Château de Ricaud

Owned for a quarter of a century by the Thiénot family, Château de Ricaud has origins going back to the 15th century, when Gaston de Foix ennobled the house “Ricault” then held by the knight Bernard de Lamensans. The original château, destroyed by the Dukes of Épernon in 1650, then rebuilt by François de Fleurier from 1674, took its present form only in 1865, remodelled by the architect Alphonse Blaquière in a neo-Gothic style worthy of Viollet-le-Duc.
From 1882 to 1910, William Wells built up a vineyard of nearly 30 ha at Ricaud, which his son Maurice set about enhancing. The Loupiac wines produced there won numerous medals from 1897 in London, Brussels and Paris. After the death of Maurice Wells in 1954, the estate gradually fell asleep until its purchase in 1980 by Alain Thiénot, who had fallen under the spell of a 1929 tasted in a great Paris restaurant.
The entry of Dourthe into the Thiénot group in 2007 marked a new decisive stage in the constant pursuit of quality conducted since the beginning by the Thiénot family.
In order to better enhance the terroir, an ambitious investment plan was launched. A very detailed mapping of soils and subsoils was carried out, confirming a complexity and diversity of terroirs unique in the Cadillac appellation, with some fifty clearly distinct profiles. 45 ha were uprooted and 31 ha were replanted with perfect adaptation of grape varieties and rootstocks.
The Château de Ricaud vineyard today comprises 66 ha of vines in a single block, set in the heart of a magnificent natural amphitheatre on the most magnificent hillsides of the region, benefiting from both natural drainage and ideal exposure.