The dramatic sale of Bordeaux Château Beauséjour in 2021 caused ripples in Bordeaux when it unfolded – two prestigious Bordeaux vineyards vying to buy the estate were pipped to the post at the eleventh hour by a last-minute bid, which kept the estate in the family hands while paving the way for a renaissance. Three years on, Arabella Mileham talks to winemaker Joséphine Duffau-Lagarosse about the estate’s new winery as it enters a new era. Speaking to the drinks business recently Joséphine Duffau-Lagarosse, ninth generation of the Duffau-Lagarrosse family who have farmed the estate since 1847, explains that buying back the family estate with investment from xxx has proved a huge opportunity… Although the estate was family-owned and run by Duffau-Lagarosse’s father as the estate manager, over time the ownership had become divided among multiple cousins, many of whom no longer living in the region (or even in France). It was, she says, with considerable understatement, “hard to manage an estate with 32 owners” especially as the majority tended to view it as something that paid them a dividend at the end of the year, rather than being invested in the life of the estate, or the the wines themselves. The collective decision to sell up was therefore a “very difficult” one for Josephine, who she was not working at the estate at the time, her father who managed the estate and her sister who all lived in the Right Bank. Philippe Cuvelier, owner of Clos Fourtet, and Stephanie
This Article was originally published on The Drink Business - Fine Wine
