Chateauneuf du Pape Domaine du Vieux Lazaret , France

£29.95

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Chateauneuf du Pape Domaine du Vieux Lazaret. In 1748 Antoine Quiot, who already owned land on the banks of the Rhône growing wheat, vines and other crops, bought his first Chateauneuf-du-pape vines. It was 12 salmées (8 hectares) in size. In 1793, his grandson Jean Baptiste bought the Tour de Lhers, an old tower next to the Rhône which had become a national property during the Revolution after being confiscated from an aristocratic French family (Rohan-Soubise). It was a vast estate of 100 hectares. He built a house there, which his family still live in today, using stones from the old château. He married the daughter of a landowner who was guillotined during the Revolution and was made mayor of Chateauneuf in 1815 and 1835. From this period onwards (the beginning of the 19th century) the wines from our estate were sold in bottles or casks and marketed to connoisseur clients. The Viscountess of Castellane, who was the grandmother of Fouché, minister of police for Napoleon 1st, was one of them. Her son Jean married the descendant of an old winemaking family who owned the land around Vieux Lazaret (an old hospital used to quarantine and treat patients during the great epidemics of the 17th and 18th centuries) and he settled in Chateauneuf du Pape where he was mayor from 1852 to 1860. He moved the estate’s headquarters to Vieux Lazaret and slowly enlarged it through marriage or purchase. In 1873, woodland was bought to satisfy the family’s passion for hunting (The Combes d’Arnevels). In 1875 the entire vineyard was destroyed by phylloxera, a small insect that eats the roots of vines, eventually killing them. Our family was ruined and took up quarrying, the silk trade and farming (wheat and cereals). The vineyard was replanted primarily with Grenache grapes. Neither the 1914-1918 war, the economic crisis of 1929 nor the Second World War were helpful to the expansion or development of the estate. In 1980 Geneviève and Jérôme Quiot decided to relaunch bottle sales.