Château Kirwan
The genesis of Château Kirwan, a cru classé property in the Margaux appellation, located just on the edge of the village of Cantenac, can be traced to the 17th century, when the land was part of La Salle, an estate in the possession of the noble La Salle family, sometimes referred to as La Terre Noble de la Salle, which was part of the seigneurie of Issan.
In 1751 the noble proprietor François Renard de La Salle sold a large part of this estate, around 19 hectares, to Sir John Collingwood (1682 – 1760), a négociant who traded out of the quayside warehouses of Bordeaux. Collingwood paid 120,000 livres (the currency that predated the franc) for this plot of land, leaving just 16 hectares in the hands of the La Salle family, a vineyard which subsequently went by the name of Ganet.
Mark Kirwan
Sir John Collingwood’s only daughter Elizabeth Ann-Marie Collingwood (died 1816) married Mark Kirwan (1735 – 1805), an Irishman from Galway who was seigneur of Naugé and Bruca. Mark took control of the estate, and in 1775, some years after his father-in-law’s death, he decided to rechristen it. His name has remained faithfully attached to it ever since.
Mark Kirwan seems to have established a very good reputation for his estate. It came to the attention of the courtier Labadie, as he drew up a report on the estates of the region for the Intendant Général of the Guyenne in 1776. He classified the estate as second in the commune of Cantenac, a judgement he made based on the wine’s sale price of up to 800 livres per tonneau, a very favourable figure compared to the other châteaux in the commune. Only Gorse, better known today as Château Brane-Cantenac, was ranked higher, the asking price for this wine a commanding 900 livres per tonneaux.
