Chateau Latour Winery

Until the end of the 16th century, Latour was a co-seigniory whose co-owners received rents from the farmers who cultivated the land. At that time, the vines did not cover the entire estate, but production far exceeded needs. The storage conditions for the wine were still precarious and it had to be consumed within a year. Until the end of the 17th century, the estate remained in the hands of the Mullet family, and although direct exploitation gradually replaced the rental system, the wine-growing situation changed very little.
Following successive inheritances and marriages, Château Latour became the property of Alexandre de Ségur, who quickly built up a considerable group of properties in the Médoc. With the arrival of this family, the great history of wine began. Shortly before his death in 1716, Alexandre de Ségur acquired the Lafite estate. His son, Nicolas-Alexandre, was nicknamed "Prince of the Vines" by Louis XV. President of the Parliament of Bordeaux, he further expanded the estate in 1718 with the acquisition of the lands of Mouton and Calon.

At the beginning of the 18th century, an aristocracy and a wealthy bourgeoisie with refined tastes, who were great consumers of good wine, whether from Bordeaux, Port, Sherry or other southern vineyards, developed in the United Kingdom. The export of Bordeaux wines, which had been limited until then due to the various blockades imposed by the repeated conflicts, benefited from a respite from hostilities and developed rapidly. This new economic situation also changed the structure of the Médoc estates, which were expanding and of growing interest to the bourgeoisie and the local parliamentary nobility. Very quickly, the wines from the best estates, including Latour, stood out for their quality and price. In 1714, a barrel of Latour was worth four to five times that of today's Bordeaux wine. In 1729 the proportion was thirteen and in 1767 twenty. The recognition of the great wines of Château Latour was already well established.

This prosperity gradually led the estate to specialise in wine-growing, which extended over 38 hectares in 1759 and then 47 hectares in 1794. At that time, the estate managers maintained very regular correspondence with the owners, offering us today a unique wealth of archives containing often amusing and endearing anecdotes about the lives of the men and women of Château Latour.

The estate managed, not without difficulty, to maintain its integrity during the Revolution and, above all, to remain in the same family. In 1842, successive inheritances multiplied the number of co-owners and they were grouped together in a Civil Society which, until 1962, was made up exclusively of descendants of the Ségur family. The property thus enjoys an absolutely exceptional location and this unique terroir was classified as a 1er cru in 1855, in a group to which Lafite-Rothschild, Margaux, Haut-Brion and Mouton-Rothschild also belong since 1973. However, over the years, the large number of heirs led to the sale of most of the shares: the English financial group Pearson became the majority shareholder with 53% and the Harveys company of Bristol, later bought by the Allied Lyons group, took over 25% of the shares.

In 1989, Allied Lyons bought out Pearson and then held 93% of the shares, with the remaining 7% held by the heirs of the Ségur family. In June 1993, Mr. François Pinault bought the shares from Allied Lyons through his holding company Artémis.