UNIQUE WINE-BASED COMMUNITIES FOR PEOPLE LIVING INDEPENDENTLY WITH SHARED PURPOSE
Bordeaux, France
Community & Raison d’Être
With careers and business life behind them, many people are looking for a new kind of adventure in their life.
No longer needing to work, but still with lots of energy, experience and years ahead of them, it is important to find the balance of relaxing but also having something interesting and meaningful to do.
So too, is living in a great environment & having community… that is Vineyard Living!
A VERY SPECIAL PLACE
On the limestone hills above the meandering Dordogne river, just a few kilometres from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of St Émilion, lies a 30 hectare wine estate.
The estate includes 25 hectares of vines, five hectares of pasture & forest, plus an intricate complex of ancient stone buildings that formally provided homes for the family owners and the estate vine-workers.
A UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY
Vineyard Living plans to buy the estate and create a unique hamlet of privately owned homes that enjoy shared ownership of a well-managed wine estate.
Members of this exclusive community can work as much or as little as they would like in the vineyards, caring for the vines, harvesting the grapes and making the wine.
Hamlet to include:
- +20 individual owned Studios, 1 bed & 2 bed cottages
- Shared ownership of a 25 hectare Bordeaux vineyard
- Enjoy home grown food from farm & vegetable garden
- Mature forest/woodlands with stream running through
- Indoor swimming pool in old stone chai building
- Vaulted stone barn/banquet hall & kitchen
- Natural swimming pool in forest glade
- Opportunity to work in a professionally operated vineyard
- On-site house/estate manager available as needed
- Guest cottage/bunk house for family & friends to stay
- Additionally there will be small farm with chickens, goats, pigs and sheep
The entire enterprise will be run by experienced professionals.
A personal invitation
As the World resets itself after the turbulence of 2020, many people are reevaluating how they live and what they do. Living a simpler, rural life has never been more enticing. To connect with nature, create & produce real things, such as food & wine, plus living in a caring community with a common purpose, has great appeal.
My name is Jonathan Loy and I have been involved with property in France for 20 years. While practicing as an architect & builder in the UK, my wife and I, with friends, bought a water mill in Brittany, which we ran as 4 holiday gîtes to rent for 15 years. After 6 years living and working in the USA as a post & beam timber frame designer and Class A Building Contractor, we moved back to France with our family in 2010. Since selling the water mill in 2015, we have been living and working in châteaux in the Bordeaux region providing hospitality and construction services. Now with grown up children, my wife & I are very settled in the area, recently buying an old stone house to renovate into our family home.
I approach this project with a lifetime of skills and experience understanding the market from an owners and service providers perspective. Also, having worked for French companies and being a business owner myself in France, I benefit as a foreigner, from both inside & outside perspectives. This has helped to provide me with vision and clarity towards the goal of creating a thriving community of people living independently but working together with common purpose in a hilltop vineyard, making wine, growing vegetables and keeping livestock.
It would be wrong to say I am oblivious to the obstacles involved administratively, constructionally, oenologically and financially in realising this project, but I am not deterred by that; rather motivated to create something wonderful and redemptive from the remnants of a neglected vineyard & wine-making chais, hectares of forest plus a hamlet of abandoned homes. Of course, there maybe easier or ‘more profitable’ projects to be had, but the goal here is to achieve something truly worthwhile & satisfying for the people who work on the project and for those who live there.
This wine estate has been locked in a family inheritance dispute for 10 years. Vineyard Living offers the chance to take this beautiful but neglected property and to turn it into something glorious for current & future generations; something really worth being a part of. Will you join us?
Here’s to a better way of living!
Guide Pricing
For individual home & community vineyard ownership
One Bedroom Studio
€295,000
Approx 900 Sq Ft. • 1 Bed • 1 Bath
Plus monthly management fee TBC
One Bedroom Cottage
€395,000
Approx 1,200 Sq Ft. • 1 Bed • 1 Bath
Plus monthly management fee TBC
Two Bedroom Cottage
€495,000
Approx 1,500 Sq Ft. • 1 Bed • 1 Bath
Plus monthly management fee TBC
The Opportunity
Provisional plans include the creation of 24 self-contained, independently owned homes including:
- 4 no. Studio apartments
- 8 no. One bedroom cottages
- 12 no. Two bedroom cottages
Each will have a unique floor plan, design details and character. They will be comfortable and equipped with modern conveniences without losing a compelling French rural aesthetic. All will enjoy an outside terrace, balcony or garden area with places to sit, relax & to dine.
Whilst the vineyard component is a vital part of the project, the level to which home owners are involved may be flexible and varied, allowing people to have a greater or lesser role as they choose.
Get in touch to find out more specific information about Vineyard Living #1
“When you are brought into the land with fine houses you did not build… vineyards you did not plant… when you settle down, eat and are satisfied… do not forget the Lord your God.”
Deuteronomy 6-8
Register your interest
Use the form below to register your interest in being a part of this unique community
and Jonathan will be in touch to discuss the opportunity in more detail.