History
In the middle of the 17th century, Arnaud Ducasse bought a small house, on the banks of the Gironde estuary, to Jacques de Ségur, Seigneur of Lafite. He could hardly had imagined then that it would be the start of a superb estate that would remain in his family for almost three centuries.
Pierre Ducasse, a lawyer passionate about vine-growing, is the real founder of the estate. He bought land within three parishes: Pauillac, Saint-Lambert and Saint-Sauveur; as well as three Lord’s domains: Lafite, Latour and Beychevelle.
Additional purchases and swaps enabled him to extend his estates up to his death in 1797.
His son inherited the 60-hectare estate (148 acres), then called “Ducasse-Grand-Puy-Artigues-Arnaud”, of which two-thirds were planted with vine. Around 1820, he had the existing château built, on the site of his ancestors' house, facing the Gironde estuary. It was under his son-in-law’s management, Adrien Chauvet, that the estate was classified in 1855, under the name of Artigues Arnaud. The company called Grand-Puy Ducasse was then founded in 1932.
In 1971 a new group of shareholders took on the somewhat dormant estate, and went on to restructure and enlarge the vineyard’s holding. As from 1980, the winery was equipped with a new vatting house, including sorting tables and other facilities for handling the harvest. In 1991, the sorting tables were moved into the vineyards, in order to improve the quality of hand-picking. In 2004, CA Grands Crus, a subsidiary of the Groupe Crédit Agricole, acquired Château Grand Puy Ducasse. An improvement plan was put together for the entire estate. It is supervised today by Anne Le Naour, the Technical Director, and the consultant oenologist, Hubert de Bouärd.