Château Val Joanis is a winery located in the Vaucluse Department of France, in the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur, just west of the town of Pertuis. The wines it produces are classified AOC Côtes du Luberon.
The Chateau is built on the site of an ancient Roman villa, some of whose stones today decorate the garden. The building is decorated with the coat of arms of Jean de Joanis, the secretary of the King Louis III of Naples. The estate was occupied by the Arnaud family, who kept it until the 17th century. The estate was given the status of a fief in 1754.
The house and estate fell into ruins during the 19th century. It was purchased in 1977 by Jean-Louis Chancel. Between 1979 and 1999, he planted 186 hectares of vines. He also commissioned the architect Jean-Jacques Pichoux to build a modern winery building, inspired by the architectural style of the Dominican Order.
The gardens were begun in 1978 by the owner, Cécile Chancel, with the help of landscape designer Tobie Loup de Viane. The garden was finished in its present form in 1990 and became a Remarkable Garden of France in 2005. The garden is built on three terraces cut into a hillside overlooking the vineyards.
The upper terrace is a kitchen garden and flower garden.The middle terrace is devoted to flowers and ornamental plants.The lower terrace is devoted to fruit trees, and to platane trees over twenty years of age brought from Mount Athos.
The three terraces are linked by a pergola, or tunnel, covered with climbing roses and trumpet vines, which runs from the top to the bottom of the garden.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.