Château Pichon-Longueville Comtesse de Lalande

For more than three centuries, Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande and its wines have owed their renown to only two families.
Pierre de Mazure de Rauzan created this prestigious wine estate at the end of the 17th century. The many archives preserved at the château place the purchase of the vineyard plots between 1686 and 1690.
He gave this vineyard to his daughter Thérèse on the occasion of her marriage to Jacques de Pichon, Baron de Longueville, first president of the parlement of Bordeaux. In the 19th century, Baron Joseph de Pichon Longueville (1755 – 1850) infused this estate with his intelligence, his strong personality and his great qualities as a winegrower. The poet Biarnez celebrated the longevity of this nonagenarian, due to the quality of his wines. In 1850, in execution of his will, also preserved in the archives, the baron’s estate was divided among his five children, with 2/5 allotted to his two sons and 3/5 to his three daughters. But in fact, some ten years later, this estate was divided in two. There would henceforth be two Châteaux Pichon Longueville in Pauillac: that of Baron Raoul de Pichon Longueville, who inherited the whole of the share intended for the sons, and that of Virginie, his sister, wife of Count Henri de Lalande, who ultimately received the 3/5 intended for the daughters. Thus was born Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande.
In 1850, Virginie de Lalande, enamoured of this land of the Médoc, commissioned the Bordeaux architect Duphot to design a residence inspired by her husband’s Bordeaux townhouse. The château is marked by the sobriety of its architecture, embellished with a tower from which springs a very elegant spiral staircase.
Precious documents reveal the rigorous management of the Countesses de Lalande and de Lacroix, who successively directed the estate. Their daily books, account books and shipping books are an inexhaustible source of information on life in the vineyard from 1860 to 1920. Only the combination of the Great War and the economic crisis that followed led this prestigious family to part with the vineyard.
Thus in 1925, Louis and Édouard Miailhe, descendants of a long line of Bordeaux owners and brokers, bought the estate from the descendants. Succeeding her father Édouard Miailhe, May-Éliane de Lencquesaing became owner of the property in 1978. She set about renovating this residence in the spirit of exacting standards and refinement that is her own. She made numerous investments, equipping this vineyard with modern and high-performance facilities. Under her administration, the wines of Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande won the esteem of the whole world. The epithets fit the spirit of the place: elegance, breeding, finesse, amplitude and complexity.
Then in 2007, anxious to preserve the future of her vineyard, she decided to hand it on, together with Château Bernadotte, acquired in 1997. She chose as her successor the Champagne house Louis Roederer, a family business run by Frédéric Rouzaud, which also owns two other growths in the Bordeaux region, Château de Pez and Château Haut Beauséjour.
A third family now presides over the destiny of this growth with the ambition of continuing the work accomplished and maintaining it at a very high level of quality and prestige.