Vines since the 3rd century…

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It is thanks to excavations at the end of the 19th century, at the bottom of the hillside to the north and south of the current house, that we have been able to reconstruct the history of the property. This is how many construction remains, a sarcophagus and many Gallo-Roman pieces were brought to light. More recently, rich mosaics have been discovered which have confirmed the existence on this site of a large Gallo-Roman villa which in the 3rd-4th century was to extend over the entire southern slope of Saint-Émilion, straddling Saint-Georges Côte Pavie and the nearby Palat site.

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Was it, as seems to be confirmed, the villa of Ausone, Bordeaux poet and wise winegrower before being the second figure of the Roman Empireﾠ?

One can think that a village rose on the ruins of these buildings after the great invasions. It is probably to serve it that the Archbishop of Bordeaux offered in 1110 to the collegiate church of Saint-Emilion a church dedicated to St-Georges from which the property took its name. The substructures of this church, of which we have the stoup, were brought to light during the excavations. A plan of the whole was drawn up before these were covered.*

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In 1420, the domain of Saint-Georges is attested as belonging to the fiefdom of the abbey of Sauve Majeure created 300 years earlier by Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Among the many owners of Saint Georges (established as a Barony under Henri IV), we must mention in the 17th and 18th centuries the old and illustrious family of Grailly, some of whose members had distinguished themselves under the Plantagenets.

During the revolution, the property was seized as national property before passing from hand to hand in the 19th century until it was purchased in 1873 by Jules Charoulet.

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The family history therefore begins in St-Emilion almost 150 years ago. It all starts in Argentat, in Corrèze, where the Charoulets, merrandiers from father to son, have been exploiting the wood for several centuries. They trade in staves, these rectangular slats, the coopers' raw material.

 

 

Indeed, the region, rich in forests, provides Libourne and Bordeaux with oak or chestnut wood for making barrels, via barges on the Dordogne. In the 18th century, Antoine and then his son Barthélemy lived in Le Bastier, a merchant district of Argentat on the banks of the river.

 

"The family history therefore begins in St-Emilion nearly 150 years ago."

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On April 4, 1838, Jules Charoulet was born who took over the family timber business for a while but soon migrated to the Ardennes. The rise of the French railway, in the middle of the 19th century, which facilitated the transport of goods and therefore competed with trade by sea on the Dordogne, was undoubtedly not unrelated to this.

He then became a wine merchant in Charleville and founded his own trading house in 1857 at the age of 19.

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What wines does he sell then? Nobody knows. In any case, he obtained numerous prizes, including a gold medal at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867. Following the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, he kept his activity in the Ardennes but left the North and came to settle in Saint-Émilion , where  his origins in Corrèze and his link with wine have probably already led him. In 1873, he acquired a small property, the Clos La Madeleine , near Ausone, and settled there with his wife, Irma, daughter of a cork merchant. The same year, he purchased another property, Saint-Georges Côte Pavie .

 

Jules died in 1899 and his son, Adolphe, took over his father's business. He acquired Château Pindefleurs in 1898, then temporarily Château Montbousquet in 1910. He won numerous prizes with his properties and became a deputy for Gironde in 1924.

 

 

When Adolphe died in 1936, the trading activity died out, his daughter Hélène and his son-in-law René Masson now managed the properties until 1980, when their son Jacques Masson took over the reins of Saint-Georges Côte Pavie.

 

In 2016, his son Philippe Masson now takes care of the property and undertakes many changes: Stéphane Derenoncourt and Hannah Fiegenschuh (Derenoncourt consultants) now advise the property, a new vat room is built and operational from the 2020 harvest, and a new cuvée is born, Clos 1873 . Finally, a sales area has opened in April 2022.

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