Château Bonalgue: The Audy Family
The history of Château Bonalgue is also tied up with the story of the Audy family, proprietors of Clos du Clocher in Catusseau, and so some of the historical elements in these two profiles are the same. Every possible detail of the Audy family story is available in my Clos du Clocher profile, so I shall merely recap here.
The Audy story begins in a commune named Corrèze, in France’s Massif Centrale, far to the east of Bordeaux. It was from here that the family originated, the records beginning in 1773 with the birth of François Audy. The documents concerning François are surprisingly detailed; we know that later in life he married a woman named Antoinette, who was 24 years his junior; the two went on to have at least eight children, and as this was a second marriage for both of them, each already having children from these earlier unions, this must have made for a very large and extended family.
Their youngest child, Antoine Audy, was born in 1826, the year after his father’s death. He grew up in Corrèze, marrying a girl from Meymac named Marie Bournel. In 1859 they had a son, Laurent Philippe, but more importantly they also left Corrèze for Bordeaux. It was Laurent Philippe who began the family’s association with wine, as in 1900 he acquired Château Jonqueyres, an attractive hill-top estate in the Entre-Deux-Mers.
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