Julien Berjal

The Idea

The craft starts with family ground and repeated passage. Berjal says, "I was raised alongside my grandfather and my father, in the culture of this cru, Château Le Châtelet. I know every row of vines where I took my first steps." That is a precise education in place: not a distant inheritance, but knowledge built row by row through childhood and work. Ownership here is not treated as a detached title. Berjal also names himself plainly: "I am a winegrower who received specialized training." Those two forms of knowledge — lived familiarity with the vines and formal training — sit together in the decisions made across each vintage. The guiding image is deliberately modest. To act as a gardener is to put attention ahead of flourish, and to accept that refinement happens by degree. Year by year, the wine profile is adjusted, not fixed in place.

The Execution

At Château Le Châtelet, the specialty is Saint-Émilion Grand Cru Classé wine. The work combines traditional techniques with contemporary practices, keeping the estate’s inherited methods active rather than museum-bound. The balance is practical: what has been passed down remains in use, and what is current has a place in the work. In 2023, the estate was certified organic by AB / EUROFEUILLE. That certification gives a dated frame to Berjal’s approach and marks the vineyard work within a recognized organic standard. For a winegrower who says he lives within his vineyard, the certification reads as part of the same close reading of place. The annual refinement he describes is the operating rhythm behind the philosophy. Traditional techniques, contemporary practices, organic certification, and Grand Cru Classé identity all return to the same task: to ask how this place should speak in the present vintage.

On the Record

The estate has earned a Gold Medal at the Paris Exhibition. Together with the 2023 AB / EUROFEUILLE organic certification, it gives two public markers of the work: one for the wine, one for the farming framework now attached to the estate. Berjal’s own words stay closest to the method. He does not separate biography from vineyard, or training from touch. The rows where he took his first steps are also the rows he continues to read, tend, and refine.

Signature

Julien's signature wines include Château Le Châtelet.

In Their Words “I am a winegrower who received specialized training.” “I was raised alongside my grandfather and my father, in the culture of this cru, Château Le Châtelet. I know every row of vines where I took my first steps.”