Haut-Rian
Château
Les Vignes de Coulous - Château de Garras - Pauline & William Lapierre happy & proud organic winegrowers south of Bordeaux, in the Entre-deux-Mers & Premières Côtes de Bordeaux region
Roots.
The estate was founded in 1988 by Michel Dietrich and Isabelle Dietrich, both children of winegrowing families from Alsace and Champagne. After a rich professional journey through Germany, Australia, and Bordeaux, they chose to settle in the beautiful medieval village of Rions. Over the next thirty years, they worked to establish Château Haut-Rian as a benchmark for quality among the region’s family-owned estates.
Their daughter Pauline first studied at HEC Paris, where she met her husband, William. Raised near Paris in a family deeply connected to gastronomy, William shared Pauline’s desire for a more grounded and meaningful way of life. After a first professional experience together in Singapore, they decided to return to France and take over the family vineyard.
It was a life choice: a life shaped by working with their hands; a life where the countryside remains agricultural and fertile; a life where wonder is found in the movement of the wind, the warmth of a ray of sunlight, or the scent of rain falling on warm soil.
Pauline earned her oenology degree in Montpellier in 2016 and officially took over the estate in 2019. William joined the adventure in 2020 after completing a degree in viticulture and oenology in Angers.
KNOW-HOW
Around six people work full-time at the estate, including Pauline and William themselves. Michel Dietrich, now officially retired but still deeply involved, also brings his experienced eye and palate to the tasting sessions, continuing to guide the wines with the perspective of more than three decades at the estate.
We are artisans.
Committing to organic and biodynamic viticulture requires immense dedication, precision, and technical expertise from every person involved. It is demanding work that can only be carried out by sensitive, hardworking, patient, and determined people — true artisans.
We, artisan winegrowers, are deeply committed to crafting wines that are both demanding and accessible.
We try, every day, to approach our work with both a long-term vision and a deep attention to detail, because we believe that true quality can only emerge over time, through consistent and thoughtful work. The finest estates are often recognized not by spectacular gestures, but by years of care, rigor, and perseverance.
This is why we strive to tend our vineyards like a garden, paying close attention to the physical and biological balance of each parcel.
Since 2018, we have progressively committed our 70 hectares of vineyards to organic farming. In 2024, 40 hectares were already certified organic, and all of our wines will be certified from the 2025 vintage onward. Organic farming became an obvious path for us because it requires the grower to remain deeply connected to the vines — demanding precision, observation, and discipline every day.
In November 2024, driven by a desire to explore a world that still remains partly mysterious to us — to better understand why wine and vines can express such subtle and almost intangible nuances — we also began enriching our soils with biodynamic preparations, with the ambition of certifying the estate in 2025.
Beyond the vines themselves, we are committed to encouraging biodiversity throughout the estate. We have planted several hundred meters of hedgerows, installed bat boxes and beehives, sow green manures across 35 hectares of vineyards, and each year return compost made from our grape pomace back to the soil.
For us, caring for the vineyard also means caring for the living ecosystem that surrounds it.
OUR DEAR PLOTS
The vineyard covers 70 hectares, divided into a mosaic of parcels ranging from just a few rows to nearly four hectares for the largest ones. These plots are spread across five different villages, allowing for a greater diversity of soils, microclimates, and grape varieties.
This fragmentation is essential to our philosophy: each parcel has its own identity, its own balance, and its own way of expressing the vintage.
In this photograph lies the remarkable hillside of Coulous — a magnificent terroir nestled within a green landscape, overlooking the ancient ramparts of Rions. It is a place of rare energy, where the vines seem deeply connected to both the limestone slopes and the surrounding natural environment.
ENTRE-DEUX-MERS
The soils are rich in boulbène (clay and sand) and the climate is cooler. Entirely planted with white grape varieties (Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc), they produce fresh and taut wines.
PREMIERES CÔTES DE BORDEAUX
Clay-limestone and clay-gravel terroirs, mainly on hillsides. Filled with sunshine and warmed by the Garonne in spring, they allow for a very beautiful expression of the 6 red grape varieties in our blends:
Merlot, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carm ènere.
Some of the estate’s oldest parcels were planted in the 1940s, while the youngest vines are only a few months old.
The average age of the vineyard is around 25 years, and we work exclusively with grapes grown on our own estate parcels.
We have a deep affection for Sémillon. Subtle and delicate, yet beautifully structured on the palate, it brings depth, texture, and elegance to our white wine blends.
We are fortunate to farm several old Sémillon parcels, from which we began a massal selection program in 2019. Massal selection allows us to preserve and renew the genetic diversity of these old vines by propagating the most qualitative and resilient plants directly from the vineyard itself.
For us, this work is both agricultural and cultural: a way of protecting a living heritage while preparing the vineyard for future generations.