Margaux Focus 2: Château Palmer

HISTORY THE DE GASCQ ERA The genesis of the present-day Château Palmer derives from the splintering of the vast d'Issan estate during the 18th century. A section cleaved away by the Foix-Candale family in 1729 underwent a second division in 1748, one part-owned by sisters Marguerite and the magnificently named Hippolyte-Euphrasie. Their plots came into the hands of the de Gascq family, who owned swathes of prime Médoc, though back then, much of it was scrubland. De Gascq’s viticultural know-how fueled viticultural expansion in Margaux and Château de Gascq itself. By the 1760s, their wine was already becoming well-known, and according to the Tastet & Lawton archives, prices were on par with nearby d’Issan. Professor Pijassou estimates that de Gascq spanned as much as 50 hectares of vine by the time of the Revolution. THE RISE & FALL OF GENERAL PALMER De Gascq is the prelude to the real story of Palmer and Charles Palmer, the Major-General who lends the estate its name. Palmer’s family resided in Bath in the west of England. Their fortune derived from a brewery and chandlery. His father, John Palmer, incepted the first mail-coach service between Bath and London and ran the Bath Theatre Royal, one of only three boasting royal warrants. As a parliamentarian and Mayor of Bath, he achieved high social standing. His son, Charles Palmer, was born on May 6, 1777, and after schooling at Eton and Oxford, joined the 10th Dragoons, a troop that included “Beau” Brummel and the Prince Regent among its alumni. Palmer worked his way up the ranks and served as the Prince Regent’s Aide-de-Camp. He served in the Napoleonic Wars under the Duke of Wellington. It was General Palmer who reached Bordeaux after the Battle of Toulouse in 1814. This is the backdrop to Palmer’s apocryphal, serendipitous meeting on the Lyon to Paris stagecoach with Marie Brunet de Ferrière, the easy-on-the-eye widow of Blaise Jean Charles Alexandre de Gascq. Her husband had passed away just three days earlier; however, banish scurrilous ideas of Palmer exploiting a widow’s grief since the couple had separated in 1790. She was en route to Paris to expedite the sale of Palmer and explained to her traveling companion that under Napoleonic law she would receive just one-quarter of its value. She extolled her wine by claiming that it was second only to Lafite. By the time the pair arrived in the capital city, General Palmer had a verbal agreement to buy Château de Gascq for the sum of 100,000 Francs. The purchase of the 60-hectare estate is recorded as 16 June 1814, and in the small print, Palmer was obliged to give 500 liters of wine per annum to its erstwhile owner, who resided at the château until March 1815. As it turned out, Palmer didn’t become the legal owner until 1835. General Palmer resided in England instead of Bordeaux and delegated Paul Estenave, a wine merchant, to maintain its daily running. Meanwhile, Palmer fell out with the Prince Regent and narrowly escaped an untimely demise when obliged to draw pistols against a former member of the Dragoons to retain his honor. After retiring from military life in 1830, Palmer returned to Bordeaux. A man full of grand ideas and boundless enthusiasm, he began expanding the estate with zeal. By 1831, after absorbing around a dozen properties, many sequestered or abandoned after the war, Château Palmer covered 162 hectares of which around half were under vine. This included a wooded area in a lieu-dit called “Boston” near the village of Villefougasse that was cleared and cultivated with vines and also Domaine de Monbrun. Notwithstanding the installation of 15 wooden oak vats, this rapid expansion had cost a princely sum of 370,000 Francs. Consequently, Palmer needed to promote his wine in the most critical market for claret – England. This “hustling” was unusual for its time and makes Palmer a forerunner for today’s proprietors who promote their wines and host dinners. Palmer exploited his connections with aristocracy and the Prince Regent (Lord Yarmouth), pouring his namesake wine for their delectation. This backfired when the Yarmouth vocally complained that Palmer’s wine was “thin and anemic” compared to his own in front of esteemed guests. That sounds like a spiteful act, notwithstanding that his own wine, known as Carbonel, was cut with Hermitage. Whether the criticism was justified or not, it represented a terrible loss of face for Palmer. Yarmouth, who must have fancied himself as a proto Émile Peynaud, advised him to replace all his vines, which Palmer did at immense cost. All this was in tandem with a corrupt intermediary, a shadily-titled London agent named Mr. Gray, charged with the finances as Palmer acquired nearby properties. By all accounts, Gray was embezzling funds. By the 1830s, Palmer’s political career was on the wane, and his bank account had run dry. Mr. Gray had long since been dismissed. Palmer could hardly afford his staff, and debts were mounting. His wife had had enough, and the couple separated without any children. Backed into a corner, a chastened Palmer was forced to sell his assets and began dismembering the estate until 1843, when the final part was sold to Mme Françoise-Marie Bergerac. Who was she? Only a companion of the aforementioned Mr. Gray. It reads like Tarantino doing Dickens. She received the sum of 247,000 Francs, but after months of litigation, the property was sold to Caisse hypothécaire in Paris the following year. Palmer died in 1851. He was not impoverished since he resided in salubrious Mayfair, yet he was a withered and lonely man who must have rued how his life was denied a happy ending. The first mention of wine dates back to 1824, when the Cru was named De Gascq et Dubignon Ainé. Afterward, the vines were decimated by oïdium, though the estate was still listed as a Third Growth in the 1855 Classification. Conferred with status, the classification predicates a more stable period in the second part of the 19th century. In 1853, the property had passed into the hands of the Portuguese-Jewish Pereire family, who made their fortune in railways and real estate. Brothers Isaac and Émile Pereire, who incidentally had begun their careers working in Baron James de Rothschild’s bank, commissioned architect Charles Burguet to design an ornate château-building that stands today. Burguet had previously helped design Pichon Baron, and it is easy to see their architectural similarities. Completed in 1856, Palmer is perhaps the most eye-catching Left Bank château, never ceasing to be arresting as it swings into view, driving up the D2 with its exaggerated conical witches’ turrets and slate Mansard roof. Close-up, one can admire the sculpted lintels and its slightly Baroque design. While the eye is drawn to the château building, visitors to Palmer will notice that the outbuildings form a kind of village-like, communal ambiance similar to Montrose or, indeed, Château Margaux, evidence of an era when château workers lived and raised families on château grounds. The Perieres installed an able regisseur, and his skill, plus their considerable fortunes, were the basis for rehabilitating the vineyard. By 1870, Pijassou states that the 177 hectares contained 109 hectares under vine. At the turn of the century, despite the onslaught of phylloxera necessitating re-grafting onto American rootstock, Palmer was one of the Médoc’s most revered estates. No less than composer Claude Debussy purchased two cases of the 1909 in 1917. However, the Pereire family suffered financially after the First World War and the economic travails that enveloped the Médoc. Decisions could not be made promptly since 30 family members were now shareholders. Consequently, investment stymied, the estate declined and ran at a loss throughout the Thirties like most of the châteaux. Between 1929 and 1937, the vineyard land withered from 65 to 36 hectares, of which 20 hectares were productive. --Neal Martin, Margaux Focus 2: Château Palmer, August 2023 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ To read about the present-day Palmer, the vineyard, harvest, vinification and the wines, check out the full article on Vinous now . Enjoy a few of Neal’s tasting notes below.