Lauris, in the Luberon north of Aix-en-Provence. Frédéric Biousse and Guillaume Foucher bought the wine estate in 2014 and opened it as a hotel in February 2016, after sixteen months of work that by their own account left four walls standing. The architect Alexandre Lafourcade, described as an expert in restoring châteaux, took on the building and a new cellar; the owners did the decoration themselves. It is this register’s clearest case of one house that turned into a hotel group.
The house
The vineyard is better dated than the building. The Michelin Guide records that “La bastide de Fontenille figure dès 1638 sur les cadastres avec 12 hectares de vigne”, and dates the house itself to “entre la fin du XVIème et le début du XVIIème siècle” — then, a few lines later, calls it “cet édifice du XVIIIème siècle”. Galerie, writing in 2025, gives 1638 as the year the “vast three-story bastide” was built and places the gardens in the 18th century. Twelve hectares of vines in 1638 is the figure all three leave standing.
Frédéric Biousse, who came from fashion, and Guillaume Foucher, a gallery owner, bought it in 2014: “We acquired Domaine de Fontenille, in Lauris, in the Luberon, north of Aix-en-Provence, in 2014.” They describe what followed in one sentence: “After 16 months of complete renovation - there were only four walls left! - we opened in February 2016.” The house opened with seventeen rooms, a gastronomic restaurant, a bistro called La Cuisine d’Amélie, a contemporary art centre and a new cellar. Its chef, Guillaume Goupil, was named Meilleur Ouvrier de France in 2022. Fontenille became the first of Les Domaines de Fontenille, which by August 2022 ran eight hotels on more than 400 hectares, farmed more than 120 hectares and sold about 300,000 bottles a year.
What distinguishes it
A cadastre entry of 1638 is the oldest fixed fact the house owns “La bastide de Fontenille figure dès 1638 sur les cadastres avec 12 hectares de vigne.” Three published accounts give three readings of when the building went up — late 16th to early 17th century, the 18th century, and 1638 itself — but all of them pass through the same cadastral entry. In this house the vineyard is the document and the bastide is the inference.
Sixteen months, and four walls The owners state the scope themselves: “After 16 months of complete renovation - there were only four walls left! - we opened in February 2016.” A guest is therefore inside a 2016 building wearing a 1638 skin. The register records this plainly because it is the difference between a restored house and a rebuilt one, and the owners do not hide it.
The architect took the shell; the owners took the rooms Yonder names Alexandre Lafourcade, “expert en restauration de château”, as the man charged with the transformation and the building of the cellar, and says the owners handled the interior decoration. Biousse and Foucher confirm the division: they decorate their hotels themselves and say they never engage an outside decorator. The house is the rare case in Part IV where the designer’s name is the owners’.
One house became a collection in six years By the August 2022 interview, “The Domaines de Fontenille Collection currently consists of 8 hotels”, with “three openings by 2023”, more than 400 hectares of estate, over 120 hectares farmed and some 300,000 bottles a year. Named houses include Bords de Mer in Marseille, Les Hortensias du Lac at Hossegor, Les Hautes Mers on the Île d’Yeu, which opened in April 2022, Le Domaine de Primard, which opened in 2021, and two fincas in Menorca. Lauris is the seed, and the register seats it as the founding house of the group that carries its name.
Three published counts of the rooms, and three of the vines The house opened with seventeen rooms. The Michelin Guide says “L’hôtel compte 21 chambres”, Yonder gives twenty-one keys in 2025, and Galerie calls it “The 25-room hotel” in the same year. The vineyard moves in step: thirty hectares in the owners’ 2022 account, “le magnifique vignoble environnant de 39 hectares” in Michelin’s, and “Le tout est entouré de 40 hectares de vignes” in Yonder’s. The register prints all of them and settles none.
Fontenille is let by the room, twenty-one or twenty-five of them depending on the count, and is seated in Wine Estates rather than Exclusive-Use Estates: there is no arrangement here for taking the bastide whole. A guest who wants an ancestral property with its family still in it will find owners who bought in 2014 and a building that was down to four walls in 2015. And the thing most people travel to the Luberon for — an old house untouched — is precisely what this one is not.
Signature rooms and dates
Competitive landscape
Sources
What the entry rests on, read 13 October 2026. Each reference records the facts it supports, so a disputed line can be traced to the account it came from.