Chateau Loudenne, the former estate of the Gilbey family, makers of Gilbey’s gin, has been sold to Kweichow Moutai Company Limited, a Chinese state-owned company specializing in the production of Maotai or Baijiu liquor. The estate, located in Saint-Yzans-de-Medoc, covers more than 120 hectares and has 57 hectares of vines: 49.5 hectares producing Medoc Cru Borugeois red wines from a blend of Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Malbec, and 7.5 hectares producing AOC Bordeaux white wines from a blend of Sauvignon Blanc and Semillon.

The estate had been owned since 2000 by the Lafragette family, best known for the production of Alize, a cognac-based fruit flavoured liquor, with which they had considerable success in the United States. It is the last of their three Bordeaux estates to have been sold, the others being Chateau de Rouillac in Pessac-Leognan and Chateau de l’Hospital in Graves.

Moutai was known to have been searching for a Bordeaux property for some time to complement its growing wine business in China.