Nicolas-Alexandre, marquis de Ségur (1695–1755) was a Bordeaux wine

Bordeaux wine

A Bordeaux wine is any wine produced in the Bordeaux region of France. Average vintages produce over 700 million bottles of Bordeaux wine, ranging from large quantities of everyday table wine, to some of the most expensive and prestigious wines in the world...

 maker who during his lifetime was known as the "Prince of Vines" due to his ownership of some of the most famous Bordeaux chateaus-including Château Lafite, Château Latour

Château Latour

Château Latour is a French wine estate, rated as a First Growth under the 1855 Bordeaux Classification. Latour lies at the very southeastern tip of the commune of Pauillac in the Médoc region to the north-west of Bordeaux, at its border with Saint-Julien, and only a few hundred metres from the...

, Château Mouton and Château Calon-Ségur

Château Calon-Ségur

Château Calon-Ségur is a winery in the Saint-Estèphe appellation of the Bordeaux wine region of France. The wine produced here was classified as one of fourteen Troisièmes Crus Classés in the historic Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855...

. A hundred years after his death, the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855

Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855

The Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855 resulted from the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris, when Emperor Napoleon III requested a classification system for France's best Bordeaux wines which were to be on display for visitors from around the world...

 would designate Lafite and Latour as First Growth

First Growth

First Growth status refers to a classification of wines primarily from the Bordeaux region of France.-Bordeaux reds:The need for a classification of the best Bordeaux wines arose for the 1855 Exposition Universelle de Paris. The result was the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855, a list...

s, Mouton as a second growth and Calon-Ségur as a third growth.

Early history

Nicolas-Alexandre was the son of Alexandre de le Meon de Ségur de Francs et Portugaises and Marie-Thérèse de Clausel and paternal grandson of Jean-Isaac, marquis de Ségur (d. 1707), military commander and a descendant of François de Ségur, seigneur de Sainte-Aulaye (d. 1605). His first cousin was Henri François, comte de Ségur and other relatives include Henri IV, vicomte de Ségur, leader and nobleman, becoming Duke in France and England, and Marguerite de Ségur, HRH Prince Albert's great-grandmother, also Queen Victoria's great-grandmother making Prince Albert and Queen Victoria second if not first cousins, part of Marquessate. The Ségur name has appeared to be in the Royal line from time to time. Through his maternal grandfather, he would inherit Château Latour. In 1716, Alexandre de Ségur bought Château Lafite and following his death, that occurred soon after, the estate passed on to Nicolas-Alexandre. In 1718, he would purchase Château Mouton and Château Calon-Ségur.

At one point he owned the land that would become the classified estates of Chateau d'Armailhac

Château d'Armailhac

Château d'Armailhac, previously named Château Mouton-d'Armailhacq , Château Mouton-Baron Philippe , Mouton Baronne and Château Mouton-Baronne-Philippe , is a winery in the Pauillac appellation of the Bordeaux region of France...

 and Chateau Pontet-Canet

Château Pontet-Canet

Château Pontet-Canet is a winery in the Pauillac appellation of the Bordeaux wine region of France. Chateau Pontet-Canet is also the name of the red wine produced by this property...

.

The Prince des vignes

Under the Marquis' influence, the wines of Chateau Lafite became firmly entrenched in the London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

 market. Prime Minister

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the Head of Her Majesty's Government in the United Kingdom. The Prime Minister and Cabinet are collectively accountable for their policies and actions to the Sovereign, to Parliament, to their political party and...

 Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole

Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....

 was a frequent customer, purchasing a barrel every three months. The Marechal de Riche-lieu

Louis François Armand du Plessis, duc de Richelieu

Armand de Vignerot du Plessis was a French soldier, diplomat and statesman. Joining the army, he participated in three major wars and eventually rose to the rank of Marshal of France....

 introduced the wines of Chateau Lafite to the royal court of Louis XV and spoke glowingly of the wine's invigorating benefits.

Louis gave Nicolas-Alexandre the nickname "The Prince des vignes" when he visited his court. The king mistook the buttons on the Marquis' coat for diamond

Diamond

In mineralogy, diamond is an allotrope of carbon, where the carbon atoms are arranged in a variation of the face-centered cubic crystal structure called a diamond lattice. Diamond is less stable than graphite, but the conversion rate from diamond to graphite is negligible at ambient conditions...

s and complemented on their quality. The king was then informed that those stones were actually the cut and polished rocks from the Marquis' famous vineyards.

Legacy

Nicolas-Alexandre is credited with drawing the line that divides the neighboring Chateau Lafite and (now) Chateau Mouton-Rothschild and distinguishing the different styles of wine that these two properties produce. While the other properties were sold not long after his death, Chateau Latour stayed within his family till 1963.