Château Gruaud-Larose: The Balguerie-Sarget Era

Returning to the story of Château Gruaud-Larose, one of the three proprietors David-Jonas Verdonnet died in 1836, leaving just his two colleagues in charge. When the firm of Balguerie, Sarget et Cie disbanded, as far as I can tell Château Gruaud-Larose seems to have come into the private ownership of the Balguerie and Sarget families. This led to a complicated shared-ownership arrangement which was to persist right through into the first half of the 20th century.

One half of the estate belonged to the failed slave-trader Pierre Balguerie, who went on to marry Suzanne Sophie Stuttenberg (1791 – 1837), and of their three children two survived to marry and subsequently inherit the estate when their father died in 1825, thirteen years after the acquisition. These were Marie Marguerite Henriette (1810 – 1851), who married Charles Isaac Alexandre de Bethmann (1805 – 1871), and Marie Clémence (1812 – 1859), who was wed to Édouard François Constant Lemercier de Boisgérard (born 1799). This half of the estate I shall refer to as the Bethmann-Boisgérard portion. The other half, meanwhile, rested with Jean-Auguste Sarget and his descendants.

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