar had been so well hidden under a heap of refuse that the occupiers never found it.

All the while, winemaking continued, overseen by the watchful eye of Georges Delmas. He would remain in the role until 1961, when he would hand it over to his only son Jean-Bernard, who had worked alongside his father in the cellars for years by this point, having graduated as one of the first students at the oenology school in Bordeaux alongside other legends such as Jean-Claude Berrouet.

And not to be outdone by Georges becoming technical director in the year that château-bottling was introduced, Jean-Bernard became the first in Bordeaux classified châteaux to install temperature-controlled stainless-steel vats for his own inaugural vintage.

Jean-Bernard Delmas would become one of the true legends of 20th century Bordeaux, and among the many things that he left behind was a vine cloning programme that he began in 1974, when ten clones of Cabernet Sauvignon and eleven of Cabernet Franc were sent to the estate from the National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA), and planted on a two hectare plot known as Bahans. The objective was to discover which individual clones within the different varieties had the greatest potential in terms of alcoholic strength, aromatic intensity and phenolic content – the parts of a grape that give structure and colour to a wine. Delmas and INRA corresponded regularly on the results.

The legacy of this research continues to show its importance today, ensuring the genetic diversity in the vineyards of Haut-Brion. It was part of the legacy that Jean-Bernard’s own son would uphold when he took over from his father in 2004, after 10 years of working alongside each other.

The third generation of the family, Jean-Philippe Delmas like his father was born a stone’s throw from the wine cellar in which he would spend his professional life, although in this case not on the château grounds, but a hospital just 100 metres from the château’s wrought iron gates. And as 2024 arrives, he celebrates his own 20 year anniversary of upholding the winemaking inheritance of his family.

Main photo: Clarence Dillon, Georges Delmas and Seymour Weller. Photos copyright Château Haut-Brion