Distillerie Sécrestat, actuellement musée Goupil
MonumentHidden Treasure
Former neo-classical brick and stone distillery (1898), birthplace of the legendary Sécrestat bitters, it now houses the Musée Goupil, the sole guardian of the archives of 19th-century industrial art publishing.
History
In the heart of Bordeaux, in the Chartrons district renowned for its trading past and converted warehouses, the Sécrestat distillery is an exceptional example of Belle Époque industrial architecture. Built in 1898 for Pierre Sécrestat, it continues an entrepreneurial history that began in 1852, when the family opened a liqueur factory on rue Notre-Dame, the flagship of which was the famous Sécrestat bitter, an elixir flavoured with gentian and bitter orange peel that was exported all over Europe. What sets this site apart from so many other rehabilitated industrial wastelands is the superimposition of two seemingly distant heritages: that of Bordeaux's liqueur-making expertise and that of the revolution in printed images in the 19th century. Since 1991, the walls that once housed the vats and stills have been home to the precious collections of the Goupil company: photographs, copper engravings, prints and chromolithographs that bear witness to the birth of the industrial distribution of art. Visiting the museum is like taking a double plunge: into the olfactory and technical backstage world of industrial-scale production by hand, and into the visual archives of a century of artistic reproduction. The three levels of preparation rooms and the cellar in the basement give the visit a dramatic verticality, moving from the natural light filtered through the large windows in the façade to the vaulted spaces in the basement. The setting, just a stone's throw from the Garonne and the Museum of Contemporary Art (CAPC), is part of a district undergoing a cultural renaissance. The sober, elegant neoclassical front facade is in keeping with the neighbouring private mansions of 18th-century merchants, a reminder that Bordeaux has always known how to combine commerce and beauty.
Architecture
The Sécrestat distillery is a coherent example of the prestigious industrial architecture of the late 19th century, where the street façade had to assert the respectability and financial solidity of the company. The main elevation features a neoclassical-style central projection in brick and ashlar, a typical Bordeaux combination of materials found in many warehouses and cellars in the Chartrons district. This slightly projecting forebuilding structures the vertical composition and gives the building an architectural gravity that transcends its simple industrial function. Behind this well-groomed façade, the interior programme is strictly functional. The preparation and production rooms are spread over three levels, taking advantage of gravity in the distillation process: the raw materials moved up and down through the various stages of transformation. The fermenting room, located in the basement, housed the large fermentation and storage vats, whose thick walls and naturally cool basement ensured the temperature regulation that was essential to the quality of the products. The floors, probably made of iron and brick or incipient reinforced concrete for the upper levels, bear witness to the construction innovations of the period. The generous interior volumes, a legacy of the building's industrial function, now lend themselves naturally to the display of works of art and the presentation of the Musée Goupil's photographic and graphic collections.
Related Figures
Pierre Sécrestat — industriel bordelais, fondateur de la distillerie en 1898, continuateur de la fabrique familiale fondée en 1852Adolphe Goupil (1806-1893) — éditeur et marchand d'art parisien, fondateur de la maison Goupil & Cie, dont les fonds sont conservés dans le muséeHenri Rittner — co-fondateur avec Adolphe Goupil de la maison d'édition artistique Goupil & Rittner, spécialisée dans la reproduction industrielle d'images d'artVincent van Gogh — travailla comme employé pour les filiales de la maison Goupil à La Haye, Londres et Paris entre 1869 et 1876, avant de se consacrer à la peintureFamille Sécrestat — fondateurs de la fabrique de liqueurs rue Notre-Dame en 1852, exploitants du site jusqu'en 1973
