Château Le Virou

On the green road that winds from Blaye to Saint-Savin, halfway between these two towns, a stern wall never fails to intrigue the walker, seeming to hide some mysterious residence from him.
Three metres high, this wall encloses a 100-hectare estate: Le Virou.
Its originality is that it occupies the site of a former monastery of the Discalced Carmelites. Wishing to have a “house of solitude” and to allow their monks to devote themselves more intensely to the contemplative life, the Discalced Carmelites of Bordeaux were the first in France to want to own their “desert”. This was the name given to those establishments, which consisted of a mini-convent and a few hermitages, caves or huts scattered through the woods.
Of Landes origin and settled in Bordeaux, the rich and very pious de Gourgue family was to grant this wish. By a contract made with the Reverend Father Bernard de Saint Joseph, provincial vicar of the Carmelite convents of Aquitaine, the de Gourgue family donated this considerable estate and a sum of eight thousand livres “to be used for the buildings, repairs and acquisitions that will be needed for the perfection of the said foundation”.
The monastery of Le Virou did not escape the turmoil caused by the Revolution and on 5 March 1791 it was sold at public auction for the sum of 241,000 livres.
Le Virou was first transformed into a pleasure property by Jean Delbos and his wife, then into a wine property by his grandson André Delbos, heir to the estate in 1859. It remained in the same family until 1919.
Various owners succeeded one another and maintained its reputation. In 1984, it changed hands again. The main buyers were the Tari family, of Château Giscours, under whose impetus this cru found a second wind and took full part in the reputation of the Premières Côtes de Blaye.
In 1991, the company Châteaux en Bordeaux took control of the property and ensures its maintenance, as well as its sale under the brands Château Le Virou for the retail trade and Prieur d’Aiguevives for the supermarket trade.