Inside the trippy French vineyard owned by ousted Claridge’s billionaire
Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst have designed pieces for Chateau La Coste, France’s totally surreal vineyard, the vision of the billionaire who formerly owned Claridge’s. Adam Bloodworth on the trippiest Provençal escape
Resting on the side of a dirt road at Chateau La Coste, a vineyard and country estate half an hour outside of Marseille, is a large piece of metal covered in tarpaulin. The trackway is not dissimilar from the dozens of others cutting through vineyards in this part of Provence, save for the eye-catching lump under the tarp.
A new Damien Hirst piece hidden from public view, it will go on display soon, adding to the 40-plus sculptures already housed at the vineyard.
Chateau La Coste has sculptures from the world’s most lauded creative minds, including Tracey Emin and Bob Dylan. Many take the form of immersive installations, inviting guests to go through subterranean houses, inside redbrick mazes and – in the case of Dylan’s piece – to lie on a freight train carriage on the remains of a Roman road. That piece asks the visitor to think about stillness, harking back to Dylan’s childhood growing up in Minnesota.
Chateau La Coste sits in the valley beneath the lavender-strewn hills that Cezanne loved to paint. Sun-bleached outhouses once used for wine production have been turned into tasting rooms, and a very pleasant afternoon could be spent drinking the Grenache, Cinsault, Syrah, and Cabernet Sauvignon blends and doing little else. But that would be remiss.
Claridge’s billionaire former owner possibly came here to scream
The latest sign of development is a mammoth 7,500 square metre concrete structure under construction amongst the vines. It looks like the base of a skyscraper, and is sure to be controversial: to many it will be an inexcusable eyesore, but this visitor experience, set to open in 2027, is the surest sign yet of billionaire owner Paddy McKillen’s audacious vision.
One of Northern Ireland’s wealthiest entrepreneurs, McKillen has drawn the world’s most lauded architects and designers to these fields since he bought them in 2002, including Ai Weiwei, Richard Rogers, Tadao Ando and Andy Goldsworthy.
This surreal playground is probably where McKillen came to scream. In 2022, the businessman was involved in one of the most high profile legal battles in London hospitality when he was ousted from The Maybourne Group following a takeover by the Qatari royals.
He owned just over a third of the firm, which operates some of London’s fanciest hotels, including Claridge’s. Before his exit he had been leading the £800m redesign of Mayfair’s most storied hotel, one of the most high profile hotel renovations in modern times, which saw the addition of four floors to the roof and five floors into a new basement. But he never saw the project to completion. Despite the feud, higher-ups at Claridge’s say he is greatly missed. This 600-acre winery must have been his solace in a time of unfathomable stress.
An art gallery protruding over the edge of a cliff
Sculptures of suburban houses, neon yellow totem poles and graves jut out from the woodland. One particularly arresting sight is an art gallery protruding over the edge of a cliff. Completed in November 2020, the Richard Rogers Drawing Gallery would have been designed around the time that McKillen commissioned Rogers to design The Emory, part of The Maybourne Group that is London’s first all-suite property.
Like Richard Serra’s steel walls protruding from the bowels of the earth a short walk away, the provocative structure questions form, appearing to hang precariously as if it is about to collapse at any moment.
Inside, I take in a temporary photography exhibition, A Room of One’s Own, curated by Margaux Plessy, whose work mimics the intimacy of a bedroom. Walking to the end of the gallery and peering into the space below is a pursuit reserved for the hardiest adrenaline junkie/art lover crossover (I am certainly not one of them: I found the experience terrifying).
Elsewhere, Psychopompos by the Brazilian artist Tunga invites the viewer to imagine its central feature, a large hanging crystal, as a portal from one world to another. Transportative but more unnerving is Brick Labyrinth by Danish artist Per Kirkeby. A play on a suburban redbrick house, it is maze-like and completely out of place in the woods, questioning the line between functional architecture and sculpture.
