In 1958, the Sumeire family who have owned the Font-Freye estate since 1933, acquired this large estate near Pierrefeu, within the Var region. Formerly the summer residence of the archbishops of Toulon, this property bears two names inherited from its long past. Château la Tour de l’Evêque and Château la Tour Sainte Anne. Its past belongs to the history of Provence and France. Queen Mary, Countess of Provence, gave privileges on this land to the inhabitants from the village of Cuers. The sister of King René, Queen Jeanne, the Queen of Naples, is thought to have stayed there.

At Château la Tour de l’Evêque, visitors are welcomed by the Dolphins’ fountain and its pretty water feature. It has always been said that in the old days there was no water in this estate, because when the lady of the manor’s husband left for the crusades, she poisoned the well with her tears… A few centuries later, Gabriel Sumeire, put an end to this curse. With his visionary genius, he linked the property to the fabulously abundant Font-Freye spring conveying the water by gravity to the Dolphins’ fountain.

Roger Sumeire, who has been in charge of the family estates since 1946, worked in perfect symbiosis with his father Gabriel. Works were carried out on a vast scale : hills were dug up to build dry-stone walled terraces.

Régine Sumeire continues the work of her family. At the end of 2010 she started a vast project of building a new cellar in order to vinify and bottle while following gravity principles. The new cellar was inaugurated for the 2011 harvest.

Our philosophy is the result of a long family tradition focused on quality, expertise on organic farming. Proud of their terroir, men and women work with passion and respect in our estates.

The labour of the soils is performed through plowings, without chemical weed-killers. We us infusions and biodynamic preparations on some plots, combined with treatments with copper and sulphur.

Manual harvesting in boxes. We start to cut very early in the morning to harvest fresh grapes. Our staff has been trained from generations to make a careful selection of the grapes while harvesting. We use refrigerated trucks in order to maintain the grapes at a perfect temperature and avoid any risk of oxydation. Manual harvesting is key for the vinification of our wines because our rosé and white wines are pressed in whole-bunch grapes.