Château Ducru-Beaucaillou: The Borie Era
Sadly, bad times followed the good, and what success Nathaniel Johnston had enjoyed was insufficient to provide continued security in these trying times. There were both economic depression and war to contend with, and sales had declined rapidly, pushed down even further by prohibition in the USA. In 1929 the Johnston héritiers were forced to sell the estate, this time to a négociant named Fernand Odon Desbarats de Burke. Sadly he had no more success than the Johnstons, the already precarious state of the property only compounded by several difficult harvests, and little more than a decade later the property was on the market again.
It was in 1941 that the Borie family, négociants originally from Corrèze, became the new owners of a very dilapidated estate. This family already owned Château Batailley, which they had acquired in 1932. The acquisition of Château Ducru-Beaucaillou prompted a reorganisation of the Borie family assets, a split intended to share out the workload, and to perhaps protect against any future difficulties with the inheritance of the various estates. Château Batailley was divided, the larger part which kept the original name passing to Marcel Borie, while the smaller section carved from it was named Château Haut-Batailley. It was François Borie who kept this, as well as the associated vineyards of Château La Tour l’Aspic and Château La Couronne, and of course Château Ducru-Beaucaillou. François took on the monumental task of renovating this new acquisition. The vineyard was replanted in entirety, the winemaking facilities were overhauled, new temperature-controlled vats were installed, and by the 1950s there were tangible results. The arrival of Émile Peynaud as consultant to the estate surely also contributed to this renaissance.
