Bordeaux Wine Enthusiasts

I ran across an interesting fact this morning, and thought I would present it to my BWE brethren in the form of a quiz. This one is pretty lame compared to Alex's weekly quiz, and should be easily Google-able, but maybe some of you already know the answer.

Pontet Canet and Chateau D'Issan are both BWE favorites, with BWE dinners attended by the proprieters as prominent events in BWE history. What is the connection between these Chateaux?

The Cruse family

Correct.

Would anyone care to elaborate on that connection?

The two families are related by marriage since the Cognac producer Guy Tesseron married Nicole Cruse in 1961.

Pontet Canet is owned by two brothers: Gérar and manager Alfred. The latter's neice, and heiress of Pontet Canet, Mélanie Tesseron, is more English than French. She is also an agricultural engineer and a very competent young woman.

Alex R.

At one point the Cruse family owned Pontet Canet. From Wikipedia:

In 1865, Herman Cruse purchased Château Pontet-Canet, a renowned wine estate that had seen better times. He quickly modernized the facilities at Pontet-Canet and built a subterranean wine cellar. The wine was not bottled at the estate, and sold in large quantities without vintage label to the French railways company.

In 1973, the Cruse family lost Château Pontet-Canet when a wine fraud was discovered in which cheap table wine was turned into expensive red Bordeaux by falsifying the records. The ensuing scandal forced Cruse to sell the estate in 1975 to Cognac merchant Guy Tesseron, owner of Château Lafon-Rochet.

Cool stuff!