Château Moulin Riche: The Lawton Era
It would seem that it was Laure Marie Mathilde Lalande who inherited the vineyards at Moulin Riche (it is possible that she took them as a dowry). She married the courtier Jean Édouard II Lawton (1846 – 1933), better known simply as Édouard, who was himself the son of the renowned courtier and proprietor Daniel Lawton. Thus the vineyards came into the possession of the Lawton family. Despite this (or perhaps because of this) the domaine seems to temporarily disappear from the next edition of Cocks et Féret. There is no proprietor named Lalande nor Lawton listed in 1886, although there was a mysterious Veuve Maurenx, turning out 40 tonneaux and having apparently appeared from nowhere. It could be, looking at the production, the same domaine, although if true I am afraid the identity of Madame Maurenx and how she was related to the Lalandes or the Lawtons remains a enigma.
In Les Vins de Médoc (Édouard Féret, 1897) the estate was much more clearly defined. For the first time the name resembled that by which we know it today, the estate listed as Cru de Château Mouline Riche, and as anticipated the proprietor was by this time Édouard Lawton. The domaine comes in for considerable praise from the authors (nothing new there – there never shied away from piling on the platitudes) as they point out that the vineyard, which was by now churning out 60 tonneaux per annum, was surrounded by vines belonging to other notable châteaux in the commune. They concluded that the estate merited a higher classification than that which it was currently accorded.
