Château Cos d’Estournel: Louis Gaspard d’Estournel
My account of the history Château Cos d’Estournel begins with the birth of Louis Gaspard d’Estournel (1762 – 1853), in January 1762, to a family from Quercy. This is some way from St Estèphe, Quercy being situated a long way south of Bordeaux, perhaps more readily associated with wines such as Cahors than with claret.
The fact that Louis hailed from the south is of significance, however, if we are to also understand the origin of the name of this château. Cos is most likely to be a derivative of caux, itself derived from colline de cailloux, meaning ‘stony slope’. Although in French the terminal consonant in caux is silent, in the Gascon tongue the end consonant is most certainly vocalised, accounting for how caux may mutate into cos (the ‘s’ is pronounced) over the years.
In 1791, when Louis (pictured below in a portrait at the property) was just 29 years old, he inherited the family estate consequent upon the death of his father, Guy d’Estournel de Maniban. The inheritance included what we know today as Château Cos d’Estournel, but also land at Pommies, in more recent times known as Château Pomys, and some other vineyards, all in the commune of St Estèphe. Thus Pomys, purchased by Michel Reybier in 2017 (as described on the previous page) was once an integral part of the Estournel family estate, and Reybier was seemingly responsible for bringing it back into the fold. As already noted it has since been repurposed as a luxury hotel, and rechristened La Maison d’Estournel.
Over the ensuing years Louis Gaspard d’Estournel added other lands to his holdings, expanding his vineyard holdings from 14 to 45 hectares. At the time such extensive purchasing of vines was perhaps unexpected; many thought that the great vineyards of the Médoc were already established, and they were further south, in Pauillac. St Julien and Margaux. St Estèphe was yet to be fully exploited though, as evidenced by the later appearance of Château Montrose which only came into being in the early years of the 19th century, hundreds of years after some other comparable deuxièmes crus. Perhaps Louis Gaspard d’Estournel saw some hitherto unrecognised potential in the gravelly soils of the commune.
