Clos de l’Oratoire: The Division
Marie had two sons, Mathieu Gaston and Jean, but exactly how much longer she and her offspring held onto Château Peyreau I cannot be sure. Certainly, by the 1940s the property was in the hands of a Monsieur F. C. Lenne, whose name can be found on the labels from that era. It seems widely accepted that the estate subsequently came to Michel Boutet in 1960, although I am not sure that is exactly true.
Writing in Le Vin et Les Jours (Bordas, 1988), Émile Peynaud indicated that the estate remained in the hands of Monsieur Lenne from 1952 right up until 1970, at which point the estate changed hands. Indeed, I believe that Michel Boutet was not the proprietor, but that he merely managed the estate of the owners, just as he was also managing Château Canon-la-Gaffelière on behalf of retired racing driver and popular mayor of St Emilion, Pierre Meyrat.
The division of the Peyreau estate, in which some of the best parcels were cleaved off to create Clos de l’Oratoire, occurred following the first classification of the St Emilion vineyards in 1955. The proprietor, Monsieur Lenne, made the split in time for the 1969 reclassification, and the smaller of the two parts and that regarded as producing wines of higher quality – in other words, Clos de l’Oratoire – was ranked as grand cru classé. The larger part remained unclassified, and this is what we know today as Château Peyreau. Both parts remained under the same ownership through this transition, and indeed they have remained together ever since.
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