Château Bellevue: Modern Times
Sadly Gaston died the following year, in 1909. An heir was needed, and fortunately he and his wife had been blessed with a son and a daughter. The son was Charles Jean Marie Mathieu Gaston Lacaze (born 1873), known as Jean; he immediately took on the running of the estate, which now boasted a full 8 hectares of vines. He tended the vineyard for nearly three decades, and I am sure he was proprietor in 1922 even though in the Cocks et Féret published that year the estate is said to be in the hands of one G. Lacaze. I think this is either error or oversight; it wouldn’t be the first time the authors of the Bordeaux bible had something wrong, although it is unusual to be so wrong so long after the event. Alternatively, perhaps Jean was using the name Gaston in some circles, perhaps as a business title.
Jean held onto the property until eventually he sold it in 1938. The buyer was a cousin named Louis Horeau (1876 – 1956). He was the son of Eugène Horeau (1833 – 1918) and Marie Thérèse Henriette Beylot (1845 – 1911), the latter being sister to the aforementioned Marie Catherine Hélène Beylot. It seems that Louis bought he estate with his family in mind. He had married Suzanne Arreitter (1881 – 1941) in 1900 and they had three daughters, and it was not long before he had created the Société Civile du Château Bellevue in order to ensure the inheritance would be trouble-free.
Three Sisters
Louis oversaw the classification as grand cru classé in the first iteration of the St Emilion Classification in 1955, quite an achievement, but sadly he died only the following year. Thus his three daughters then took on the running of the estate, the status as a société civile meaning they avoided the division usually incurred with inheritance within a family, as well as the highly punitive taxes. The company was thus ran by Antoinette, Marguerite and Suzanne. It does not seem that Antoinette ever married or had any children, and so as the years passed it was the latter two who remained relevant to the story of the château.
