Château Beauséjour: The Division
Pierre-Paulin Ducarpe is a very significant figure in the history of Château Beau-Séjour Bécot, because it was he that created the estate, having taken the carving knife to the Beauséjour vineyards in 1869. This seems to have been prompted by the marriage of his son, on June 8th that year. Even so his daughter seems to have taken on the more impressive part of the domaine; Louise Caroline Ducarpe (some sources refer to her as Madeleine Ducarpe) received half of the vineyard plus the château and associated buildings. Caroline (as it seems she was known) had taken the name Duffau-Lagarrosse, having married Doctor Calixte Duffau-Lagarosse, and thus Château Beauséjour-Duffau-Lagarosse was born. Pierre-Paulin’s son, Léopold Ducarpe (born 1839), took the other half, and it was this vineyard that was the nascent Château Beau-Séjour Bécot, although at the time it was known as Château Beauséjour-Ducarpe.
In the ensuing years both halves of the Ducarpe family established independent reputations for their two new estates. Looking specifically at the half that remained with Léopold, the 1883 Cocks et Féret lists this third among the premiers crus, behind Château Bel-Air and Château Ausone, and ahead of his sister’s portion. Both estates were, at this time, turning out 18 tonneaux of wine per annum; presumably each were still working with half the original estate, somewhere between 7 and 8 hectares each. Perhaps only naturally, this declined in the ensuing years as phylloxera took hold, production falling to 15 tonneaux in 1886, but by 1908 it had recovered, and was now up to 20 tonneaux per annum. This remained the state of play right through to the 1920s.
