Thomas Jefferson and the Carbonnieux pecan tree…

It was a small news story last week, in a week of monumental ones, but it represented something fundamental to Bordeaux, and got a huge reaction online. The 235 year old pecan tree, reportedly planted by Thomas Jefferson at Château Carbonnieux in 1787, had split apart – weakened first by the hot, dry summer of 2022 and finally broken in two by high winds in the last days of September.

This was the oldest tree on the estate, standing at 35m tall, planted after Jefferson’s visit to the Benedictine monks that lived on the Pessac-Léognan estate at the time (until the French Revolution drove them out just a few years later).

It wasn’t the only tree in the Bordeaux region that is linked to Jefferson’s famous trip to Bordeaux, that took place while he was living in Paris as Ambassador to France. You can find an example in the Jardin Public park in the city centre, which dates from the same time but has less of a clear story linking Jefferson himself with its planting, and another one, standing 32m tall, at Château Beychevelle in St Julien. Or you could travel down to the south of Bordeaux, to Château de la Fosse in Riocaud, where you can find the oldest pecan in the region, almost certainly connected to Frenchman Paul Revere (born Apollos Rivoire), another hero of the American Revolution, whose father came from Riocaud. There are even two trees supposedly planted by Jefferson at Château Smith Haut-Lafitte, not far from Carbonnieux, but these are not listed in the official pecan tree census (and yes, there is one of those).

We don’t actually have a record of Jefferson planting any of these for certain. What we have instead is a letter from 1786 from a Monsieur de Malesherbes thanking Jefferson for his donation of pecan nuts and explaining that he had, ‘before my eyes’, a fledgling pecan tree that showed how at home this American tree was in the soils of Europe. He explained that those he had planted 15 years earlier had done a good job of withstanding the cold European winters.

Thomas Jefferson

What is certain is that the trees stand as a symbol of the grip that Jefferson’s five short days in Bordeaux have exerted on the city’s imagination over the centuries since. Strange really, as more credit should perhaps be given to John Adams, America’s second president, who visited Bordeaux in 1778, nine years before Jefferson.

Adams even beat Jefferson to noting down the future First Growths, reportedly meeting a negociant called JC Champagne at Blaye on April 1, 1778, who told him about the four best wines of the region. Adams wrote, ‘of the first Grouths of Wine, in the Province of Guienne… Chateau Margeaux, Hautbrion, La Fitte, and Latour’. Almost two years later in April 1780, John Adams wrote from Paris to John Bondfield, the American commercial agent in Bordeaux, that he had ‘Occasion for a Cask of Bordeaux Wine, of the very best Quality”.

However, it is Jefferson who stands as a symbol of the American love affair with Bordeaux wine. He arrived in the city on Thursday May 24^th, 1787, arriving from Langon in the south of the region, where he visited Chateau d’Yquem and Chateau Carbonnieux (‘de Carbonius’ as he wrote it) before heading into Bordeaux to stay at the Hotel de Richelieu.

The Jefferson tree, felled in the park of Carbonnieux

Jefferson headed out the following day to Chateau Haut-Brion in Pessac (apparently he first drank this wine at Benjamin Franklin’s table – his predecessor as Ambassador to France) and what is now Chateau Pontac Monplaisir in Villenave d’Ornon. Saturday was spent writing letters, meeting people and watching two performances at the Grand Theatre, one after the other, as was typical at the time (that particular day was a tragedy by Voltaire followed by a more lively comic opera by Desfontaines et Dalayrac). Sunday 26^th he got some money from his bank to pay for laundry and lodgings, and Monday he had a large breakfast with guests, then paid his bill and headed off on a boat to Blaye.

His diaries show detailed recordings of the vineyards and wines that he tried (and say almost nothing about what the hotel was like, or what dinners he attended). We know also that at some point during the visit, he placed orders for Château d’Yquem (the exact amount is not recorded), Haut-Brion (24 cases) and Lafite (250 bottles).

And at some other moment – or perhaps at a later date, after his return to Paris, Jefferson sent seeds or pecan nuts to the monks that he met at Carbonnieux, who then planted a tree that would grow and remain in place through Revolution, Phylloxera, two global pandemics and two world wars, until earlier this month.

‘It’s so sad that this tree, that was part of the history between Jefferson and Bordeaux wines, has come down,’ said Eric Perrin, owner of Carbonnieux. As a symbol of its loss, the Perrin family has arranged for a pecan tree to be planted at the American Embassy in Paris on October 18, 2022.

And there is one poignant possibility that has opened up. Until now, it was only possible to draw general conclusions about the exact age of the Carbonnieux pecan, as the only way to date trees definitively is by counting the rings in their trunk. Now that it has come down, its secrets may just be revealed.