page_title: Château Fortia
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Château Fortia / History
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
context_page_description: Château Fortia is a French wine producing estate in the Châteauneuf-du-Pape region of the Rhône Valley. With a history dating back to the eighteenth century, Château Fortia has long been a notable producer in the southern Rhône. In the early twentieth century, the estate came under the direction of Pierre Le Roy de Boiseaumarié. Baron Le Roy went on to be co-founder of the Institut National des Appellations d'Origine and guided the creation of the Appellation d'origine contrôlée system which is the basis of not only French wine laws but has also been influential in the laws and appellation systems around the globe.
context_section_description: While the estate has a long winemaking history with ancient cellars that were constructed in the fourteenth century, the modern winemaking history of Château Fortia dates to the mid eighteenth-century when the Marquis de Fortia d'Urban leased a portion of his land in 1763 to sharecroppers who were producing wine. By 1783, the wine being produced from the estate was receiving favorable accolades from consumers in Northern Europe, the British Isles and the West Indies. In writings, the Marquis describes the red Châteauneuf-du-Pape as "... between that of Languedoc and Bordeaux. It is less smoky than the former and its bouquet close to the later."
  In the early nineteenth century, the estate passed to a descendant of the Marquis de Fortia, Paul-Antoine de Fortia, who further expanded the vineyard plantings and buildings on the estate. By 1815 there were outside records of a castle La Fortiasse on the estate. In 1843, the Count de Ripert Monclar wrote favorably of the estate and described the hermitage that was among the vineyards. That same year, Paul-Antoine died and the estate passed to his heir Louis de Séguins-Pazzis, comte du Pazzi, who held the financially encumbered estate for only a short time before selling it to a local tax collector, M. de Orollée Virville. The estate continued to pass from owner to owner for the rest of the nineteenth century, being owned at one point by the French branch of the Gondi family, until it was purchased by Bernard Le Saint in 1890. Le Saint was a former director who maintained the official journal of the Egyptian government. He further expanded the estate and gave it its current name, Château Fortia. In 1919, his daughter Edmée married a decorated World War I pilot, Baron Pierre Le Roy de Boiseaumarié.
  When Baron Le Roy died in 1967, the estate passed to his son Henri Le Roy. In 1994, Henri's son Bruno Le Roy took over as manager and continued managing the estate until 2004. Since 2001 until now, Didier Robert from ICV served as a consulting enologist and the quality of the wines increased. Since 2004, the estate has been run by Pierre Pastre (Chantal Le Roy de Boiseaumarié's husband) was nominated by the family to manage the estate.
caption: Plaque in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, commemorating the work of Château Fortia's Baron Le Roy in promoting the wines of the region.
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