Château Clerc-Milon: Rothschild Reinvigoration
As the decades came and went the estate passed through a succession of owners and, as always seems to happen in these circumstances, it gradually fell into disrepair. By the 1960s it had been passed from Jacques Mondon to a local lawyer named Jean-Jacques Vialard, by which time the estate had contracted to just 15 hectares. Little wonder, considering its condition, that Marie Vialard and Madame Heron, who inherited the property upon Vialard’s death in 1970, were only too pleased to sell on what they no doubt saw as a money pit. The new owner was Baron Philippe de Rothschild (1902 – 1988), who secured the estate for the paltry sum of one million francs, which bought him a 16.5-hectare vineyard, as well as a diminutive chai and small residential property which was on the same side of the D2 as Château Mouton-Rothschild, and was in fact nowhere near Mousset, scene of my unsurprisingly doomed search.
In modern times vineyards in Pauillac will change hands for more than a million francs per hectare and thus, even though there was no grand château included in the sale, to acquired 16.5 hectares for such a modest sum was a real bargain for the Rothschilds.
Over the next decade Château Clerc-Milon saw extensive investment, and radical change. Baron Philippe realised that many parts of the original estate had been sold off piecemeal, or divided through inheritance, and these many islands of vineyard were now under new ownership. He promptly set about buying these up in order to reconstitute the vineyard. The Mondon suffix was dropped, and the estate was simply Clerc-Milon again.
