Château de Reignac: The 20th Century
In the 1922 Cocks et Féret the authors finally provide some detail on the estate, which at this time was still clearly the leading domaine in the commune, turning out 120 tonneaux of red wine and 30 tonneaux of white wine each year. These are impressive figures, and combined they match the level of production in the pre-phylloxera era. The château, featured in a photograph, looks much as it does today. As for the vineyards there were 102 hectares to the estate, of which 33 hectares were planted with vines. These seem to have been well-chosen varieties in the opinion of the author, the vineyard dominated by Cabernet Sauvignon. The wines came in for what reads as rather muted praise, especially the reds. The quality of the whites, meanwhile, were said to have been held back by a reconstitution of the white vineyard.
At this time the proprietor was Madame M. Carlsberg-Labat, and this is almost certainly Marie Labat (1884 – 1954), most surely the daughter of the Labat who part-owned the estate back in 1886. On April 23rd 1904 she married André-Wilhelm-Arthur Carlsberg (1875 – 1918) which would explain her new surname. They had a daughter Odette Carlsberg (born 1905) and a son Raoul Carlsberg (born 1907); despite his rather Teutonic surname Raoul answered General de Gaulle’s call and signed up to fight with the Free French during World War II, otherwise I have little information on him.
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