Joseph ducos

With the appearance of phylloxera around 1870, the Tulle de Villefranche family sold its property, a vineyard already afflicted by this vine blight, to an extraordinary individual, the Commandant Joseph Ducos. Armed with unfailing courage and strong convictions, Ducos set about reconstructing the domaine and introducing multiple grape varieties that were to assure considerable success for the wines of La Nerthe.
During a speech given in Avignon in 1938, the French President Albert Lebrun lauded " this Commandant Ducos who with his La Nerthe property, was the soul of the viticultural reconstitution " of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. Mayor of Châteauneuf, then deputy of the Vaucluse region, President of the first "Syndicat Viticole" (an association of wine growers) of Châteauneuf, recipient of the gold medal of the Chamber of Agriculture of the Vaucluse (of which he would later serve as president), Joseph Ducos made the name Châteauneuf-du-Pape official in 1893.