Wines

Château Phélan Ségur

Véronique Dausse
Saint-Estèphe

Featured:
Thursday, May 8, 2025 – Trade Tasting
Friday, May 9, 2025 – Vintners Dinner and Auction
Saturday, May 10, 2025 – Bordeaux Master Class and Grand Tasting Reception

Located in the village of Saint-Estèphe, Château Phélan Ségur has proudly overlooked the Gironde estuary since the early 19th century.

Founded by Irishman, Bernard Phelan, the estate was developed by his son, Frank, and renamed Phélan Ségur in the early 20th century. The cellar and the vat room are integrated into the Château in a highly unusual architectural ensemble. The property is spread over 114 hectares, including 44 hectares of parks, forests, meadows, streams and ponds, forming a remarkable biodiversity reserve. Its 70 hectares of vineyards benefit from the temperature regulation provided by the proximity of the River; they are divided into four very distinct islands and express the diversity of the clay-gravel soils of the appellation. This produces powerful wines often characterised by their tannic structure. The Phélan Ségur style stands out for its elegance, its pure and complex aromas, its finesse and precision, the quality of its tannins and its balance.

Philippe Van de Vyvere is the owner since January 2018. Initiated by his grandfather at an early age, this great connoisseur of Bordeaux was really taken with the Château Phélan Ségur. He intends to apply his entrepreneurial values in pursuit of aesthetic and technical while respecting environmental balances.

While she has kept a love of the land and of terroirs from her Piedmontese and Gascon origins, Véronique Dausse has also built up an extremely full career in the world of wine. With an MBA under her belt, she started her career at Clos du Val in the Napa Valley. Here, she established the four pillars of her wine know-how: knowledge of the product, a commercial spirit, an Anglo-Saxon approach to marketing refined through contact with distributors and consumers around the world, and insatiable curiosity. She has thus taken part in: the renewal of Languedoc wines and the birth of branded varietal wines (as Marketing Manager at Skalli Fortant de France from 1990 to 1994); the emergence of a great Champagne brand (as Sales and Marketing Director at Champagnes Nicolas Feuillatte, where she started as Export Director in 1995 and remained for 11 years); a remarkable incursion into the world of spirits (in the Export Department of Marie Brizard / Belvédère); and in the service of AdVini at the time of the merger of the Jeanjean and Laroche families, as the head of the distribution division.  

In becoming Managing Director of Château Phélan Ségur in 2010, she joined the Gardiniers, a family entirely focused on gastronomy and the art of living, with the restaurants Le Taillevent and Les Crayères, among others. She has brought her energy, her determination and her obsession with quality to one of St Estèphe’s most brilliant wine estates. In 2018, Château Phélan Ségur came under the ownership of the Flemish Van de Vyvere family. In love with the property and its terroir, Véronique accompanies Philippe Van de Vyvere in realising his dream, for which he puts his entrepreneurial values to work in search of aesthetic and technical excellence, with respect for environmental and social balance.  

The mother of 3 children, she divides her time between her family, her oenological and culinary travels, and opera.