Château Gigognan hosts company meetings, study days, family gatherings, lunches and cocktails in a 100 square meter room with a panoramic view of its cellar and vats. Groups can add wine tastings and vineyard activities, and the 18th-century château can be hired in full with 8 bedrooms for 15 guests. The estate lies at 1180 Chemin du Castillon in Sorgues, Vaucluse, a few kilometers from Avignon.
Seminars and company events
The meeting room is bright and spacious and comes with a video projector and an interactive touch screen. Its many tables can be set in a U-shape, in theater or in classroom layout. The same room suits a cocktail, a lunch or a birthday. The outdoor areas, including terraces, gardens and a lavender field, can also be privatized for trade shows, showrooms and photo shoots.
The estate's wine activities work as team events. They include a guided tour of the cellar with a tasting, blending workshops from Tuesday to Friday, e-bike rides through the vines, and a winegrowers' trail. Bookings are required for all of them.
Rooms and capacities
The seminar room covers 100 square meters and overlooks the cellar and the vat room. The estate does not publish a capacity figure for it. Outside, the terraces, the gardens and the lavender field can be booked for open-air events.
Accommodation
The château offers guest rooms on a bed and breakfast basis: six double rooms named after grape varieties and olive trees, from 19 to 25 square meters, and a family suite of two bedrooms, Lavandes and Abricots, with a 20 square meter private terrace and access to the fitness room. All rooms have air conditioning, TV and wifi, and are decorated in an 18th-century Provençal style.
For full hire, the château offers 8 bedrooms for 15 guests, with a kitchen, dining room, lounge with piano, billiards room, fitness room, pool, terrace and garden. Two winegrowers' gîtes of 75 square meters, with three and two bedrooms, sleep up to six and five. Free parking and electric vehicle charging points are available.
Catering
The estate has no restaurant. Guests who hire the château can ask for breakfast service, a caterer or a private chef, and the team recommends a list of restaurants nearby. The tasting cellar is open Monday to Saturday.
History and setting
The estate takes its name from a Roman soldier, Gigius, who received the land. It appears as Gigonius in records of 1178, and old vine stock and amphora fragments found on the property show that wine was made here at that time. The Chapelle Saint-Martin was built in 987 on a roadside temple and later became a priory, then a château. In the 17th and 18th centuries the estate ranked as a village and formed, with Châteauneuf-du-Pape and Bédarrides, a fief under the archbishops of Avignon. The château was fully renovated in 2012. Jean-François Hénin bought the estate in 2017, restructured the vineyard and built a new cellar.
Today the 110 hectares of vines are farmed organically and produce Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Signargues, Côtes-du-Rhône Villages and Côtes-du-Rhône wines in red, white and rosé.
Getting there
The estate is in the Rhône Valley a few kilometers from Avignon, the papal city. Parking is free on site.
