For nearly six hundred years the same family has farmed the land of Pitray and its vineyard.
The feudal manor of the 14th and 15th centuries was built by the Prieur family. By a contract drawn up in the noble house of Pitray on 9 February 1535, Bertrand de Ségur married Mademoiselle Huguette de Prieur, who brought him the land of Pitray.
They had a son, François de Ségur, nicknamed Prieur after his mother’s name. The latter made his will on 10 September 1568, in which he named Pierre de Ségur, his eldest son, as his universal heir. Then came his descendants Thomas, Pierre… And the Ségur family transformed the feudal manor in the 17th century into a more pleasant residence.
In 1715, the last descendant of this branch of the Ségurs married her neighbour Elie de Simard, former alderman of Saint Emilion.
Under the Second Empire, their descendant, General Louis de Simard de Pitray, had the present château built by the architect Blaquières. An impressive building in the Gothic-Renaissance style fashionable with Viollet-le-Duc, it is today surrounded by a park dominated by centuries-old oaks and cedars, designed by Jean Alphonse Escarpit.
In the 20th century, his great-granddaughter Alix de Simard de Pitray married the Count de Boigne. Both strive to combine family tradition and progress, to maintain and hand on this ancestral heritage to the following generations.
In 2003, their son, Jean de Boigne, took on responsibility for marketing the Pitray wines, whose quality is recognised ever more widely around the world. Indeed, from the 1970s, Louis de Pitray, his grandfather, having modernised the estate, began export trading relations, notably in the United States and England. Canada, Japan, China, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark… have been added with Jean de Boigne, without his neglecting the traditional clientele (restaurateurs and private customers) in France.
Pitray has recently expanded thanks to the lease of Château de Castegens, built at the end of the 14th century. The land and château of Castegens were from the outset a fief of the Counts of Grailly. Over the centuries, alliances ensured that the château was passed to the Pitray family and then to the de Fontenay family in 1858. The present owner of Castegens, Jean de Fontenay, is none other than the uncle of Jean de Boigne; the family spirit endures.
In this age of globalisation, it is not so common to come across a long-established family estate that endures and holds its own successfully in today’s harsh commercial competition.
The doors of Pitray are open to all those who are interested in wine or wish to enjoy the charm of this estate by staying quietly in the spacious, recently renovated guest rooms.
