Château Bauduc
Oz Clarke, not an unknown visitor at Château Bauduc, tells the story as well as anyone else. Writing in Bordeaux (Pavilion books, 2012 revision) he declares “It’s a dangerous thing for a young man to have too much cash in his pocket“, quoting the modern-day proprietor of Château Bauduc, Gavin Quinney. Gavin, according to Oz, “woke up one morning to find he had bought a château“. Having met Gavin several times, I have learnt that this tale is not too far from the truth!
Gavin’s start at Château Bauduc may have had a somewhat chaotic air to it, but there is no doubt in my mind that he and wife Angela have made a great success of Gavin’s surprise purchase. Today this is a model estate for Bordeaux, the white wines clean cut and vibrant, the reds increasingly good. And yet they remain affordable, prices no doubt dampened by the absence of a grand appellation; we are in generic Bordeaux and Entre-Deux-Mers territory here. It is no surprise that they have garnered a loyal following, the wines listed by famous restaurateurs, and those not snapped up by Gordon Ramsay and the like sell out via Gavin’s online direct mail-order business, largely to a UK clientele but also much further afield.
Before continuing on to look at Gavin’s tenure, however, I will first attempt to sketch in some of the rather sparse history of this modern-day Bordeaux success story.
Ancient Beginnings
It seems somehow appropriate that Château Bauduc is today under English rule, as responsibility – albeit tangentially, perhaps, but responsibility nevertheless – for the estate’s existence can be laid at the feet of a representative of the English crown, as long ago as the early 14th century. The man in question was Amaury III de Craon, a politician and diplomat who somehow managed to juggle two seemingly contradictory roles, as a representative of the English King Edward II (1284 – 1387) in Aquitaine (which had been under English rule since the marriage of Eleanor d’Aquitaine to Henry II in 1152), and as a sénéchal in the service of the French monarch, King Philippe IV (1286 – 1314), in Anjou. This was in the run up to the Hundred Years’ War, so there was the occasional rattling of both Anglo and French sabres; Craon’s diplomatic skills must have been considerable.
