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 1928 the Johnston héritiers were forced to sell the estate, this time to a négociant named Fernand Odon Desbarats. He was the husband of Mary Butler de Burke, from an English family settled in Ireland who ran a wine import business; Fernand and Mary met and married, and with Mary’s dowry they purchased the Ducru-Beaucaillou estate.
As an aside, Fernand and Mary had a daughter, one Victoria Charlotte Marie Angèle Berthe Desbarats de Burke (1902 – 1999), who married Édouard Miailhe (1898 – 1959), their descendants being the Miailhe family who today own Château Siran.
Sadly Fernand and Mary had no more success with Ducru-Beaucaillou than the Johnstons, the already precarious state of the property being compounded by several difficult harvests, and little more than a decade later the property was on the market again. A sale was naturally slow to come, and it was some years before a solution was found. This came in 1941, when Fernand signed a tenancy agreement with an upwardly mobile young man named Francis Borie (1891 – 1953). This agreement was a fermage à viager, essentially a tenancy guaranteed to continue until one or other party dies, the contract usually specifying exactly who. In this case the fermage was secured up to the death of Fernand. Once he passed away, Francis was able to secure possession of the property.
The Borie Origins
The Borie family originated from Corrèze, an impoverished corner of France. Many inhabitants left to seek a better life elsewhere, with the Borie family coming to Bordeaux during the 19th century. Others, such as the Moueix family, came the following century.
The exact moment when a Borie ancestor decided to leave Corrèzian poverty behind is not known, but it seems certain it was sometime before 1870, as this was when the family established a négociant business in the Bordeaux region. There seems to be some confusion over which individual was responsible, accounts differing depending on which Borie descendant you ask, but looking at the family tree François Borie (1832 – 1895) seems to me to be the most likely candidate. We know he left Corrèze behind because he spent his golden years in Saint-Nazaire, on the Atlantic coast close to the mouth of the Loire, but his profession was as a metal trader rather than a négociant en vin. Nevertheless, he could have established the trading business in 1870.
Francis had married Catherine Couderc (born 1837) and they had two sons, Eugène Borie (1862 – 1911) and Émile Borie (1865 – 1939). It is often said – even by modern-day Borie descendants – that it was Eugène and Émile who set up the business in 1870, but given they were aged just eight and five years old at the time this would have been precocious behaviour! The truth is they only established themselves in the wine business in 1886 (when they were in their early twenties, which seems more believable) when they rented some wine facilities in Pauillac, and renamed the family business Eugène Borie Frères. The business seems to have flourished, as by 1900 they were able to invest in some purpose-built facilities. Shortly afterwards, in 1901, they began acquiring vineyards, starting with Château Caronne-Ste-Gemme.
