CARVED OUT BETWEEN THE ATLANTIC OCEAN AND THE GIRONDE ESTUARY, THE MÉDOC, THE “LAND IN THE MIDDLE” ACCORDING TO THE ETYMOLOGY, IS THE HOME TO THE LANDS OF BEAUMONT, WHICH IN THE 18TH CENTURY WERE NOTHING BUT MOORS, HEATHS, FIELDS AND WASTELANDS, OWNED BY THE DUC DE DURAS, MARSHAL OF FRANCE AND MEMBER OF THE ACADÉMIE FRANÇAISE.

The land was cleared as from 1772, and the estate became the property of Henri Labarthe, who cleaned it up and prepared it for growing vines. The vineyard of Beaumont was born in 1824, with its new owner Mr Bonnin.

From 1830 to 1847 the house of Beaumont belonged to the Marquis d’Aligre, one of the wealthiest men in France, who tripled the area under vine. In 1849 the estate passed into the hands of the Bonnin brothers, who built Château Beaumont in 1854 in a Renaissance mansard style.

In 1860, the Comte de Gennes, great-uncle of Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who won the Nobel prize for physics in 1991, acquired the property which he resold in 1872 to Jean-Victor Herran, the minister for Honduras. The Parisian industrialist Joseph Germain succeeded him in 1890. By his devotion he managed to raise the wines of Château Beaumont to the top tier of the Médoc Crus Bourgeois. He built the vat house in 1894.

From 1925 to 1986 the estate saw a succession of owners: the Milanese company Della Grazia et Cie, the lieutenant-colonel of Caracas Ignacio Andrade, the former Venezuelan senator Dionisio Ramon Bolivar Carvajal and then the winegrower Bernard Soulas, who entirely reconstructed the vineyard and restored the château.

In 1986 Château Beaumont started on its 12th life with the arrival of the GMF group, which joined with Japanese group Suntory to create the company Grands Millésimes de France, also owner of Château Beychevelle and the Bordeaux merchant Barrière Frères.

Today the capital of Grands Millésimes de France is held by the groups Suntory and Castel.