Maison Blanche is a large, contiguous estate situated in Montagne, in a horn that runs alongside Saint-Émilion, to the south, and Lalande-de-Pomerol, to the north, until it just touches Pomerol. Its land was trodden by man long before it was known by that name. Seventeen centuries ago, a Gallo-Roman road ran through it, leading to Lucaniacus, the nearby villa of the proconsul and poet Ausonius, to whom it probably belonged. A thousand years later, at the end of the Middle Ages, they belonged to the vast seigneury of Corbin, which was dismembered over time. In 1838, Bernard Constant, a Libourne merchant and owner of part of this land, divided it between his children. Désiré received Petit Corbin, which he in turn divided up. His son Antoine took La Marsale and his daughter Marie Céline La Métairie, the neighbouring lot. Under the guidance of her husband Octave Pineau, sub-prefect of the Vienne department, she had an elegant mansion built in white stone, which she signed on the two large chimneys with the wrought iron initials of the name of the family they had founded, Constant-Pineau. La Métairie became La Maison Blanche, and in 1938 wine merchant Louis Rapin bought and merged the two small adjoining estates, adding part of the adjoining La Bichaude branch in 1941 to form an entity whose boundaries have not changed to this day. His daughter Françoise took over in 1972 and entrusted management to her husband, Gérard Despagne, whose family had owned property in Saint-Émilion since 1812. Their career was marked by the construction of large bottle and barrel cellars and the embellishment of the estate. After their final retirement in 2009, Maison Blanche reverted to their son Nicolas, who has been at the helm since 2000. He has refused to follow the industrial trend in Bordeaux and has instead committed himself to a natural quality approach certified by the Bio, Bio-dynamique (Demeter) and Bio-Cohérence labels.
The estate’s different cuvées perpetuate the vanishing tradition of authentic, natural, living wines for laying down, neither fined nor filtered, neither sterilised nor pasteurised, made with grapes from great terroirs, without any manipulation or additive other than sulphur (since the 2008 vintage, several cuvées are also available without sulphites). They must be kept in the cellar before being drunk young (2 to 3 years), for their strength, or mature (7 to over 30 years), for their balance.
