Château de Vaucouleurs: A Historic Wine Estate in Puget-sur-Argens, France
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- French
- Site type
- Domestic
- Remains
- Castle
On this page9 sections
History
Château de Vaucouleurs is a historic wine estate in Puget-sur-Argens, France, developed from a Provençal vineyard and country residence between the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. Its origins reach back to 1686, when Jean-Baptiste Jodelet, Sieur de Vaucouleurs, acquired land beside the Canavère River and established a substantial wine-producing farm.
From vineyard to bastide
Jodelet was a Burgundian who served as an intendant, a senior administrator, to the Bishop of Fréjus during the reign of Louis XIV. His 50-hectare property included vines and agricultural buildings, with the original wine cellar later becoming the château’s current cellar. After Jodelet died in 1697, the estate passed to his son Honoré, who had been born at Fréjus in 1687.
Ownership changed around 1730, when Joseph Brun, a householder in Fréjus, acquired the property. His son Jean Brun received it through a marriage contract in 1755. In 1772, Nicolas Rey purchased the domain. Rey was mayor of Puget-sur-Argens and a prominent local bourgeois who owned adjoining lands. He built a substantial bastide, a Provençal country residence, on a flat rock at the highest point of the estate.
The Rey and Court families
Under Nicolas Rey, the estate became a setting for fashionable gatherings and acquired a reputation in the Var. A local tradition maintains that Napoleon Bonaparte stopped there in October 1799 after returning from Egypt, before travelling onward to Paris. This association remains a tradition rather than a certain account of the journey.
The Napoleonic cadastre, an official land register and map used for property and taxation, shows the estate’s agricultural character in 1826. At that time, the château itself had not yet been created, and the entire 75-hectare domain was represented as a vineyard named “Bastide Rey.”
Rey gave the estate to Joseph Court in 1831, marking Court’s marriage to Rey’s granddaughter, Magdeleine-Sophie Rey. The bastide was then known as “Villa Sophie,” a name that remains carved on the arch of the principal entrance. Magdeleine-Sophie died in 1837, while the estate continued under Joseph Court’s ownership.
The nineteenth-century transformation
During the late nineteenth-century fashion for romantic folies, ornamental country residences and estate projects designed for picturesque effect, Court reshaped the property. He commissioned two crenellated towers, formal French gardens arranged with symmetry and geometric order, and a hippodrome, or horse-racing course. These additions gave the earlier bastide a medievalizing appearance and led to its new name, Château de Vaucouleurs. That name remains associated with the estate’s wines.
The Vaucouleurs racecourse opened on 3 June 1883. More than 5,000 people attended its inauguration, and visitors from Paris and the Côte d’Azur came to the estate for races and festivities. The hippodrome was short-lived, however, and the area was soon returned to vineyard cultivation.
The château passed through several owners in the early twentieth century. Madame Robilis acquired it in 1892, followed by Monsieur Po in 1923, Monsieur Zaugg in 1927, and Monsieur Sénéchal in 1932.
Wartime occupation and later history
Guillaume Le Bigot, a controller-general of the French Navy, purchased the château and its wine-growing estate in 1943. Soon after the Le Bigot family moved in, Italian military personnel requisitioned the residence. German forces later occupied both the ground floor and the upper floor, leaving the owner and her children only one bedroom and a room with a kitchen.
The agricultural hangar beside the château was converted into a military canteen during the German occupation. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel visited Vaucouleurs for strategic reasons and considered placing artillery batteries on the château’s towers. Their access through a glass roof and stairway, together with their steep roofs rather than terrace tops, made that plan impractical. The guns were instead installed at the highest point of the estate and directed towards the sea in anticipation of a possible Allied landing.
Shortly before the Allied landings, German troops withdrew into the woods, fearing reprisals. American liberation forces later established a tent camp across the estate. Guillaume Le Bigot subsequently served as mayor of Puget-sur-Argens from 1959 to 1977. The property remains privately owned by the Le Bigot family.
Château de Vaucouleurs has also been associated with visits by Napoleon Bonaparte, Erwin Rommel, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and Charles de Gaulle. The tradition concerning de Gaulle holds that he stayed there several times while Le Bigot served as his ministerial delegate for the navy.
Remains
The surviving estate combines a late eighteenth-century bastide with nineteenth-century romantic additions and agricultural buildings linked to wine production. The main residence occupies a flat rocky outcrop at the highest point of the property, while vineyards and the former racecourse area extend across the surrounding estate. The original farm cellar forms part of the château’s present cellar, preserving a direct physical connection with the property’s beginnings as a wine-producing domain.
The château and entrance
The principal residence began as the substantial bastide built by Nicolas Rey in 1772. Its later transformation gave it a medievalizing character through the addition of two crenellated towers. The towers have steeply pitched roofs rather than terrace tops, and access is provided through a glass roof and stairway. These structural features also explain why the towers were unsuitable for the artillery batteries considered during the Second World War.
The arch of the château’s principal entrance bears the inscription “Villa Sophie,” recalling the name given to the residence after Joseph Court received the estate in 1831. The inscription connects the present building with the Court family period, before the property acquired the name Château de Vaucouleurs.
Gardens, vineyard, and racecourse
The grounds created under Joseph Court included formal French gardens and a hippodrome. The racecourse opened in 1883 for horse racing and public festivities, but its use was brief. The former hippodrome area was later brought back into vineyard cultivation, restoring an agricultural function to that part of the estate.
Agricultural hangar and wartime features
An agricultural hangar stands beside the château. During the German occupation, it was adapted as a military canteen, a change of use still indicated by the inscription “Kantine” on one of its doors.
During the same period, artillery was positioned at the estate’s highest point and aimed towards the sea. The placement reflected the military use of the property during the anticipated defence against a possible Allied landing, while the château’s towers remained unsuitable for the planned gun batteries because of their roof design and access arrangements.
