INHERITING A PASSION

The first chapter in the story of the Darnajou family and its barrel-making passion was written in gold letters by Pierre Darnajou, the patriarch and founding father. The son of a vine-grower and the grandson of a cooper, he acquired his coopering diploma in Libourne in 1961 and set out on a long professional career, first doing piecework from home, while he waited to set up his own cooperage.

His wait ended in 1976. After earning the prestigious award of Meilleur Ouvrier de France (France’s best craftsman), he created his own workshop at Lalande de Pomerol in the family’s garage. It was here that he cultivated the subtle art of marrying wood with wine, sharing this main activity with that of cellarmaster and thus building up a unique savoir-faire that he passed on to his son, Vincent. The latter inherited this passion and adopted the vocation with open arms in 1993, first crossing to the other side of France to pass his coopering diploma at the Lycée of Beaune, in the heart of that other great French wine region, Burgundy. Returning to his own region, Vincent worked several years alongside his father before taking over the business definitively in 2003.

His passion for this noble craft led him to create a more modern facility, in which the highest standards of barrel-making could be practised with his trademark meticulous attention to detail. The Tonnellerie Vincent Darnajou was set up in Montagne.

INHERITING A PASSION

With the drive and support of his wife Nadège, the structuring of the business was begun. Methods, work tools and a proactive approach were introduced that have today made the company perfectly adapted to the present and well-prepared for the future.

Alongside Vincent, who is either working closely with his coopers or busy visiting clients and building up customer-loyalty, Nadège co-runs the company, taking special care of forward-planning as well as societal and environmental matters.  Constantly attentive to markets, clients and trends, Nadège ensures that the cooperage maintains a harmonious balance between the values dear to the company and its evolution. 

Among several other areas currently being studied, Nadège is developing new services for the clients using the latest technology, research and innovation.

Since 2003, with the structuring of the business and its subsequent development, the team has grown to 15 people, all working in perfect synergy. 

INHERITING A PASSION

Marie Charlotte Merceron, as our sales assistant, is the first link between our cooperage and our clients, both in France and abroad.  

Having made skills maintenance and personnel development a priority for our team, our company took on Chantal Villotta Germain in 2013 on a part-time basis to manage human resources. Having completed her mission with aplomb, she was offered a full-time post in our company in 2015 as operations and human resources manager.

The internal promotion of Jérôme Arpin and Mickaël Coutin is an example of the success of our personnel development programme. They are now the heads of our workshop teams in Montagne and Les Artigues de Lussac. Fully involved in the barrel-making process, they now also benefit from a lateral, cross-sectional view of the company’s needs.

Since 2003, we have been constantly evolving, building our company around its core values, and eager as a team to do our job well and establish a relationship of long-lasting trust with passionate wine growers all over the world. 

THE TWO SITES

An enterprising spirit is underpinned by a carefully-established philosophy of work in two production sites. 

When our company was set up in 2003, we located the workshop and head office at Goujon, near Montagne. The 225-litre Bordeaux barrels that have made Tonnellerie Vincent Darnajou famous all over the world were made there. 

New ideas were also developed at that site, different avenues were explored, and tools were acquired that would help keep us on our toes, make us innovate and take the decisions that would enable our company to move forward without abandoning its values and its soul.

Anticipating the cooperage’s future development and direction, we adapted to the expectations of our clients and gradually expanded to cater for new markets around the world. These were the crucial factors that persuaded us to create a second production site of a size that maintained the human dimension of the first.    

The location for this new site was Les Chapelles in Artigues de Lussac. From 2011, the cooperage had needed to satisfy strong demand on behalf of our clients to widen its range and supply barrels of 300, 400, 500, and up to 600 litres capacity. This site enabled us to respond to that demand without changing our artisanal way of working, to which our whole team continues to be deeply attached.