Château Grand Mayne: The Héritiers Laveau
After Jacques’ death the estate then came to his son Jean Laveau (1766 – 1836). He continued his father’s work, expanding the family’s domaine to a new high. In 1811 he purchased Château Soutard from the Combret de Milon family, increasing the Laveau dominion to 288 hectares, of which 62 hectares were vines, including some on the desirable terroirs of the plateau and on the slopes. With the introduction of Napoleon’s inheritance laws, however, it was perhaps inevitable that such a grand domaine would eventually be broken up. After Jean’s death the estate was divided between his héritiers, and this large-scale carving-up of the domaine left just a nubbin of land around the manor house, amounting to just 21 hectares; it is this estate that has evolved into what we know today as Château Grand Mayne.
The Héritiers Laveau appear in the 1850 Cocks et Féret, but curiously not as proprietors of Château Grand Mayne, but of Château Franc Mayne; the Laveau family had purchased this property after the Gomerie estate had been broken up and sold off in the post-Revolutionary fervour. There is, however, no mention of any other estate which could conceivably represent a precursor of Château Grand Mayne, so I can only suppose that the authors have overlooked it. There are a couple of red herrings, for example there were some vineyards at Au Petit-Bois, tended by three proprietors including a Laveau; subsequent editions of Cocks et Féret, however, show that this estate persisted alongside Château Grand Mayne once it appeared, so it is certainly not relevant.
