DANFLOU, Alfred

Les Grands crus du Bordelais. Monographies et photographies des châteaux et vignobles

Bordeaux: Goudin & Lavertujon, [1867]. Two volumes. Folio. (13 3/4 x 10 5/8 inches). 110; 106 pp. 55 albumen print photographs, each captioned with the name of the château and its owner.

Contemporary red morocco-backed cloth boards, spine with raised band, lettered gilt

The rare second, expanded edition of an important photographically illustrated record of the classified growths of Bordeaux, published just over a decade after the 1855 Classification and illustrated with 55 albumen photographs of the châteaux and vineyards that had come to define the international identity of Bordeaux wine.

Danflou's Les Grands Crus Bordelais is one of the earliest and most ambitious photographic publications devoted to wine, using the relatively new medium of albumen photography to document the architecture, landscape, and proprietorship of Bordeaux's leading estates. The 1867 edition is the substantially enlarged form of the work, issued in two volumes with 55 albumen photographs: the first volume treating the first, second, and third growths, and the second treating the fourth and fifth growths. The work is closely tied to the world created by the 1855 Bordeaux Classification. Commissioned for the Exposition Universelle in Paris, the classification ranked the leading Bordeaux wines by reputation and market value, arranging the red wines from first to fifth growths and giving enduring form to the hierarchy of the Médoc, with Château Haut-Brion as the notable Graves exception. Danflou's volumes give that hierarchy a visual architecture, presenting the classified estates through their châteaux, vineyard settings, and named owners. The photographs are central to the book's importance. Each château is shown not merely as a wine-producing property, but as a seat of identity, ownership, and prestige. The images record façades, courtyards, outbuildings, vineyard landscapes, and estate approaches, fixing in photographic form the material culture of Bordeaux wine at a moment when the great growths were being codified for an international market. The publication also belongs to the early history of photographic bookmaking in France. Original photographs mounted into a folio text, gave the work a documentary immediacy. The resulting volumes combine wine history, estate monograph, architectural record, and photographic survey, preserving the appearance and ownership of the Bordeaux grands crus in the first generation after the 1855 Classification.

Vicaire, 248; Bitting, 114; Chwartz, I, n°354; Howgego (2), 96.

Item #42841

Price: $5,300.00