Chateau Haut-Rian
Les Vignes de Coulous - Chateau de Garras
Pauline & William Lapierre, Artisans vignerons en Entre-Deux-Mers et Cadillac
WHO ARE WE ?
The estate, as it is today, was created by Michel & Isabelle Dietrich in 1988. They were both children of winegrowers from Alsace and Champagne. After a rich professional career in Germany, Australia and Bordeaux, they decided to settle down and found in Rions (30km south-east of Bordeaux) a place with exceptional and varied terroirs for making fine red and white wines. For 30 years, they have worked to make Château Haut-Rian a benchmark for quality among the region's family estates.
Pauline, their daughter, first studied at HEC Paris, where she met her husband, William Lapierre. They left for a first professional experience in Singapore and finally decided to return to France.
Pauline, graduated in oenology in Montpellier in 2017 and takes over the estate in 2019. William joins the adventure in 2020 after passing a BTS viti-oeno in Angers.
THE TEAM
The team at the estate is divided between work in the vineyard, the winery, order preparation and administrative and commercial work. It represents around 7 full-time people, not counting the seasonal workers who join the team, mainly in the spring for work in the vineyard and helping out from Michel Dietrich, an active retiree.
OUR COMMITMENT
ARTISAN WINEGROWERS, COMMITTED TO QUALITY
For over 30 years we have been recognized for the quality and consistency of our wines. Regularly rewarded with medals in France and abroad, we work directly with demanding wine merchants and restaurants in France, Europe and the USA who have followed us for many years.
We apply this vision of long-term quality to our work during winemaking but also to the work in the vineyard. Since 2018 we have been working our vines like a garden, attentive to the physical and biological balance of the plots that are entrusted to us for only a few decades.
We have thus planted several hundred meters of hedgerow, installed bat boxes and two beehives. Each year we sow 35ha of natural fertilizers and feed the soil with compost from our grape marc.
Finally, since 2018 we have been gradually converting our 70 ha of vines to Organic Agriculture. 40 ha were certified in 2024 and all of our wines will be certified for the 2025 vintage.
To go even further, we started to enrich our soils with biodynamic preparations in November 2024 and we want to label the estate in 2025 as well.
OUR TERROIR
The vineyard covers 75 hectares, divided into a multitude of plots ranging from a few ares for the smallest to almost 4 hectares for the largest! These parcels are spread over 5 villages, giving us a real diversity of soils, climates and grape varieties.
ENTRE-DEUX-MERS
The soils are rich in boulbènes (clay & sand) and the climate is cooler. Entirely planted with white grape varieties (semillon and sauvignon blanc), it is a very high quality terroir for fresh white wines.
CADILLAC - CÔTES DE BORDEAUX
Clay-limestone and clay-gravel soils, mainly on hillsides. Full of sunshine and warmed by the Garonne in spring, they allow a very beautiful expression of the 6 red grape varieties of our blends:
Merlot, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, Malbec and Carmènere.
The oldest plots on the estate were planted in the 1940s and the most recent are a few months old.
The average age of the vineyard is 25 years. We only work with grapes from our plots.
We love Sémillon. Subtle and delicate, with a beautiful structure in the mouth, it brings a lot to our white wine blends.
We are fortunate to have old plots of Sémillon on which we began massal selection work in 2019. Massal selection helps preserve the genetic diversity of these old plots by renewing them.