Château Kirwan: Schroder & Schÿler
Camille’s gift went beyond this vineyard, as he also left behind the splendid Parc de Bordelais, 30 hectares of botanical paradise in the heart of the city, the work of the famed garden designer Eugene Bülher (1822 – 1907). These gardens were stocked with specimens of sequoia, magnolia, walnut and cypress, to name a just a few of the species favoured by Godard, a keen botanist. Sadly, it seems Château Kirwan did not have the same attention lavished upon it. Adolphe died in 1895, and at this time the city looked for someone new to take the estate in hand. An agreement was reached with the négociant firm Schroder & Schÿler, who took on the responsibility of farming the vineyards and making the wine.
They put in place a régisseur name Moreau, and they seemed to have taken a fairly hard-nosed, unromantic and commercial approach. The wine was generally blended across the vintages, rather as Château Pontet-Canet once was, and only sold as a single-vintage wine in exceptional years. This contract seems to have suited the city councillors, however, as it was renewed in 1902, a new ten-year agreement that should have carried Schroder & Schÿler through to the end of 1911.
To their surprise, however, in January 1905 the new mayor of Bordeaux, Alfred Dany (1832 – 1911) decided to sell the property, and it was acquired by Daniel Guestier (1860 – 1938) and George Guestier (1860 – 1936) for the sum of 200,000 francs. What they acquired was a 70-hectare estate with just 25 hectares of vines, one where the recovery from phylloxera had yet to be realised.
