Château Chauvin: Victor Henri
Before taking over from his father, Georges Ondet had married, having tied the knot with Cécile Berthe Marie Ragas (born 1881) on September 5th 1907. They had a son who they named Victor Henri Ondet (born 1908), and so it was that in 1932 Henri took charge. There doesn’t seem to have been any further role for Georgette and Marcel, perhaps because they had no children.
So it was that during the middle years of the 20th century it was Victor Henri Ondet, who like his grandfather Amand Victor Ondet also went by the name of Victor (I assume solely to confuse 21st-century wine writers foolhardy enough to attempt to pick apart his family history), who had his hand on the tiller of Château Chauvin. Victor expanded the domaine to 13 hectares, achieved with the purchase of parcels from his neighbours, so the vineyard (apart from a couple of wayward parcels) remained in a single, continuous block. It was under Victor’s direction that the estate was classed as a grand cru classé in the first St Emilion classification, published in 1955.