Château Grand-Launay

At Teuillac, Château Grand-Launay, with its Bourg stone house built in 1841 and its centuries-old lime trees, once welcomed Jules Barthélémy Lombard (1809-1871), consul general of France, and even Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte.
Michel Cosyns, trained in viticulture by the Don Bosco fathers in Mendoza, at the foot of the Andes, then in modern oenology at the two faculties of Dijon and Bordeaux, acquired Château Grand Launay with his wife in 1969. The restructuring of the estate by this young oenologist gave these wines the vineyard and cellars they deserved.
In 2003, his son, Pierre-Henri Cosyns, returned to his roots.
Before that he was not passionate about his parents’ profession.
An engineer in the Paris region, he came to help them during his summer holidays. But at the end of the summer of 2003, he did not take the road back to the capital. A sort of delayed love at first sight!
He confesses it himself : ” that summer, I became hooked on this clay soil, on the green work and on the harvest. Then on vinification, understanding and taming yeast life to sublimate the fruit into a living but lasting drink. It was a revelation during that sugar-rich vintage “.
He therefore resumed his studies to obtain the national diploma of oenologist while setting up his farm as a farmer.
With the 2005, 2006 and 2007 vintages, his father passed on to him part of his extensive knowledge of their terroir. Michel Cosyns liked to be out in the field: “wine is made in the vines, not with chemistry!” he often repeated. He worked the land with simplicity and did not much like this chemically assisted agriculture. “We do as the organic growers do.” On the eve of the 2008 harvest, a heart attack took him.
For Pierre-Henri Cosyns, certification in Organic Farming was a matter of course. In 2009, with the support of his mother and sisters, 100% of the family vineyard was certified by ECOCERT. In 2012, European regulations finally recognised organic winemaking, and the wines have since carried the words “ORGANIC WINE”.
Pierre-Henri Cosyns and his collaborators are thus not exposed to a productivist agriculture that is the source of many ills. The diverse environment of twenty-five hectares in a single block forms a genuine island protected from all chemistry. The wines are guaranteed true to their terroir and free of synthetic residues.
Pierre-Henri highlights the estate’s success : ” as before, our wines are recognised by the press and in national and international competitions ; as before, our wines are exported to many countries ; as before, our wines remain fabulous value for money.
In this magnificent landscape of the Côtes de Bourg, Pierre-Henri, Amélie Saffre his partner (an architect), and Henri and Léon, their children, will introduce you to their passion and their wines. They offer overnight stays in guest rooms and winegrower’s meals. It is a place to discover, a philosophy to understand, wines to taste with attention. Already in 1908, Féret wrote “remarkable for their finesse and sap, ranked among the best bourgeois of the Bourgeais…”.