This year, the Château de La Chaize is celebrating its 350 years of history, … This year, the Château de La Chaize is celebrating its 350 years of history, …

Do you know the roots of our history?

Jean-François de La Chaize d’Aix, brother of King Louis XIV’s confessor, known as “Père Lachaise” (who gave his name to the famous Parisian cemetery), was appointed the King’s Lieutenant in Beaujeu, the capital of the former province of Beaujolais.

Captivated by the region, he acquired the Château de la Douze in 1670, a medieval fortress located on the slopes of the Beaujolais hills. The earliest written records referring to this historic Château de La Douze date back to 1196. Ninety-one years later, the name La Douze also became that of a documented vineyard.

Alas... shortly after acquiring the estate, a landslide caused by a storm destroyed the château.

“I then decided to build a larger, more majestic residence on the site, one that would bear the mark of its time,” he explains. “Thanks to my brother’s influence at court, I was able to call upon the finest builders of the era, those chosen by the King for Versailles: Jules Hardouin-Mansart, architect of the royal buildings, and André Le Nôtre, creator of the gardens.” And, proudly adjusting his lace cravat, he adds: “In just two years, they created what I dare say is one of the most beautiful châteaux in France. By giving it my name, I could never have imagined that Château de La Chaize would still be admired in the twenty-first century...”

The château, with its classical lines and elegant proportions based on the Golden Ratio, stands before a large reflecting pool at the end of an avenue lined with sculpted yew trees, a formal French garden, and a kitchen garden laid out in rays like the sun, together covering 1.5 hectares. Behind the château lies a rectangular sloping plot backed against the hillside and enclosed by a protective stone wall: a clos planted with vines and remarkably well exposed.

Completed in 1676, the estate would be passed down from generation to generation for more than three centuries, even though the owners’ name changed: “For my granddaughter, Anne-Françoise de La Chaize, married Marquis Pierre-François de Montaigu in 1735. He had no connection with Shakespeare’s Romeo Montague... he was Louis XV’s ambassador to Venice. He also chose a rather unusual solitary wanderer as his private secretary, by the name of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”

“In the eighteenth century,” continues Jean-François de La Chaize d’Aix, “my descendants – the Montaigu family – had the excellent idea of planting vineyards all around the château. The quality of the soils, the slope of the hillsides and their exposure provided ideal conditions for producing fine wines. And history proved them right...”

When the Marquise de Montaigu died without children in 1967, the estate passed to her great-niece, Nicole Roussy de Sales. Together with her husband and children, she devoted fifty years to promoting Château de La Chaize wines throughout the world and maintaining the château. The château, its gardens and its winery were officially listed as Historic Monuments in 1972.

In 2017, another family took over: that of Christophe Gruy, together with his nephew Boris Gruy, the estate’s Managing Director and winemaker.

A living heritage looking towards the future…

More than an anniversary, these 350 years illustrate the continuity of a vision: to make Château de La Chaize an essential benchmark among France’s great wines.