The year 1876 marks the entry of the Marchive family, originally from Jarnac in Charente, into the history of French cooperage, with Louis, Pierre, and Félix Marchive, three brothers, all coopers.
Tonnellerie Marchive also benefits from unique expertise and experience in the manufacturing of large containers, passed down from generation to generation since the mid-19th century, thanks to its association with Tonnellerie Fruhinsholz. This cooperage, founded in 1849 in Alsace, notably built the largest wine vat in the world for the Byrrh establishment in Thuir (Pyrénées-Orientales) and produced many award-winning vats at world exhibitions.
The history of Marchive – Fruhinsholz™ is, above all, the story of the union of two cooperages with a glorious past and the sharing of an invaluable expertise.
André Marchive (1924-2016) founded the first Marchive cooperage in Jarnac in 1949.
There was already a cooperage tradition in the Marchive family, as three of Louis Marchive’s sons, a farmer, are listed as coopers in the 1876 population census of Jarnac: Louis, 17 years old, Pierre (grandfather of André Marchive), 14 years old, and Félix, 12 years old.
Later on (in the 1901 and 1906 population censuses), only Félix Marchive continued working as a cooper, initially for the cask manufacturer Gay in 1901 and then independently in 1906, while Pierre is listed as a crate manufacturer.
The Jarnac site expanded, and new buildings were constructed in 1969 following the acquisition of Tonnellerie Fruhinsholz. The machine tools from the Fruhinsholz cooperage in Nancy were transferred to the new Jarnac site. By 1987, production reached 30 barrels per day with a workforce of 16 people (the cooperage had around 100 employees around 1970).
Tonnellerie Marchive strives to remain attentive to your needs and those of fine wine enthusiasts, guided by the values it holds dear, rooted in its history and the precious heritage passed down to its coopers over the decades.
