Domains des Etangs a luxury hotel on a sprawling French estate

This 11th-century French chateau in a private 850ha park is luxury with a twist - the hosts want you to feel right at home.

WISH TRAVEL 30 Oct 2015

The Charente Limousine region, in the west of France, doesn’t feature in any classic French narratives or slapstick autobiographical tales of expat woes.

This is an overlooked, remote area of France — far less revered than the neighbouring wine regions of Tours, to the north, or Bordeaux, to the west — populated with cognac coloured Limousine cattle and blankets of rolling green hills and pastures that are punctuated by sleepy villages. Hotels and fine-dining options are few and far between.

But now there is the five-star destination hotel Domaine des Etangs, which opened in June. Once the family holiday estate of oil scion Didier Primat, daughter Garance Primat has now opened up its grand wrought-iron gates to visitors. “It was our family home, but it’s a place you want to share with other people,” she says of the estate, set on 850 hectares of rambling parkland (etangs are ponds). Primat recruited Parisian architect Isabel Stanislas and celebrated landscape gardener Camille Muller to create a luxury hotel meets bucolic paradise bar none. The property boasts an 11th-century chateau with seven spacious suites and seven luxury farm cottages dotted about the grounds.

While chateaus might be a dime a dozen in France, this particular offering stands apart: despite the exquisite furnishings and notable works by Matisse, Dieter Appelt and Laurent Grasso that adorn the walls, guests are encouraged to kick back and make themselves home. The drawing room and double living rooms are all unstaffed — requests can be made via phone to reception or to the kitchen, both housed in another building — which means you can make yourself a cup of tea, curl up on the settee and read a book, or help yourself to a nightcap and a Cuban cigar in the cognac room, which is smartly fitted out in tobacco-coloured Hermès furniture. (The Hermès family happen to be close friends of the Primats.)

Despite this luxurious fitout and the serene outlook, the estate is also conspicuously child-friendly: there’s an impressively kitted-out games room and an outdoor playground complete with a flying fox and swings. Primat, one of eight children, felt this was important: “I spent a lot of time there with my siblings and my parents; it is a place that has to be filled with children.”

Given such an expanse of nature, there are also endless activities that guests can enjoy outdoors: mountain bikes and horses to ride, and charming wooden rowboats, moored at jetties dotted along the shores of the property’s numerous lakes, are there for the guests to use. Back at the chateau, there’s an outdoor swimming pool and a tennis court that juts out over the lake as if suspended on the water. On the lower floor, you’ll also find an indoor pool and hammam for guests to use any time of the day. On the two occasions I ventured downstairs during our stay I didn’t cross paths with a single person.

For those who are after real privacy, however, best to opt for one of the property’s self-contained farm cottages, many of which are completely secluded. Some, like the largest cottage, Dragon, which features four double bedrooms, are perfect for families or groups and equipped with full kitchens for self-catering. Guests can also request a private chef from Dyades, the property’s restaurant, to prepare dinner.

One of the only fine-dining offerings in the region, the Dyades — a 40-seat restaurant housed in the stables next to the chateau — is run by French chef Fabien Beaufour, previously executive chef at Daniel Humm’s Michelin-starred restaurant Eleven Madison Park in New York. This is a gourmet interpretation of the farm-to-table concept: Beaufour and his team need only venture as far as the abundant kitchen garden for their vegetables and the beef comes from the Limousine cows raised on the property. The restaurant is also open to the public, but those who drop by for a meal will likely want to check in for a whole week. Or two.

domainedesetangs.com