Château Chasse-Spleen

In the 19th century, Chasse-Spleen was one of several estates with the village of Poujeaux in its name. Rosa Ferrière gave the estate the name Chasse-Spleen and it became the first branded wine in Bordeaux.

In Bordeaux, it used to be customary to give one's own winery a combination of proper name and place name. The founder of this winery did the same and in 1720 combined his surname Gressier with that of the village of Grand Poujeaux, on the edge of which the winery was to be located, to create Gressier-Grand Poujeaux. In 1820, the estate was divided into two parts by inheritance. The son kept Gressier-Grand Poujeaux. Lucrèce, the daughter, who married a Castaing de Poujeaux, inherited a vineyard but no name. However, a name was needed for the 1863 World Exhibition in London, where the wines were presented, and so it became "Poujeaux-Castaing". Rosa Ferrière, Lucrèce's daughter-in-law and already a widow, was more shrewd and when the English became interested in the estate's wines, she remembered that Lord Byron had once stopped off at Gressier and had been lavishly entertained by his great-grandfather. Lord Byron is said to have praised the quality of the wine: It was particularly good "to dispel the spleen", in other words "to dispel melancholy". The English term "spleen" had already been popularised in 19th century France by Charles Baudelaire and so Rosa translated the English "dispel the spleen" into "Chasse Spleen".