Travel Reference
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by an English family who used it as their holiday house. Pierre owned the middle section
while the wing opposite the one owned by the commune was split in two: one part owned
by a local French family that didn't use it and a second part owned by a Kiwi man and
his French wife who spent half their year selling antiques in Auckland and the other half
sourcing them from their pied-à-terre in France.
Over the couple of days of bottling we had come to realise that Pierre approached life
with vigour. His work was bottling but his life was his family and his passion was motor
cars. He collected ancient ones and did rally driving in his spare time. When he wasn't rally
driving or bottling he was with his family working on renovations to his castle. I couldn't
wait to see it.
The kilometre route from Garrigue to Saussignac runs past Les Tours de Lenvège then
sweeps up, surrounded by vineyards, to the village. Saussignac Castle, with its massive,
perfect stones, likely cut from the quarry at Garrigue, dominates the scene.
Pierre bowed nobly at the door with a sweep of his arm as we walked in. A brocaded cur-
tain hung across a stone entrance that led from the imposing hallway into the grand salon.
In the open-plan kitchen, at the entrance to this great room, a stately woman with dark hair
and fair skin was slicing fresh carrots for a salad. Pierre introduced Laurence, his wife.
The castle was beautiful outside but the interior was breathtaking. Vaulted stone ceilings
soared high overhead creating immense grandeur: proportions from an age where space,
labour and stone were plentiful, although even then it was possible to run out of money: the
front towers of the château would have been matched by two replica towers at the back but
for lack of finance.
'When we arrived this room was split into five rooms with dry walls,' said Pierre. 'All
these stones were covered with mortar. We planned to put the kitchen at the far end but I
pulled away the tiny 1970s fireplace to discover this.' He pointed to the massive château
fireplace large enough to hold ten adults standing comfortably at full height. 'I ran to
Laurence and said, "Sorry, we can't put your kitchen in!"'
'And I'm still waiting,' said Laurence drily, her hand waving over the half-installed cup-
boards and the oven still sitting in a box in the corner. She had been making do for three
years. Pierre studiously ignored the comment.
'Removing the mortar covering the stones was the hardest job, especially where the mix
was more concrete than chalk. Come, let's go upstairs.'
Pierre motioned upwards and led us up another level. Pierre and Laurence's piece of
the castle was about one fifth of the total but they had enough space for a family of ten.
The staircase, made of stone slabs about 2 metres wide, wound around storage rooms that
formed what would have been a giant-size stairwell.
The upper section, their living area, was still in progress with skirting boards and some
doors and electrical points unfinished. Pierre had split the equivalent space of their grand
room, just one level up, into three comfortable bedrooms, a bathroom and a study. The
