There is a Roman water supply system still visible on the grounds of Château Figeac. It dates from the second century AD, when a Gallo-Roman landowner named Figeacus built his villa on a rise of gravel-rich soil at the northwestern tip of what would one day become the most contested appellation in Bordeaux. The name stuck. The land did not change hands so much as it passed through them — through medieval lords, merchant families, and eventually winemakers — accumulating history in layers as deep as its unusual soils, especially its unconventional gravel.