9 Avenue de Saint-Chinian, Hérault
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Monopoly has a simple recipe for winning: buy up all the streets of one colour and put hotels on them. Marc Verstraete, a Belgian industrialist, had no such plan when, after a long search for a vineyard of his own, he fell for a ruined château in Assignan, a hill village in Saint-Chinian country. The idea was to make a little wine for his own pleasure, and that, for a while, was that.
Then the friends started coming. They came so often that a house in the village had to be bought to put them up, then another, and the game was on. Today roughly a third of the old village is painted in the colours of wine, from rosé pink to deep claret, and every coloured façade belongs to Castigno, now a hotel of twenty-one rooms scattered among houses where about a hundred and fifty people still live. Many of them work in its vines and kitchens, and once a year the estate throws a banquet for them.
Tine Claeys, then his wife, had designed costumes for Belgian film and television, and she dressed the houses the way she once dressed actors. In the Vendangeurs wing the rooms are named after grape varieties, and one of them is red right down to the monogrammed sheets. There are poetry books by the beds and no televisions anywhere, which seems only fair. The rooms provide the drama.
Out in the vineyard, some of the vines are more than a century old and grow in rows no tractor can work, so two draught horses do the ploughing instead. The wine ends up in a new cellar clad in cork and shaped, seen from above, like a giant bottle, where classical music is played to the barrels because it is said to keep the wine joyful. By all accounts, it is in excellent spirits.
By evening everyone drifts to the square, where La Petite Table cooks over open flames and guests end up beside the villagers over a bottle of Castigno while children chase each other through the lanes. There is also a Thai kitchen under red lanterns, a nod to the owner's love of Asia and an unlikely find in the Languedoc hills, and a small gourmet room, Maison Robert, with its terrace in a corner of the square. Not every restaurant opens every night, so the village has to be read like a board, with some squares lit and others dark.
As one of the concierges once put it, guests have to like wine to come here. Couples and food lovers are the natural players. Children may join the game, but the mood is grown-up and the pools are not fenced. Wifi is all but absent, and the hotel closes from January to March. A car is needed from Béziers airport, under an hour away, but for the Sunday market in Saint-Chinian the hotel's bright red 2CV is far more fun.
Monopoly is famous for ending friendships. In Assignan, a game that began with friends has brought a village back to life.
Unplugged
The rooms have no wifi and no television; the corridors, as the hotel puts it, are the village streets.
The old stable in the centre of the village holds two of the three Cuvée Prestige rooms, the largest category at 50 to 90 m², with a shower room and a big living area: old stone, parquet, brightly coloured walls, works of art and antique finds. The square, the restaurants and the spa are next door; reception and the pools are two minutes away.
The five Cuvée Millésimée rooms, 25 to 35 m², are named after the estate's vintages and decorated in the shades of wine lees, from pale to the deep red seen here, with Languedoc stone and a shower open to the room. Four are on the first floor of La Maison des Amis, beside the pools; the fifth is La Maison Vic, a maisonette with kitchen.
The estate's cellar lies outside the village, beyond the hamlet of 4 Sous: a long, low building clad in cork, shaped like a wine bottle laid on the ground, holding the vats and barrels. Guided tours with a tasting of five organic wines and a wide view over the vineyards run daily from April to December, including one in English.
La Petite Table puts its coloured chairs and benches across the cobbled square under red parasols and a few shade trees. Chef Julien Perard cooks bistro dishes with a nod to his Réunion roots, and on Fridays the menu becomes a wood-fired grill with live guitar. Le Thaï faces the same square; Maison Robert keeps a shaded terrace in one corner.
At a glance
Where
9 Avenue de Saint-Chinian, 34360 Assignan, Hérault, Occitanie; a hill village in the Saint-Chinian appellation of the Haut-Languedoc, among vines and garrigue. By car 35 minutes from Béziers and Narbonne, with access from the A9 and A75; Béziers airport 40 minutes, Carcassonne and Montpellier airports about an hour, Perpignan airport an hour and a quarter; TGV Paris to Béziers about four and a half hours. GPS 43.39705, 2.88905
Why this one
Rooms in coloured houses round the square.
Three restaurants a few steps away.
Clad in cork, among old vines.
The Edit Notes
The rooms are spread across the village. La Maison des Amis, at the entrance, holds the front desk, the car park and the outdoor pools, with the small Cuvée Tradition rooms, four Cuvée Millésimée and three ground-floor Vendangeur rooms with terraces. The three Prestige rooms sit in the centre, beside the square, the restaurants and the spa. The other eight Vendangeur rooms lie to the east, each with a terrace onto a small garden and two bicycles, five minutes on foot from the desk.
La Petite Table, Le Thaï and Maison Robert each close on different days, and the hotel's own English and French pages do not always give the same days, so the evening plan should be confirmed when booking the room. Maison Robert seats only twenty, which makes a reservation the safer course. Le Thaï works without a menu card: the kitchen sends a tasting sequence that changes every two weeks. On fine Fridays La Petite Table switches to its wood-fired grill.
The rooms have neither wifi nor television, and the hotel presents this as the reason to come rather than as a shortcoming. Anyone who must work, or travels with children used to screens, should look at Villa Rouge instead: a detached house east of the village for up to four, with two bedrooms, a kitchen, a garden, its own pool, wifi and television. It is let for three nights or more in low season and by the week in July and August.
The cork-clad cellar stands among the vines beyond the hamlet of 4 Sous, a short drive from the square, so the guided tour needs a car, a bicycle or the 4x4 vineyard safari, which ends with the same cellar visit and tasting. Tours run daily from April to December, with one English-language tour each day. A car is needed in any case: the nearest airport is Béziers, about forty minutes away, and the TGV from Paris stops at Béziers.
The price question
The money buys a stay inside a working wine village: a room in a coloured house, three restaurants a few steps away, the estate's own wine in the minibar and a cellar visit on the doorstep. It does not buy a conventional hotel: rooms are spread over several houses, the entry rooms are small, the rooms are offline, and the restaurants keep separate calendars.
Book it for couples who like wine and food and want two or three nights offline, with dinners planned around the restaurant calendar. Families with young children, or anyone who needs a connection, are better served by Villa Rouge or by another hotel.
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The Extra Edit
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