Château La Dominique: The Greloud Era
The estate subsequently came into the hands of Charles Chaperon, who then sold it to Gabriel Henri Greloud, a négociant, in 1862. Henri Greloud was also the proprietor of Château Tertre-Daugay (now renamed Château Quintus), which he acquired in a piecemeal fashion also from the Chaperon family, and he also owned Château Lafleur of course.
Henri Greloud and his descendants maintained ownership of the estate well into the 20th century, and under their tenure the reputation of the domaine seemed only to wax, and never to wane. In the 1868 Cocks et Féret the production was sitting at 30 to 35 tonneaux, and more importantly it was listed at the head of the deuxièmes crus, an obvious promotion. And by the time the 1883 Cocks et Féret was published Château La Dominique was ranked as premier cru, still with Henri Greloud at the helm, now turning out 40 tonneaux per annum.
The first time the Cocks et Féret authors paid the estate any real attention was in the 1886 edition, when they wrote of Henri Greloud’s vineyard in in the sort of tones usually reserved for Château Cheval Blanc, just next-door. The authors drew direct comparisons between the two vineyards, noting that they were divided by little more than a drainage ditch which ran for 900 metres along the boundary between the two.
