Chateau Magnol features all the elements of the classic French Chateau: Winding corridors lead to elegantly appointed chambers. Museum-worthy paintings. Vases brim with fragrant blooms plucked from the garden. In the kitchen, a chef chops herbs plucked from beds just outside the window. A long dining room table set with silver and the finest china invites long, drawn-out meals and conversation. A roaring fireplace creates the perfect, cozy ambiance for dessert cordials. A vast cellar is stocked with bottles waiting anxiously to be uncorked.
Adorned with wisteria and trellised red roses and surrounded by endless vineyards, the 18th century estate, home of Barton & Guestier, the oldest wine house still in operation in Bordeaux, exudes elegance.
The Barton & Guestier story begins over 300 years ago, in 1722, when Irishman Thomas Barton (1695-1780) left his home in Curraghmore, County Fermanagh, and settled in Bordeaux, determined to find a wine estate of his own. By 1725, he was sending barrels and bottles of the finest Bordeaux wines via the high seas to his wine-loving customers in Northern Europe, having earned the nickname “French Tom” as the port city’s go-to merchant.
The business remained in the Barton Family until French Tom’s grandson, Hugo Barton, teamed up with Frenchman Daniel Guestier in the late 1700s. Together, Barton & Guestier sourced wines from the best vineyards in Bordeaux, aged them in their cellars, and then loaded them onto ships that sailed off along the Garonne River and across the ocean.
Ahead of his times, ever-entrepreneurial Guestier opened a trade office in Baltimore, Maryland. And none other than U.S. President Thomas Jefferson, who once declared, “Good wine is a necessity of life for me”, was among the duo’s first clients.
Jefferson had joined John Adams and Benjamin Franklin in Paris in 1784, where he eventually succeeded Franklin as Minister to France (1785-1789) before becoming Secretary of State. Like most early Americans, before his stint in France, he indulged in sweet, heavy wines from the Iberian Peninsula. His tastes changed after he toured Bordeaux and indulged in France’s finest vintages. “The taste of this country was artificially created by our long restraint under the English government to the strong wines of Portugal and Spain”, he later remarked on America’s penchant for Madeira and port.
Upon his return to Virginia in 1795, he placed an order for 250 bottles of Bordeaux, 120 bottles of Sauternes, 60 bottles of Frontignan, and 60 bottles of white Hermitage. The cellar of his Monticello home brimmed with the finest of Bordeaux wines.
During his presidency, Jefferson was a wine connoisseur par excellence, hosting three wine-fueled dinner parties in the White House each week. He was also the first president to equip the White House with an adequate wine cellar. Of his $25,000 annual salary, he spends $3,200 on wine alone during his first year in office.
Though he was well into his retirement in 1818, Jefferson was alarmed ad took immediate action when some members of the federal government suggested a higher tariff on wine imports, noting in a letter to Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford, “I think it a great error to consider a heavy tax on wines as a tax on luxury. On the contrary, it is a tax on the health of our citizens. It is legislative direction that none but the richest of them shall be permitted to drink wine…”
Build at the beginning of the 1700s, the Chateau Magnol in Blanquefort, just a few kilometers from the heart of Bordeaux city, was inspired by an ancient Gallo-Roman villa. Situated in the Haut-Medoc appellation, it’s surrounded by 30 hectares of Haute Valeur Environnementale vineyards (HVE is a French agricultural certification that recognizes a commitment to protecting and enriching the environment through responsible, conservation-minded practices.) Its magnificent underground cellar houses an extraordinary collection of almost 20,000 bottles.
The underground cellar, however, conceals a dark history.
During the Second World War, when German troops reached Bordeaux on June 28, 1940, they took over the Chateau and made it the headquarters of their naval operations (an occupation that would last until August 1944). The wine cellar served as their bunker.
In 1942, Winston Churchill launched Operation Frankton, described by British Admiral Louis Mountbatten as a “brilliant little operation carried through with great determinism ad courage…” On December 7, 13 Royal Marines planned to paddle nearly 70 miles up the Gironde Estuary in 6 collapsible canvas kayaks to the port of Bordeaux. Just two kayaks made it all the way, where they attached mines to Japan-bound German ships loaded with arms.
Only two of the soldiers survived. One brave Royal Marine was executed at the Chateau. A small memorial adjacent to the bunker stands in his honor, and an annual ceremony celebrates his valiant efforts. The tale of Operation Frankton featured in the 1955 film The Cockleshell Heroes.
Today, sommeliers from around the world visit Chateau Magnol’s B&G Food & Wine Academy to learn about the French AOC system and wine tasting techniques under the supervision of Master Sommelier Omar Barbosa.
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Learn more about the history of Barton & Guestier.
