Château La Fleur-Pétrus: Fabien Pineau
On October 17th 1922 Fabien Pineau had married Marie Françoise Prax, the daughter of a noted soldier General Louis Prax, who was a grand officier in the Légion d’Honneur and ultimately commandant of the 11ème corps at Nantes, as well as holding a teaching position at the military school in Saumur (another Loire Valley connection). Hence my supposition that he, too, was an absentee landlord. Nevertheless, following the death of his grandfather and father, the newlywed Fabien inherited the estate. The production gradually increased until he (or, more likely, someone working on his behalf) was turning out 20 tonneaux per annum, as documented in the 1929 edition of Cocks et Féret.
Tragically Fabien Pineau died in 1939, at the age of 45 years, certainly before his time; although the cause of death is not recorded, I do wonder if he was killed in military service, firstly because of the date, secondly because the domaine seemed suddenly to be left rudderless. The ordered passing of the property from one generation to the next ceases at this point, and according to Clive Coates writing in Grands Vins (University of California Press, 1995), the estate first passed to a proprietor called Montouroy, although for only a short period. Before the decade was out it had already landed in the hands of the Garet family. Their tenure was also short-lived though, lasting a little more than a decade, as in the early 1950s the property was acquired by the Moueix family, who have held onto it ever since.
