Château Beychevelle: The 19th Century
Delphine de Brassier died a few years later, and her daughter Marguerite de la Roque-Budos (1752 – 1821) attempted to hold onto the estate, and keep it as one. At this time there were 86 hectares here. She managed for some not inconsiderable time, but she ultimately sold up, in 1800, to Jacques Conte (1753 – 1836). He then sold it to his nephew Pierre-François Guestier (1793 – 1874), on 25th August 1825, for the sum of 650,000 francs. Guestier was the merchant who teamed up with the Barton family to create the négociant house Barton & Guestier, and who also managed Château Langoa-Barton and Château Léoville-Barton during the absence of Hugh Barton. It was thus Guestier who held tenure as the property was ranked as a fourth growth in the 1855 classification.
After Guestier’s death the property was sold by his heirs in 1874, the buyer a banker by the name of Armand Heine (1817 – 1883), who paid 1.6 million francs for the privilege. He upgraded the château, with a design by architect Henri Duphot (1810 – 1889) and he restored the winemaking facilities, so there was welcome investment in the estate. On 3rd November 1859 he married Marie Amélie Kohn (1838 – 1904) in New Orleans, USA. They had one daughter, Clare Blanche Marie-Louise Heine (1865 – 1940), who went on to marry Charles Armand Achille Fould (1861 – 1926). He was the scion of a very wealthy family, descendants of the Napoleonic finance minister Achille Marcus Fould (1800 – 1867).
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