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Origin and history

The Château de Malleret, located in Cadaujac en Gironde, came into being in the early eighteenth century when Guillaume Malleret, a lawyer at the Parliament of Bordeaux, acquired the estate in 1700. The site, then called Maleret, already housed a home with remains of Louis XV style. The vineyards of the estate produced 40 to 50 tons of wine, typical of Bordeaux palus. The Cassini map and the plans of the General Staff confirm its existence before the major transformations of the 19th century.

In 1839, the estate passed to Lucien Arman (known as Arman-Courau), a Bordeaux shipowner, through his marriage to Laure Caillaves. In 1860 he began to enlarge the original castle and develop a landscape park, including a private dock on the Garonne to welcome Napoleon III, a friend of the family. The friendship between Arman-Courau and the emperor, although poorly documented, was reportedly born when Louis-Napoleon was imprisoned in Ham (1840–46). The collapse of the Arman shipyards in 1868 forced the sale of the estate in 1869.

The castle, of neoclassical eclectic style, combines a body of central houses with mansard roof, side pavilions in return for square, and round towers. The honour staircase with double flights, probably anterior, leads to the large living room. The gardens, structured in French, include a basin decorated with a marble basin with lion heads, two terracotta lions (XVIII century) stolen and then recovered, and a vegetable garden-verger in squares of box. A belvedere, a former pavilion of the Maritime Exhibition of Bordeaux (1895), and a Spanish-Mauresque pigeon-house complete the outbuildings.

In the 20th century, the estate declined: Mr Berthias, owner in 1933, installed a modern dairy (Living Milk) and recovered wrought iron grills from Place Gambetta in Bordeaux. The family conflicts of the following owners led to the abandonment of the castle, saved in 1986 by a complete restoration. The large metal greenhouse (Universal Exhibition of 1878), transferred to Gradignan in the 1980s, is an iconic element that has disappeared. Since 1989, the castle has been listed as a Historic Monument and is visited during Heritage Days.

The interior houses cabinets of curiosities on the first floor, while the park, redesigned, preserves factories such as the round cellar, the guardian's house, and a water castle. The two lions, once guardians of the gate, now throne near the Garonne after their flight and their recapture in Paris. The estate thus illustrates the evolution of a wine estate in aristocratic residence, marked by the fascists of the Second Empire and the economic hazards of the 19th and 20th centuries.

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