Château Faurie de Souchard: The Laveau Family

Within what remains of this profile I discuss solely Château Faurie de Souchard, and not Château Soutard or Château Petit Faurie de Soutard. At the point these three estates were separated some writers have assumed Château Faurie de Souchard estate came direct to the Souchard family, and that their name was immediately applied. In truth, both suppositions would seem to be false. First, Jean Baptiste de Souchard, the latest in a long line of lawyers and mayors who is often said to have acquired the vines, died in 1792, nearly sixty years before the carving up of the Château Soutard vineyard. Secondly, the estate appears in numerous editions of Cocks et Féret and other publications during the latter half of the 19th century under the rather simpler name of Faurie.

Indeed, in 1853, just two years after the division, Wilhelm Franck noted in Traité sur les vins du Médoc (third edition, Chaumas, 1853) the presence of the a domaine known as Faurie, in the hands of a Laveau family member who was turning out 10 to 12 tonneaux per annum. In the 1868 Cocks et Féret it was in the hands of a Lavaud (presumably a variant of Laveau), with a production of 12 to 15 tonneaux, and in the 1874 Cocks et Féret it was a Lavau (yet another variant of Laveau), who was turning out 12 tonneaux.

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