Few artistic residences display a tenth of the scope
Perched on a wooden walkway, Tracey Emin’s Self-Portrait: Cat Inside a Barrel, features a ceramic cat inside the wooden cask. Peering at the shiny cat cooped up inside in the dark wood, and then looking down at the forest canopy, is to experience the private and internal versus the public and external.
Some pieces are less absurd. Fox by REM musician Michael Stipe features a collection of metal animals, and invites you to be part of the pack. Sitting with the beasts is both an isolating experience and a communal one.
It has become en vogue to put art in hotels lobbies and throughout vineyards, but few projects display even a tenth of the scope of Chateau La Coste. I recommend going alone or in a small group to amplify the surreality, but tours lasting two hours are also available. To get the proper experience, stay in one of the vineyard’s two hotels for access to the sculptures after hours.
Stand beneath Paul Matisse’s Meditation Bell at dawn and ring the series of working gongs at your own pace. At dusk, follow the topography on a pilgrimage along Ai Weiwei’s Ruyi Path. After dinner, stroll to the closest artwork, Yoko Ono’s Wish Trees for Provence, to read notes written by guests under moonlight.
Vietnamese homes stranded amongst the undergrowth
Skip dinner and take snacks out at night, watching your own reflection in obese bronze chalices or venturing inside Vietnamese homes stranded amongst the undergrowth without a throng of tourists poking lenses into your sightlines.
The ultra-luxury Villa La Coste is one of two Palace hotels outside Paris. It offers the highest perspective over the vineyard and features more artwork, including a painting of McKillen’s father, who spent time here in the 2000s. New opening Auberge La Coste is a four-star property within the heart of the chateau, where there are multiple restaurants, including an al fresco lunch spot and a rotisserie kitchen restaurant.
Every room at Auberge has a private balcony or terrace overlooking the vines. While small, the rooms are designed to give the feeling of space, accentuated by a cream palette carried from the bed linen to the paint and furnishings. On the downside, there is no swimming pool and the small folding chairs on the terrace don’t invite long afternoons overlooking the vineyard.
Light, bright brunches of asparagus and local cheeses at La Terrasse were followed by lamb and seafood – straightforwardly cooked but slathered in local, seasonal herbs – at the Louison fine dining restaurant. Overlooking the Louise Bourgeois Crouching Spider, the restaurant is part of the art, inviting diners into the whimsy: chairs and tables are placed on an island adrift on a feature lake. If £2,000 per night for Villa La Coste is too steep, book a room at Auberge, then reserve a table for dinner on Villa La Coste’s stunning terrace for a flavour of Claridge’s had it been French.
Wealthiest land by chopper next to provocative nude sculpture
Paddy might not be available, but there is another way to get close to the McKillen psyche: his sister Mara McKillen, who is 75, works seven days a week as general manager. It was Mara who discovered the dilapidated vineyard not long after the turn of the millennium.
I’m told Mara doesn’t do interviews either, but you can spot her effervescence and childlike appreciation for the artworks a mile off. During my visit she warms to me, on one occasion joining me for half an hour on the Auberge terrace. Over wine, she recommends vineyard routes and favourite sculptures, delaying her dinner guests to finish a particularly long story.
It’s funny, I say, that the wealthiest guests coming in by helicopter land next to a sculpture of a naked lady with her legs spread (by the French artist Prune Nourry). Her bosoms will be the first thing they see.
She hadn’t thought of that, she says, but there is a quiet protest in it – a radically unglamorous representation of the pregnant female body — which I suspect she enjoys the thought of.
Mara fizzes again when I ask which artist will next drive up these narrow lanes. Staff say they are on first-name terms with Hirst, who has been spending weeks at a time here. The following morning, embarking on another cycle of lunchtime wine followed by an architecture amble, it’s easy to see why.
Rooms at Auberge La Coste start from £235; tours are £15. chateaulacoste.com