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Key figures

Origin and history

The Musée du chai de Lardimalie is a private museum located in a cellar built in 1902 on the town of Saint-Pierre-de-Chignac, in the White Perigord, in the heart of the Dordogne. This building, designed by the Bordeaux architect Ernest Minvielle for industrialist Jules Honoré Secrestat, was intended for the production and conservation of wine. It embodies a functional architectural model, marked by technical innovations for the time, such as rails, a hub and oak vats.

Jules Honoré Secrestat, born in 1822 in Montignac, was a visionary entrepreneur in the field of drinks, inventing the Bitter Secrestat, the first gentian aperitif. After making a fortune in Bordeaux, in 1875 he acquired the estate of Lardimalie, where he planted a vineyard of 36 hectares. At 80, he built two cellars (one for white wine, one for red wine) by Minvielle, but died in 1905, shortly after their completion.

The cellar, passed over over five generations, ceased its wine-growing activity in 1967, due to a lack of competitiveness vis-à-vis neighbouring vineyards. Transformed into a museum in 2009 by the Mullenheim family, he exhibited tools, archives and objects tracing the rural and wine life of the Périgord between 1870 and 1967. The building, registered as a historical monument in 2010, has been managed since 2021 by the tourist office of the Grand Périgueux.

The museum also evokes the industrial and advertising boom of the early twentieth century, through documents and everyday objects. Its quasi-industrial arrangement, with innovative equipment (steam oven, splinter) bears witness to the ingenuity of Secrestat. The site, labeled Tourism & Handicap in 2012, is part of the wine and architectural heritage of New Aquitaine.

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