Wendy Heinicken-Goby is the owner of Château Saint-Pierre De Mejans. She shares her experience building organically and bringing to life the soul of a thousand year old building in Provence, France. Hospitality, Artists in Residences, and Wine. Five years ago she found a listing for a thousand-year-old building ten minutes from her house and went to look at it out of curiosity, with no intention of buying anything. It needed a great deal of love. She and her husband stepped into the chapel, looked at each other, and started asking questions instead of leaving. The winemaker who had farmed the land for thirty-five years agreed to stay on. His biggest customer turned out to be an importer in Houston, where she is a third-generation native. She read that as the universe speaking about as plainly as it speaks, and they bought the place in 2021. It opened a year later as a bed and breakfast, a wedding and events venue, and a working vineyard, and she has run it by feel since. Anything she adds has to please her first, and then it has to suit the building — which she treats as having a soul that predates her by over 1,000 years. New ideas are treated as experiments, and a decision afterward about whether it felt right. Nothing gets six editions planned in advance. This conversation is that method in detail: what it has produced, what it cost her to learn, and the structure underneath that makes the looseness survivable. Three things to take from it: Organic growth rests on structural discipline. The vineyard is an SCEA and the lodging and events business is an SAS, each with its own accounts and software, because French law treats farming and hospitality as different animals. Her first year, she bottled the entire harvest before knowing what she could sell. Every year since, the sales figures come first.She kept what already worked to cover what she didn't know. The winemaker is the son of the family who sold them the estate and has farmed that land for thirty-five years, including the vines he planted himself. His staying was a precondition of the sale. Her own training came after, and so did the industry friendships she can now call when something goes wrong — the thing she names as what she most wishes she'd had at the start.The history is the filter every decision runs through. Sound baths happen in the Romanesque chapel because they suit it. Concerts are chosen for what the music should be inside that building. Brunches are a local chef, local produce, outdoors under the trees — and the vegetable garden, the beehives, the olive oil and the lavender all come off the same land the monks farmed. What she wants next follows the same line: children learning outdoors how wine and honey and olive oil are actually made, and a medieval dinner in the chapel, built on records she has been gathering from historians and the National Archives.If this is the conversation you've been needing to have, start here. thinkvoen.com Where to find the Château: Château Saint-Pierre de Mejans — saintpierredemejans.com/en Where Wendy learned the trade: Université du Vin — universite-du-vin.com Les Éléonores de Provence — leseleonoresdeprovence.com The community she's part of: Creative Connections Luberon — instillimpact.co/community (Jossie Auerbach's bilingual gathering of women entrepreneurs and creatives, which has held events at the Château) SUBSCRIBE TO OUR SUBSTACK MAILING LIST: https://substack.com/@thestartlisteningpodcast This episode was produced by Cat Fincun and VOEN Consulting.
