At the age of 101, Lord Jean de Pontac of Haut-Brion felt the time was ripe to prepare his way to heaven.
So in 1584, he gave a water-mill surrounded by pasture and vines to the Carmes de Notre-Dame order.
The Carmes monks kept the Haut-Brion appellation for 200 years. Then over time, the estate came to be known as « Les Carmes Haut-Brion ».
Throughout this period, the ownership of the estate never changed, sheltered from the property transactions common in pre-revolutionary France.
When the French Revolution came, as a result of the confiscation of Church possessions, the Carmes Haut-Brion estate became public property in 1791.
At the beginning of the 19th Century, it was bought by Léon Colin, a Bordeaux wine merchant and direct ancestor of the present owners, the Chantecaille-Furt family.
Today Didier Furt and his wife Caroline run the estate, joined in 2005 by their daughter Pénélope. |
