Château Margüi sits about an hour north of Toulon, nestled in the hills of Provence on the outskirts of a sleepy town called Châteauvert. At first glance it looks like yet another picturesque stage set for “French country,” another sleepy postcard from la France profonde.
But in a country—and a region—that prides itself on its history, here is a hidden manor that is truly ancient, improbably cantilevered at the intersection of soil and civilization. Archaeological traces show that 2,600 years ago the Romans tended this soil for wheat, olive oil, and—most of all—wine, attracted by the unique and rare combination of the pure springs on the property and the special clay underground. To this day, a statue of Ondine, the mythological water nymph, watches over the springs here; they have never run dry.
Ever since then, the château has been something of a microcosm of France’s long and tumultuous history. A farm for most of its life, in the mid-17th century it became a private estate; like many others, it fell into disrepair during World War I. But change continued apace, and now Margüi has found an unlikely proprietor, someone better known for space adventure. George Lucas, the titan behind the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, and his wife Mellody Hobson, the co-CEO and president of Ariel Investments, bought the château in 2017, reportedly for $14 million.
With the help of the interior designer Michael S. Smith, they have lovingly restored the property, maintaining it as a working vineyard and farm with facilities that can be rented for business conferences and special events, or just for leisure by those who want to reconnect with the land and themselves.
“When we found the house, it was a real fixer-upper,” Hobson says. “But we saw an amazing potential.”
This Provençal project is an extension of the couple’s passions. In 1991 Lucas founded Skywalker Vineyards on four acres in Marin County. The vineyard, now 35 acres, is nestled on Lucas’s vast Skywalker Ranch, which has become a sort of creative sanctuary, especially for filmmakers.
The same is true of Skywalker’s Italian estate, Convento Viandante del Cielo, a 16th-century monastery in the part of Umbria that was home to St. Francis of Assisi. Margüi too is a place with deep roots, devoted to the solid fundamentals of the art of winemaking, and to the terroir, a term that refers to the sum of environmental factors that affect the crops in a particular place.
The vintages made here exalt all the classic flavors of the region. The red is an earthy blend of the syrah, cabernet, and grenache varietals, which together give something of the taste of black currants. The white is a bit sharper, and the rosé… Well, the rosé is the color of sunset in a glass. This is Provence, after all.
To restore the bastide, or main house, Hobson and Lucas relied on Smith, who translated the couple’s sweeping imagination into a subtle but evocative design. Throughout, a significant collection of vintage movie posters gestures to their Hollywood pedigree, as does a library that showcases hundreds of titles with a focus on cinema and the arts.
“George is one of the most famous storytellers in the world, and Mellody is interested not just in stories but in narrative. She has a really romantic vision of aesthetics,” Smith says. “They wanted something that had a sense of place and perspective, so my goal was to layer as much character and pattern and charm onto it as I could, but onto something that was still a working entity.”
In practice that meant celebrating both the integrity and the history of the house, which dates from 1784. For many of its more than nine suites, Smith chose natural tones that reflect the striking Provençal fields just outside the windows. A good example is theso-called Yellow Room, decorated with various golden fabrics by Pierre Frey and Carolina Irving that look like sunflowers that never fade. Then there is the dining room, where the wallpaper captures the flora of the region with delicate trees in faint olive greens. In the same way that Lucas’s wine mission is meant to respect the local terroir, the home now nods to it too. (The estate features four buildings with some 18 suites.)
“All of the surrounding natural elements create a magical environment that sustains both plant and human life,” Hobson says. “It is a magical place and a region that must be cared for and preserved.”
Whether you come for an offsite or to relish a few days of solitude brainstorming a future blockbuster, to stay at Château Margüi is to encounter the Provence of yore: the sights and scents of M.F.K. Fisher, the dreamscapes of Peter Mayle, the rustic simplicity of Marcel Pagnol. It was Pagnol, in fact, who once wrote that “our days are only beautiful through their tomorrow.”
Here at Margüi, with its 2,600 years of tradition, the beauty lies in appreciating precisely that: the endless march of history, yes, but also the promise of the future.
Lead image: A cornucopia at Château Margüi, brimming with ingredients from its farm, which dates from Roman times. Today it is operated as a working winery and rentable estate by Skywalker Vineyards.
This story appears in the September 2023 issue of Town & Country under the headline May the Rosé Be With You. SUBSCRIBE NOW
