Visiting a new chateau can be a lot of fun – we get to escape from Paris for a while, enjoy the countryside and hopefully find a great new venue to propose to our clients.

We were put in contact with a chateau owner who is keen to do more weddings at his chateau in France.  We, being keen to develop relationships directly with chateaus, decided to take a trip down to check out the situation.  The chateau was located in the Ardèche, a department nestled between Burgundy and Provence, part of the Rhône-Alps region.  The caretakers were a nice English couple who had been long-time residents of Zimbabwe – with weather a far cry from the grey-misty-coldness of French winters.

The chateau was built in the mid 1800′s and is named after the mountain that overshadows the chateau grounds.  An intriguing historical anecdote is that it apparently was into this mountain that a plane carrying JFK’s sister and her lover crashed in 1948.  The chateau can sleep quite a few people and has a large outdoor terrace that could accommodate an elegant outdoor reception.

Wanting to capitalize on our time away from the office, we enjoyed some well-earned glasses of Saint-Emilion and researched other possible venues we could visit on our drive back up to Paris.  Thankfully there was no shortage of candidates and we decided to contact a chateau our wine merchant friend Charles had recommended to us.  The chateau owner had recently inherited the estate and was happy to have us come visit.

This chateau, located between Beaune and Dole, had the symmetric elegant lines of the 17-18th century style.  Despite the snowy weather and general dishevelment inside because of the renovation work, we could tell that it would be a great venue.  The work is scheduled to be done for the chateau’s re-opening in May, are dates are still available for Summer/Fall 2010!