Château Lagrange: Charles de Brane
The property came into the possession of Charles de Brane, but tracking down specific details on this individual has been near impossible. Of note, the history presented by Château Lagrange refers to this proprietor as Charles de Branne de Cours, which would tie him rather neatly to the previous era, when Jacques de Cours and François de Cours held sway here. Unfortunately I have been able to draw a line of inheritance between the two distant generations, and other than the estate’s records stating that Charles ran the property from 1712 until 1746, next to nothing is known of him.
Perhaps desperate to give Charles some regional context, it has been broadly assumed (and it might make sense) that he was a member of the same family who at one time or another also owned Brane-Mouton (today better known as Château Mouton-Rothschild), Château Brane-Cantenac and one or two other domaines. The only evidence for this is that Brane was not a common name at the time, rather circumstantial evidence at best. Exactly how Charles might have been related to Bertrand de Brane (c.1681 – 1744), his son Joseph de Brane (1700 – 1769) and grandson Hector de Brane (1746 – 1835), proprietors of these two estates, has eluded me though. I would usually find some clue in old dictionaries of the French nobility, but strangely the Brane family don’t make an appearance in these. Perhaps they weren’t quite noble enough?
Nevertheless it seems likely that it was during the Brane era that vines were first planted here; the early and middle years of the 18th century being the time at which many of the classed growth estates of the Médoc were established. These first wines were sold, perhaps unsurprisingly, under the name of Brane-St-Julien.
After Charles de Brane (probably) established the vineyard, the property subsequently passed to his son, Antoine de Branne (died 1771). After Antoine’s death the property then passed into the hands of the Arbouet family.
The Arbouet Era
The connection between the Brane and Arbouet families was through Jacques Arbouet. Jacques was the son of Pierre Arbouet, Procureur du Roi à la Monnaie de Bordeaux (which means he was in charge of the Bordeaux Mint), and he was a member of the local bourgeoisie. A trawl through local records reveals a Jacques Arbouet, a surgeon, resident in nearby Saint-Sauveur-Médoc. Perhaps this was the same Jacques Arbouet? Surgeons and doctors are, after all, very bourgeois (I should know).
