Treachery in Bordeaux (The Winemaker Detective Series) by Jean-Pierre Alaux, Noël Balen

with a little too much familiarity.
    “Watch what you say. I’m perfectly capable of doing that,” Cooker replied. It was hard to discern any joking in his tone.
    Virgile rubbed his neck and felt it best to keep a certain distance. He regretted letting himself go and saying something that could have been interpreted as a lack of respect.
    “There is something bothering me, sir. What’s the link between the Moniales and the Haut-Brion estate?”
    “There isn’t one today, except that they share the same terroir on the Graves plateau. The Moniales estate belongs to the Fonsegrive-Massepain family, and it has since the beginning of the 19 th century, when Aristide Fonsegrive, a wine trader in Bordeaux and a direct ancestor of Denis’ wife Thérèse, bought it. During the French Revolution, when all the land belonging to the Church was confiscated, the estate became state property, and the Moniales did not escape.”
    “It once belonged to the Church?”
    “To the Order of Our Lady of the Moniales, for two centuries. At first, there was nothing but a small watermill surrounded by prairie and vineyards. Toward the end of his life, Jean de Pontac, who was the true founder of the Château Haut-Brion, thought he would win his way into heaven by giving this parcel to a religious order. He was a bourgeois Bordeaux merchant and had bought the manorial rights. He was born in 1488 and died in 1589, was married three times and had 15 children. He was a busy one.”
    “He lived to be a 101?” asked Virgile.
    “Don’t you count fast. Jean de Pontac did, in fact, live under the reigns of kings Louis XII, François I, Henri II, Charles IX and Henri III. Some years are good and age exceptionally well,” Cooker sighed. “I have tasted some wines that have crossed the century and lived through a dozen French presidents.”
    The winemaker sat down on a small pile of stones at the foot of the water tower and invited his assistant to do the same. He then recited the full details of the Pontac family dynasty. Arnaud II, the fourth son of the centenary, was the bishop of Bazas, and his funeral procession was over nine miles long. Geoffroy, president of the Bordeaux parliament, lived in the Daurade, a private mansion overflowing in gold and mirrors. Arnaud III wallowed in the same luxury as his father and became the first president of the local parliament. And finally there was François-Auguste, who also headed up the Bordeaux parliament and was the last direct Pontac descendent to own Haut-Brion.
    “From then on, things became terribly complicated,” the winemaker continued. “François-Auguste lived in such luxury that the château was seized twice to pay his debts. When his sister Marie-Thérèse inherited the estate in 1694, the land was split up, and she managed to keep only two thirds of it. I’ll spare you the details of who slept with whom and who was the widow of whom.”
    “Too bad! That’s often the most interesting!” said Virgile.
    “You’d be disappointed. There is nothing very spicy, just stories of alliances and marriages for money. No light favors or pillow talk, I fear. At this stage, François Delphin d’Aulède de Lestonnac, Marie-Thérèse’s son—she had married the owner of Château Margaux—inherited both Haut-Brion and Margaux. And that explains a rather astonishing tradition. Haut-Brion, which is in the Graves, is still classified as a Médoc premier cru, in accordance with a very ancient formulation that did not take into account its geography, but rather its age-old noble codes of usage.”
    “And that’s still the case today?”
    “Don’t forget that Bordeaux is a land of traditions. Never forget that! So, stop me if it gets too complicated, OK, Virgile? This François Delphin, Marquis of Margaux and owner of Haut-Brion, died in 1746 and passed down his land to his sister, Catherine d’Aulède de Lestonnac, the widow of the Count François-Joseph de Fumel, who had a son named Louis who