Château Lafon-Rochet: Louis Arnaud
Together Louis Arnaud Blaise and his wife, Marie-Chevalier Pages, set about re-establishing the vineyard, with considerable success, although only as a result of many decades of tiresome work. It was thanks to their efforts that the wine was established on the marketplace, and sold well at a decent price, sufficient to see the estate ranked as a quatrième cru in the 1855 classification. Upon the death of Louis Arnaud, the estate remained in the ownership of Marie-Chevalier and her son, Pierre Alcide Lafon de Camarsac (1821 – 1905), with the former holding a two-thirds majority.
Pierre was a photographer and he exhibited little interest in viticulture and wine, preferring instead to follow a more artistic lifestyle in Paris, and so it was perhaps a wise move by Marie-Chevalier to bequeath the majority of her portion, upon her death in 1888, to her Pierre Alcide’s daughter and her granddaughter, Lucie. Under her direction the estate went from strength to strength, and were it not for the usual litany of vineyard disasters, namely oidium and phylloxera, this situation may well have continued. But as it was the two were forced to sell the property in 1895, and thus the ownership of Château Lafon-Rochet by the descendants of Etienne de Lafon finally came to an end.
After the Lafons
The new owner was Frederic Audon, who acquired the property including its 26-hectare vineyard for the very reasonable sum of 110,000 francs, and with some suitable investment it was once more a productive and fruitful venture. It remained with Audon until 1924, when due to his divorce from Marie Madeleine Lucie Buttura, the property was sold to Marcel Ricard and his wife Catherine Marguerite Eyssand. Catherine subsequently died, but her family held onto the estate for a few years, before also selling it on in 1938, this time to Elie and Berthe Nafrechoux, who passed it on two years later to Charles Louis Duquenoy-Legry, a French brewer.
