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Pauillac de Château Lafite

The third wine of Château Lafite-Rothschild; see there.

The famous vineyard is located in the north of the municipality of Pauillac in the French Haut-Médoc region (Bordeaux). The Château Mouton-Rothschild is located directly adjacent to it. It was first mentioned in writing in 1234, when a Gombaud de Lafite, an abbot of the monastery of Vertheuil in the north of Pauillac, is mentioned. Lafite has been recorded as a fiefdom since the 14th century. The name "Lafite" is probably derived from the Gascon "la hite", which means "small mountain" or "hill". This is a clear reference to the gentle elevation on which the estate's buildings stand.

Château Lafite-Rothschild - Weingutsgebäude

In the mid-16th century, it was owned by the nobleman Joseph Saubat de Pommiers. After his death, his widow Jeanne de Gasq married the notary Jacques de Ségur (+1691) from the famous noble family in 1670 and brought Lafite as her dowry. At this time, there were already a small number of vines, but it was only between 1670 and 1680 that vineyards were planted on a larger scale. A piece of land called "Clos de Mouton" later became Château Mouton-Rothschild. In 1695, his son Alexandre de Ségur married Marie-Thérèse de Clauzel, the heiress of Château Latour. At this time, three of the four Premiers Crus classified in 1855 belonged to the estate.

First successes

A productive vineyard can be traced back to at least 1707, as a bottle from this vintage has been found. Thanks to greatly improved viticultural techniques, the first successes were achieved from the 1720s onwards. Lafite wine was marketed abroad (particularly in England). It was also appreciated by the English Prime Minister Sir Robert Walpole (1676-1745), who ordered a barrel of Lafite (225 litres) every three months between 1732 and 1733. It was only later that it became known at the royal court in Versailles. There is a nice story about how this came about. A doctor prescribed wine to Marshal Richelieu (1696-1788) as " the best and most pleasant of all tonics". After a long journey by the Marshal, King Louis XV (1710-1774) remarked on his return that Richelieu " looked 25 years younger than before his departure". He remarked: " I have found the famous fountain of youth. The wine of Château Lafite is a noble tonic, delicious and comparable to the ambrosia of the gods of Olympus". The royal mistress Madame Pompadour (1721-1764) served Lafite wine at her intimate dinners. And her successor Madame du Barry (1743-1793) also favoured this wine.

Visit from Thomas Jefferson

After his death in 1755, the Marquis Ségur's estate was divided among his four daughters, whereby Lafite and Latour were separated again, but were still managed together until 1785. Lafite fell to Comte Nicolas Marie Alexandre de Ségur, the son of the marquis's eldest daughter. He sold it in 1784 to his relative Nicolas Pierre de Pichard (+1794), the first President of the Bordeaux Parliament. Shortly afterwards, the estate was described in an essay as the "most beautiful vineyard in the universe". At this time, the future US President Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) was his country's ambassador to France and collected information about Château Lafite, among other things. Finally, the Ségur family's rule over the estate came to an end with the execution of Nicolas Pierre de Pichard by guillotine on 30 June 1794 by the Revolutionary Regime.

Finding old vintages

In the spring of 1985, the artist manager Hardy Rodenstock (1941-2018) received a phone call about the discovery of 12 very old vintages of fine wines. These had been found walled up in a cellar wall in Paris. They were wines from the renowned French wine estates Château Lafite-Rothschild, Château Mouton-Rothschild and Château d'Yquem from the 1784 and 1787 vintages from the estate of Thomas Jefferson. In 1988, the American billionaire William Koch (*1940) bought four...

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Roman Horvath MW

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