Château de Malle

Château de Malle, in Preignac, France, is a historic wine estate and château built by a Bordeaux bourgeois and merchant at the turn of the 17th century, with architecture that blends classical order and Renaissance inspiration. Its origins in the late 1500s and the completed château of the early 1600s established the site as a producer of white wines that entered regional and international markets. The estate’s Sauternes received the rank of Second Growth in the Bordeaux 1855 classification, and the main buildings and grounds have been placed under national heritage protection, reflecting centuries of continuous wine-making and family ownership.

The first house on the site was constructed in 1598 by Arnaud de Malle; that structure survives and today serves as the estate’s boutique. In the early 1600s Jacques de Malle, president of the Parliament of Bordeaux, erected the present château and began systematic production of white wine. A mid-17th century record notes the 1643 harvest amounted to 54 tonneaux and two barriques, showing substantial output for that period.

Ownership passed into the Lur-Saluces family when Jeanne de Malle married Alexandre-Eutrope de Lur-Saluces, baron of Fargues and count of Uza. Alexandre-Eutrope laid out formal gardens and placed his coat of arms of three crescents on the façades. Pierre de Lur-Saluces inherited in 1754, followed in 1780 by Claude Henri de Lur-Saluces, who bore the title seigneur de Malle and was executed by guillotine on 24 December 1793 at Place Nationale in Bordeaux as a victim of revolutionary measures against the aristocracy. In 1793 Louis-Alexandre-Eugène, a royalist deputy for Gironde, assumed the seigneurial title.

Ferdinand-Eugène became owner in 1842 and passed the estate to his son Henri, who served as a senator of Gironde. It was under Henri’s stewardship that the château’s Sauternes achieved its 1855 Second Growth status. In response to the phylloxera crisis, Pierre de Lur-Saluces reduced the vineyard from about 40 hectares to roughly 15 hectares and in 1937 bequeathed the property to his sister Adélaïde; the estate later passed to Augustine Léontine Mathilde d’Auzac de Campanac.

After the Second World War the estate came under Pierre de Bournazel, count de Lespinasse de Bournazel. A severe frost in 1956 destroyed the vineyard and necessitated replanting, and in 1959 he established the Commandery of Bontemps of Sauternes and Barsac. Following his death in 1985 his widow Nancy de Bournazel managed the domain with their sons. By 2018 the house and vines had fallen into disuse, with the last commercial vintage dated 2016. In April 2024 Luc Planty, formerly director of Château Guiraud, and his wife Clémence purchased the estate for several million euros, the first transfer outside hereditary succession; they initiated conversion to organic agriculture and reopened parts of the property.

A note of alternate dating appears in one account that places the château’s erection at the start of the 18th century. Figures for the estate’s vineyard holdings also vary: one record traces 38 hectares of vines on the property since 1666, roughly divided between Sauternes and Graves, while other statements ascribe a total of 50 hectares across the communes of Preignac, Toulenne and Fargues, split into 28 hectares in Sauternes, 3 hectares of white Graves and 20 hectares of red Graves.