Jean Gautreau was born in April 1927 in Lesparre into a family who had nothing whatsoever to do with the wine industry. His father was an insurance agent. Jean was an accomplished athlete. He played football and tennis, even making it to the semi-finals of the Roland Garros Juniors competition at the age of 18.
He returned to Lesparre after his military service in Morocco and worked for the brokerage firm of Miailhe in 1948 at a time when business was very tough for the Bordeaux wine trade. Regularly in touch with leading merchants, Jean Gautreau, aged 21, clearly saw the enormous potential – especially in Africa – for sales of an inexpensive blend consisting of wine from the Gers department with deeply-coloured wines from the Northern Médoc. Taking advantage of this commercial opportunity, he decided to leave his job in 1950 to become an independent broker.
Seeing that the price of Bordeaux wine was heading inexorably upward, Jean Gautreau created his own négociant firm on 1st January 1957. He soon found customers in Belgium and the Netherlands and developed a flourishing trade in quality Bordeaux wines. He innovated by introducing the concept of mobile bottling units to provide château-bottled wines to his clients.
An excellent terroir
Sociando-Mallet has throned on the Butte de Baleyron, one of the finest gravelly terroirs in the Médoc, since the 17th century. Situated in the commune of Saint-Seurin-de-Cadourne, north of Pauillac, the vineyard overlooks the Gironde estuary on a bend in the river.
Sociando-Mallet's terroir consists of Günz gravel over a deep layer of clay-limestone soil. This terroir perfectly regulates water supply and enables Cabernet Sauvignon to ripen extremely well and Merlot to acquire depth and complexity. This terroir is Sociando's soul. It provides the wine with complex structure, freshness, and elegance.
An incredible know-how
The entire vineyard is harvested by hand into small crates by a team of 120 pickers. The bunches arrive at the cellar in perfect condition.Once brought to the cellar, the bunches are sorted by hand on a conveyor belt to eliminate matter other than grapes as well as any imperfect fruit. The grapes are then de-stemmed, gently crushed, and sent into the vats, making sure not to mix grape varieties or grapes from different plots.
This plot-by-plot selection means that each vat can be vinified in optimum conditions with a tailor-made process. Grapes from young vines or grown on a shallow layer of gravel produce La Demoiselle de Sociando-Mallet, the estate's second wine. Grapes from the finest terroirs produce the grand vin, and grapes from some other plots must wait until the first tastings to know which cuvée they will go into.