Chateau de La Dauphine, Fronsac
Chateau de La Dauphine, Fronsac
(Image credit: Chateau de La Dauphine, Fronsac)

Not only was La Dauphine an obvious Deserving Hero, but I would give this description to the appellations Fronsac and Canon-Fronsac almost in their entirety.

Following a reputation that equalled if not surpassed that of St-Emilion and Pomerol by the 18th century – confirmed by the grandeur of many châteaux – yet fell away after phylloxera, these appellations continue to produce some of the most robustly elegant and best value-for-pleasure wines on the Right Bank.

Chateau de La Dauphine

The gravity-fed vinification cellar at Chateau de La Dauphine
(Image credit: Credit Unknown)

Yet La Dauphine has a class all its own: archives date the estate back to 1670. In 1709 it was sold to Jean Olivier, a financial advisor to Louis XIV, and remained in the family through three centuries. A classical (though smaller than Laroque) château was finished in 1750 to welcome Princess Maria Josepha of Saxony, wife of Louis, Dauphin of France – hence the name. By the 1960s the property was in the capable hands of the De Brem family, who also owned Canon de Brem in Canon-Fronsac, regularly producing the best wines in both appellations. In 1985, François-Régis Marcetteau du Brem, the last descendant of the Olivier family, sold La Dauphine to Christian Moueix of Ets J-P Moueix.

Despite the Moueix viticulture and vinification know-how, Fronsac was a losing proposition and the château was sold again in 2000 to Jean Halley, co-founder of the Promodès Group, who took on board the vendor’s concern about the future of the appellation. The southerly exposed vineyard covers 40ha of vines averaging over 30 years in the form of an amphitheatre with a 60m height differential, the soils on the plateau being limestone, in the middle limestone with clay, and at the bottom clay-silty sand.

The whole property is now farmed organically with technical choices tailored to each individual plot; in the new circular vinification cellar there are 26 concrete and 16 stainless steel gravity-fed tanks of just 50hl (hectolitres), allowing each parcel to be vinified separately; the double-insulated underground cellar houses 600 barrels, renewed 25% per year. The estate’s oenologist was Denis Dubourdieu, who was succeeded in 2011 by Michel Rolland.

Steven Spurrier
Steven Spurrier
Decanter Magazine, Consultant Editor
Decanter’s consultant editor Steven Spurrier joined the wine trade in London in 1964 and later moved to Paris where he bought a wine shop in 1971, and then opened L’Academie du Vin, France’s first private wine school in 1973. Spurrier staged the historic 1976 blind tasting between wines from California and France, the Judgment of Paris, and in the 1980s he wrote several wine books and created the Christie’s Wine Course with then senior wine director Michael Broadbent, a veteran Decanter columnist. In 1988 Spurrier returned to the UK to focus on writing and consultancy, with his clients including Singapore Airlines. He has won several awards, including Le Personalité de l’Année (oenology) 1988 for services to French wine and the Maestro Award in honour of California wine legend André Tchelistcheff (2011) and is president of the Circle of Wine Writers as well as founding the Wine Society of India. He also produced his own wine, Bride Valley Brut, from his vines in Dorset.