The cottage. Three bedrooms under a steep tiled roof, an open fire, and a porch the vine took over years ago and was allowed to keep.
Maison des Vignes is the smallest of the three larger houses and the one people book twice. Three bedrooms, one of them on the ground floor with its own bathroom, and a porch so thoroughly colonised by a climbing vine that nobody has had the heart to cut it back.
Inside, thick stone walls, terracotta floors and a stone fireplace big enough to be the point of the room in October. The lounge runs into the dining room, and French doors on both sides mean the light moves through the house across the day rather than sitting in one corner of it.
It works as a standalone for a family of six, and it works as part of a larger gathering when the other houses are full. Either way it has its own front door, its own kitchen and its own terrace, and the pool is a short walk across the grass.
The light through the vine leaves in the afternoon is the reason people book this one twice.
Everything below belongs to this house alone — its own front door, its own kitchen, its own porch. The pool, tennis court and grounds are shared with the rest of the estate.
A deep stone porch running the width of the house, roofed in timber and then roofed again by the vine. A long table underneath it, lanterns on the wall, string lights through the beams. It faces south-east, so it takes the morning sun and is in shade by the middle of the afternoon — which is the right way round for a house people eat outside in.
The same table in daylight, which is where most of the eating actually happens. Open grass on two sides, fields beyond, and enough shade under the vine that nobody has to move at one o'clock.
A carved stone fireplace with a heavy timber lintel, sofas and armchairs in old tapestry, exposed beams and terracotta underfoot. A small deep-set window on one side and French doors on the other, which is why the room is cool at midday and warm at six.
A long farmhouse table seating eight, with rush-seated chairs, a gilt mirror on the wall and windows on two sides. It opens off the lounge rather than being shut away from it, so whoever is laying the table is still part of the conversation.
Pale walls, wide oak boards and a tall window into the trees, with a carved stone mirror salvaged from somewhere on the estate. It is on the ground floor and it has its own bathroom — the only bedroom in the house that can say either, which makes it the obvious room for whoever would rather not do stairs after dinner.
Aged tile, a wide walk-in shower with a brass rainfall head, and a pedestal basin with brass taps. The most recently rebuilt room in the house, and it shows. It belongs to the ground-floor bedroom — worth knowing before the rooms get allocated.
Under the roof, with pale timber panelling following the pitch on one side and a dormer window in the eaves. Brass lamps either side of the bed, which at 180 × 200 is the largest in the house. Quiet, and warm in a way that ground-floor rooms in stone houses never quite are.
Lined floor to ceiling in warm pine, with an old tapestry bench at the foot of the bed. The darkest and the most enclosed of the three, which in July is a feature rather than a fault.
One long living room with the fire in the middle of it, a separate kitchen, and the ground-floor bedroom with its own bathroom at the far end. Two more bedrooms above, off a landing, sharing the bathroom with the bath.
Indicative layout · not to scale · beds 180 × 200 and 160 × 200
Issigeac holds its market on Sunday morning and Eymet its night market on Tuesday. Monpazier and Beaumont-du-Périgord are two of the better bastides in the south-west, and neither takes long to reach.
For wine, Château Tour des Gendres, Château de la Jaubertie and L'Ancienne Cure are all about a quarter of an hour away. For the river, canoes from La Roque-Gageac down to Beynac, the Maxange caves, and the beach at Pont de Vicq. And for the days when nobody wants to move, there is the pool and there are the cedars.
Vignes works on its own for six, and slots in easily when a larger group takes two or three houses together.
Dates and rates are online. If you want this house together with one or two of the others, write to us instead — it's quicker than trying to make the calendar do it.